We brought Norman Mailer s The Naked and the Dead home from the public library. Mom went ballistic. She had no idea what the book was about, but it had naked in the title, and that was enough for her. It s more like trying to hold back the tide. Society has been changing ever since those prim Victorians bowdlerized Shakespeare, and books are the least of it.
Parents have every right to be worried.
Kids may be far more sexually knowledgeable and sophisticated than their parents and certainly their grandparents were at the same age, but parents also know that doesn t make those kids any more mature. We ve raised two teen-agers, so we know better than to offer any easy answers. But parents have to pick their battles. Obviously kids need to be self-grounded in a way that gives them a fighting chance to deal with the scarier aspects of the culture that swirls around them. Because there s no way to hide from it, and pulling a book like The Hammer of Eden from the shelves isn t going to make it go away.