The school run now involves a commercial FM radio station and pop music. A sign of the times in our house.
I don’t mind it too much. It sure beats the arguments over who gets to choose the CD, and I don’t mind a mindless pop song, or three.
Except suddenly those songs don’t seem so mindless…
Back in the ‘good old days’, when it was just me and, when I wasn’t working, the only human I had responsibility for was myself… back then, I let those songs wash over me.
I may have scoffed at some stupid lyric here or there. I may even have disagreed with the sentiments of some songs or exalted the messages of others, but that was just in passing. In general a song was just a song, back then.
Now, as I bumble home from school in the Big White Bus full of water bottles, and school bags and children, now there is something different about the way I hear.
I listen to the start of a song, a song my kids and I all sing along to, a song I quite like, and today I hear more than just ridiculous manufactured utterances. Today I hear ‘simulated sex noises’ and I wonder who on earth has taken over my ears!?!
I listen as the real words begin and I realise the entire song is pretty much about sex… if you want it to be.
I wonder if I am becoming a grumpy old woman?
I can hear the scraggly old voice in my head…
“Music these days is all about sex and nastiness… ”
But is it all about sex? Or am I just hyper aware of potential messages in the music because now I am responsible for the molding of four other human lives?
Do I hear more than I did way back when because now I have tween girls singing along at the top of their lungs?
Do I listen differently now because I have a vested interest in raising good men?
Where once I could let it all wash over me and brush it off as ‘mindless pop music’, now it hangs in my mind and taunts me.
When I start analyzing some of the songs I find the themes really don’t mesh well with the values we want for our children.
If they listen to this music will my girls think that the most important thing in life is to have a boyfriend?
Will my boys think that women exist purely for their own pleasure?
Should I be letting my kids listen to this music?
Maybe when they are older?
And there I go, becoming that grumpy old woman again.
I am sure every generation of parents rolled their eyes at the music their children listened to. Every generation thought all kinds of bad things would come from that ‘god awful racket’, but did it?
I turned out ok. I grew up into a person who could rationalize the lyrics of a song and decide for myself whether it was mindless crap or not. How much influence did the music I listened to really have on my values?
And so I am stuck in that eternal roundabout of questions that seems to plague my whole parenting career.
I won’t be turning off the radio though.
I still don’t really know how much influence music might have on my children, but I am ok with that. I am ok with that because, for now, I still have more influence over them than anything else, and I intend to capitalise on that for as long as I can.
So we’ll listen to the song that is about drug addiction and I’ll tell them what it is about and we’ll talk about that.
We’ll listen to the song about getting drunk every Friday night and I’ll tell them what it is about and we’ll talk about that.
And we’ll listen to the song that might be all about sex and I’ll ponder some more if I am just hearing things differently now…
Do you hear differently now you are a parent?
What do you think about kids listening to pop music?
Do you question your parenting choices nearly as much as I do?
{image: by Travis Isaacs via flickr}
oh my goodness Kate….i have been having the exact same thoughts recently! Especially after taking my teen and a few of her friends on a road trip recently and i was a little horrified by a lot of the lyrics i was hearing…but guess what, i made a few comments about a few songs and they really hadn’t ‘listened’ to them properly until i mentioned the actual lyric…then they agreed with me! It really made me wonder if i am just a grumpy old Mum now thinking that it ‘wasn’t as bad in my day!’and perhaps overreacting? They truly didn’t seem to know the lyrics but they liked all the songs…so perhaps it is still more about the rhythm and actual ‘music’…i’m no longer sure but it’s interesting isn’t it?
I get this totally. I do listen to the radio and my children do like top 40 songs. Lulu is addicted to one direction, Tom, beiber. I’m kinda ok with that. What I’m not ok with is listening to johnny ruffo sing “I’m on top of the world when I’m on top of you girl” seriously, WTF!
No way!
I have to confess I am somewhat clueless about pop stars these days because we don’t watch much TV. I didn’t even know who Jonny Ruffo was till we started taping Dancing With the Stars. Am not sure I have heard that song, but one of the problems is that we probably have and I’ve just not noticed all the words!
I agree. I worry about the clothes and fashion of young girls these days too. I dig through clothes racks to find thirst for my daughter that DONT say ” diva” or the like. She can’t read but I don’t like the message on many of them
I totally know what that’s like…
We are now in the ‘bigger girls’ section and I find it really hard to find appropriate clothes. There is nothing suitable for just playing… were are all the t-shirts and jeans? And the colours? Suddenly when you hit size 6 you only get a handful of ‘trendy’ colours.
You are so right when you wrote…
“Music these days is all about sex and nastiness… ”
I was so shocked when I found out what songs my kids were dancing and singing to! But those songs are so catchy and funky… makes you want to move and groove! I sometimes sing a long to the songs being played on the radio… until I read the lyric properly on the net. Then I said “Oh my gosh…” this is what the song is about? Shock horror!!!
1) no
2) the kids usually have to put up with me channel flicking a lot trying to escape the ads. Eventually there will be an iPod dock in the car and then we will listen to music everyone likes on my phone :) (and we like a lot of random crap)
3) no :P
yes, I hear the songs on the radio and hate it! I hate that through music subtle messages are being sent to our kids. We dont listen to the radio in this house, for that reason. I dont like whats on, i dont like the messages behind the songs and I definately do not want my kids singing it!
I tend to listen to older music. My almost 4 year old daughter loves the Beatles (I’ve found most of their songs are about love and holding hands, and if they do sing about sex it’s a lot more subtle (I was a bit shocked that Bruno Mars sings “your sex takes me to paradise” in one of his new ones) so I don’t mind too much) and I love them too. She also loves Madness, particularly Baggy Trousers, and to be honest they sing so fast that you can barely make out the lyrics anyway. If we listen to the radio it’s always radio 2 and they mostly do oldies and that suits us well. I am so not in touch with “music of today” that on the odd occasion I read Heat magazine or whatever I am mostly thinking “who on earth is that?”
I definitely feel like an old biddy sometimes, but I like that my daughter is learning to appreciate the older music that isn’t just about sex or getting high etc, and I also find I prefer the tunes from songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s etc.
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