Should an 8-Year-Old Watch ‘Glee’?

On the spectrum of “we don’t own a television” to “my children can watch whatever they want,” I tend toward the more permissive end. Once my sons reached their early teens, I gave in, deciding to view the ubiquitous sexual innuendo and gender stereotyping, among other things, as fodder for conversation and a means of inoculation against the real world. We regularly watched together, the boys and I, with them slightly mortified that their mother was seeing this inappropriate stuff, and me providing running counterpoint wherever possible.

Last week, however, for the first time in 19 years as a parent, I turned off the set. The show was “30 Rock,” which has always been bawdy, but which has also crossed the crassness line recently. I can’t tell you the whole of the plot, because I only got as far as Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin’s characters discussing her sexual-performance problems. “It’s like Fort Knox down there,” Fey said, and I was afraid my 16-year-old might wonder what she was talking about, because frankly, I wasn’t exactly sure myself. Was it penetration that was the problem? Orgasm? And why was I wondering this during a half-hour TV comedy? I turned off the set just as an ad for erectile dysfunction came on.

Parents have complained about the immorality of television since there has been television. Before that, they were complaining about the immorality of film and burlesque. For a while, they were wrong; that’s because, for a while, entertainment was pushing the envelope in order to show real life as it IS rather than as it is when sanitized.

Separate beds for Lucy and Ricky? Oh, puh-leeze. Maude having an abortion? Yea. The gang on “Friends” having a bit of an obsession with porn? Laughs for adults, but not appropriate for children. A paraplegic losing his virginity against his will, a group of teenagers using nitrous oxide to spur fantasies about Britney Spears, Urban Dictionary level slang used to describe lesbian makeout sessions? All in the 8 o’clock “family” hour?

Which brings us to “Glee.”

The cover of GQ magazine this month shows three stars of that hit show — Lea Michele, who plays Rachel; Dianna Agron, who plays Quinn; and Cory Monteith, who plays Finn — dressed (or undressed, in the case of Michele and Agron) to look like teenagers. The stars are all in their 20s, but the photos, set in a high school, have raised more than a few eyebrows and voices.

The conservative Parents Television Council (which has been having its own share of internal troubles lately) says the photo spread “borders on pedophilia”; Katie Couric has called it “un- ‘Glee’-like,”; the women of “The View” and “The Talk” have expressed their disapproval; and Agron has apologized on her blog, saying, “If you are hurt or these photos make you uncomfortable, it was never our intention.”

Then, however, Agron turns the tables on parents. “If your 8-year-old has a copy of our GQ cover in hand, again I am sorry,” she continues. “But I would have to ask, how on earth did it get there?”

In an e-mail this weekend, an Atlanta reader, Sarah Smith, asked me the same question this weekend. Her discomfort was not just with the photos (although they make her very uncomfortable) but also with the reaction to the photos — specifically the number of parents who feel betrayed by what they see as a “family program.”

She writes:

What really amazes me, though, even if I know it shouldn’t, is that the news reports discussing people’s reactions to the photos keep talking about all the 8- and 9-year-olds who love this show. Really, people? I watch “Glee,” and I don’t consider the jokes and scenarios on there appropriate for 8-year-olds at all. This is thick, hard-edged satire, mixed with a sentimental plot line that also relentlessly satirizes itself. The episodes are full of verbal violence, physical bullying and crass takes on young-adult sexuality, to the point that I myself sometimes wince and wish they’d back off on the raunch, especially this new season. They present deadpan cruelty as funny, and when the humor occasionally hits the mark, I can laugh only from the safe distance of having long since finished an adolescence that was nothing like theirs.

So I’m wondering if the singing and dancing or the high-school setting have automatically led parents to assume that this is a family show. I’m noticing that the producer also created the raucous “Nip/Tuck” before he turned to school kids, which should give us a heads-up for what may be in store. And I’m concerned that it will be tougher for kids to spot bona fide bullying or meaningless sex when they see them, if we expose them to both as satirical entertainment when they’re way too young to understand.

Am I missing something here? Do you all let your 8-year-olds watch “Glee”?

If I still had an 8-year-old, I would not let him watch “Glee.” And if I were Fox, I would not show the program at 8 o’clock. But I would also argue that a discussion of lack of taste and propriety on television is too narrow if we are only talking about parents making decisions for children.

Children are seeing too much salaciousness-passing-for-entertainment on television because there IS too much salaciousness on television, so of course our children are seeing it. (There’s also too much at the newsstand, as buddytv.com points out with this roundup of photos your children have likely seen on the checkout line.)

I’m not calling for government intervention here, or an advertising boycott, or a return to Puritan times. But it would be nice if those who write these shows were required to watch them with their children — and their grandmothers, and their nodding-acquaintance neighbors — before they were shown.

Do your children watch “Glee”? Do you? Have you been covering your eyes lately? Has anything — on “Glee” and elsewhere — led you to turn off programs you used to enjoy?

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