An official with the American Family Association says although a new survey shows that portrayals of sex on television often shows consequences, parents should still be careful about what they and their children view.
The study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that during the most recent television season, sexual content was shown on two-thirds of all shows and on four-fifths of shows most watched by teenagers. In addition, the study found that among 1,100 shows of the last TV season that depicted or talked about sex, 26% made some mention of condoms or abstinence.
Ed Vitagliano is director of research for the American Family Association. He treats the study findings with a bit of caution.
“The real message should be one of abstinence and waiting until marriage — and you're never going to find that in Hollywood while the current crop of producers and writers are in control of the scripts,” he says. “Even though it's a little bit better report than we've had in the past, it's still a far cry from what this country needs when the subject of sexuality is mentioned.”
For that reason, Vitagliano says parents still need to be on guard because they have a big responsibility when it comes to the shows their children watch.
“Parents need to be very careful not only about what their children watch, but what they themselves watch,” he says. “It can't be a 'do as I say and not as I do' kind of thing, at least for Christian parents. Their principles and their values need to be reflected not in what they tell their children to do, but in how they themselves act.”
The Kaiser survey found that more than half of the teens it polled said they had learned something important about “safe sex” from television. The Kaiser Family Foundation is an independent health analysis organization.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
