Family Values

When I was younger, way before I actually had kids, I always thought I’d be a cool mom. Not the horrifying “best friend mom” who dresses like the cougar version of her teenage daughter and lets her get away with murder because someone in the house is the queen bee and it isn’t the parent. But a cool mom whose kids could talk to her about anything because she’d already been through it all and still remembered what it was like to be a young. I always thought that my vast, dramatic life experiences would give me this amazing empathy and understanding of the younger generation.

And to some degree it does. My memory is literally like a steel trap and I don’t just remember every detail of my childhood down to what people were wearing and what song was playing but I also remember with fresh pain every feeling. So when I saw the look of rejection on my little pal Cecilia when she asked Mac to marry her and she said no (not knowing that his reasoning was that he’s never getting married because then he’d have to move out of our house and he likes it here), my heart broke for her.

And last summer when one of the baseball boys staying with us for the summer over did it a bit a team party and ended up vomiting out the side of his mouth while passed out cold on the floor of my garage, I felt his pain and remembered the way things like shots of Sambuca and carafes of house red wine had ravaged my system as a younger person.

But as an old person I knew that I was responsible for this kid and so even though he wasn’t going to like it I had to call 911 and get an ambulance over here or risk letting someone die on my watch. As an adult, you can’t always make the cool decision. Sometime you have to make the right decision. At some point you have to give up the idea of being cool and be the least cool thing there is - a grown up.

So my question is – who is running the ABC Family Channel because for a channel with the word “family” in it their programming it is awfully sexed up. Is it being run by the 20 something equivalents of my baseball friend because that would make sense? Or is it being run by washed up sexpots like the “best friend moms” I mentioned before who want to relive their glory days? Or maybe it’s being run by the kind of total geeks who I encountered in my cable television working days who think they missed out on some kind of crazy shenanigans as young people and get off on recreating what they think they missed now? I don’t know. All I do know is that the only thing the ABC Family Channel is doing that has to do with family is showing you how to make one – physically.

Now, I have to admit, I am totally into their new show Pretty Little Liars. The story is super cheesy and ridiculous but who cares because the high school girls are all cute and totally mean and 90210 awesome. And their parents are played by some of my classic favorites: Sydney Mancini from both versions of Melrose Place, Nia Peeples of North Shore and Fame not to mention her own rocking Party Machine, Chad Lowe, the poor HIV afflicted boyfriend of Becca on Life Goes On, and best of all one girl’s big sister is played by that crazy babysitter from One Tree Hill who tried to steal Jamie and hobble Dan Scott. Fantastic casting. I love the show. It is for sure my favorite guilty pleasure of the summer. Note the word GUILTY.

See, I am the mother of two very little boys. If they were tween or teen boys would I want them watching this trash with me? No way. If they were girls of any age would I let them near this show? Not in a million years. I mean in the first episode one girl is depressed so she goes to a seedy bar in the middle of the afternoon, picks up a random guy and has sex with him in the bathroom. Excuse me? And that guy ends up being her English teacher! Who openly flirts with her and tries to ignore their sizzling chemistry but when he sees her walking down the road, in the rain mind you, he stops to pick her up for a quick make out session. Wow. When I watch stuff like that I immediately think Family Viewing. NOT. Even while I’m enjoying the show in the back of my mind I’m hating what this kind of garbage does to the always already fragile psyche of a young girl. Why isn’t this show on the CW or FOX and why isn’t it on at 9 or 10pm? Why would a channel that is supposed to be about family put on something that is so the opposite of their supposed brand at 8pm? I’ll tell you why - because no one cares about corrupting our youth. No one feels responsible even though it’s something we all should feel.

I know it’s kind of a big statement but it’s true. Last night I was at a park near a duck pond with my kids and there were some other little whippersnappers who were chasing two of the ducks and plucking their feathers. Yes, they were actually pulling feathers out of the ducks. Now, it’s no secret that I hate birds of any kind but I also hate the idea of torturing other living creatures and that’s what these kids were doing. The ducks were freaking out. They ran/waddled as fast as they could away from those crazy eyed children and the kids kept chasing them. They’d pull out their feathers while the ducks flapped and screamed and then the kids would give the feathers to their parents to hold while they continued to torment the poor ducks. I instructed my kids to get away from them and then I yelled for the whole park to hear “Everyone get away from those ducks! You are going to give them a heart attack!” The parents of the duck abusers looked at me like I was crazy. But you know what’s crazy – letting your kids torture animals because little kids who enjoy hurting other living things grow up to be the Patrick Batemans of the world and as much as I enjoy Huey Lewis, I don’t think the world needs anymore Batemans.

Sometimes saying no isn’t such a bad thing. Sometimes doing the hard thing is the best thing. Unless of course your dream is to be the parent of a sociopath or a pregnant teenager or the star of a Girls Gone Wild video, to watch someone die of alcohol poisoning or to work as a network executive at ABC Family. If one of those is your dreams keep on saying yes and I’m sure you’ll get exactly what you deserve.