If you truly love your children…
Sharon Stone might be onto something, but she doesn’t go far enough.
By Gerry Bowler • Special to ChristianWeek
It’s so gratifying when an actress whose work you have admired for years proves that she’s not just another pretty face, that she has a keen eye for a social problem and a mind capable of presenting a progressive solution to it.
Such a one is Sharon Stone. From her modest debut as "Pretty Girl On a Train" in Stardust Memories to meatier speaking roles in Police Academy 4, Basic Instinct and Antz, Ms. Stone has demonstrated that hers is a voice we should be paying attention to. So when she tells a United Nations gathering on the AIDS crisis that parents should help their kids by keeping a huge box of condoms in the home, this observer is one man who will sit up and take notice.
"I believe that if you truly, truly love your children, you need to supply condoms in a place in your home, at a quantity that makes it a non-judgmental situation for them to have them," she said recently in New York. "I mean, put 200 condoms in a box in some place in the house where everybody isn’t all the time, so that your kids can take them.
"If they want to make water balloons out of them, great," she added. "If they want to carry them so they feel tough, great. If they want to give them to their friends, even better."
The 40-year-old Ms. Stone has an IQ of 154 but has not chosen to reproduce, so we are unlikely to learn whether she would actually practise what she preaches in the provision of condoms to her own offspring. Nevertheless, I feel that the actress may be on to something in her idea that we scatter things about the house for our children to surreptitiously take up and use. Instead of a jumbo box of prophylactics, however, I would suggest that we leave out a Bible.
Better protection
My advice is to put one somewhere in the house where everybody isn’t all the time and hope that a kid will, without fear of parental pressure, open it up and read. If he wants to read only the life of Jesus, great. If he wants to go on to the epistles of Paul, great. If he wants to give a copy to his friends, even better. Should he take the contents of this book seriously he will not need to go hunting for that giant container of condoms and yet he will be even better protected against the scourge of AIDS than one who takes Ms. Stone’s counsel to heart.
But why stop at a Bible? I’ve got a whole list of things that I would like children to discover and make their own, stuff that would street-proof them against the nastier aspects of popular culture such as the violent and sleazy movies that have made Sharon Stone a rich woman.
I believe, for example, that if you truly, truly love your children you will want to make them as accomplished as possible in the speaking and writing of the English language. The economy of the 21st century will not be kind to those job-seekers who are poor communicators, so I urge parents to put out on a side table (in a safe and non-judgmental way) a book of grammar. I recommend The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, and while you’re at it, get the kid a dictionary.
Media guide
A guide to the way we are manipulated by the media is essential for a child in the new millennium, so the loving care-giver will be sure to leave out a copy of either Quentin Schultze’s Dancing in the Dark: Youth, Popular Culture and the Electronic Media or David Marc’s Bonfire of the Humanities: Television, Subliteracy and Long-Term Memory Loss. If you suspect your child of being a serial reader you may also wish to leave out an application for borrowing privileges at a local library.
Watching too much television and/or playing too many video games makes children passive and obese, so on that out-of-the-way table should be things to encourage activity and creativity.
What child would not be delighted to find a skipping rope, a paint box, a telescope or a Frisbee left about for her use? I suspect that if Ms. Stone put her undoubted intelligence to use she might find any number of healthier choices for children, parents and society than what she has endorsed so far.
Gerry Bowler is a Winnipeg writer and historian. You can read previous columns at the ChristianWeek web page, or contact him directly at: gbowler@videon.wave.ca.
