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A. No. Absolutely not. I recommend that we start teaching the classes in fifth grade at the very latest because girls are getting pregnant at the age of 12. Once the kids understand what an enormous responsibility it is to be a parent, they don't want to do it anymore. They begin to respect the needs of the child. Another thing these programs do is encourage caring and sensitivity in young boys. They encourage boys to view themselves as future nurturing fathers. There is very little encouragement of nurturant fathering in this society. We have had a 350% increase in births to single mothers in the past 30 years. We have a soaring divorce rate, with half or more divorced fathers not seeing their children. Research reveals that boys raised without caring and involved fathers in the home are at a higher risk for violent, antisocial behavior than those who have such a father.
Q. How do you stop the violence?
A. Children have to be removed from the commercial market and treated as a precious national resource. We have made the mistake of allowing the enculturation of American children to be in the hands of businesspeople, whose primary interest is not in these children's well-being or even in the well- being of the nation. These people are perfectly ready to exploit the worst possible human potentials. Parents, teachers, educators, social workers, should get involved to try to bring some regulation to this.
Many European countries have much more serious restrictions on what movies children can see than we do in the U.S. We have these theoretical restrictions like the R rating. But the R rating is a joke. I went to see slasher films, and the movie theaters were filled with young kids. Some parents bring their children to see slasher films. When I went to see A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4, there was a little girl sitting in front of me whom I estimated to be three years old. We need to educate those people to begin to understand what the effects are of viewing these kinds of films.
Q. Toy-store aisles now look like mini-arsenals. Do you want to control that too?
A. Yes, and that is also done in some of the European countries.
Q. But that violates a youngster's right to buy whatever toy he wants.
A. No, it doesn't. Does the fact that a 12-year-old can't go into a bar and order a scotch on the rocks, does that violate his or her rights? It is the same thing. We have a history of regulations for the protection of children. A 15-year-old boy cannot buy the same girlie magazines that his father can buy. There are laws to protect children from alcohol. There are laws to protect children from working at an early age.
Q. But a G.I. Joe toy is not an issue of Playboy. Kids have always played with such toys, and who are you to tell parents what their kids can play with? That violates the parents' right to let their child grow up the way they see fit.
A. But then aren't we violating parents' rights when we don't allow their children to go into an X-rated theater and see pornography?
Q. One is pornography, the other the right of parents to buy their child a toy.