Parental Controls
- jim Young 20190221
“Parental Control in the 50s or 60s was a flyswatter or a belt.” jy
The expression “Parental Control” when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s had nothing to do with television. In our house “Parental Control” was exercised with a fly swatter.
“Parental Control”, relative to the TV, was the “off” button which I didn’t dare touch after one of my parent’s had shut it off, for fear of invoking the other “Parental Control” - the fly swatter.
We only got 1 TV Channel in our house. Apparently it was black and white. As I have been colour blind since birth, my parents told me we had a colour TV and it wasn’t until I was 14 that I learned the truth.
I had cousins that lived in the big city (Toronto) however and they got what seemed like hundreds of TV channels to choose from.
Even so, I don't think there were any TV stations that required parental control back in those days. (Yes - that's how old I really am!)
Rob and Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke show slept in separate beds as did Henry and Alice Mitchell on Dennis The Menace. Even the Mitchell's elderly neighbours the Wilson's slept in separate beds.
There were plenty of single Dads on TV back then; Chuck Connors in The Rifleman, Fred McMurray in My Three Sons, Andy of Mayberry and Ben Cartwright of Bonanaza, but it would have been scandalous for a TV show to suggest a single mother was fit for television!
That didn't happen until the late 60s when Diahann Carroll starred in Julia, also as the first black woman to star in a TV series in a non-stereotypical role.
If a TV couple were even sitting on the same bed just talking, the censors required they have 1 foot on the floor at all times.
Lucy on I Love Lucy was the first pregnant woman on TV but they couldn't use the word pregnant. Pregnant ladies, that were always married in the early days of TV were “in the family way” or “had a condition”.
In fairness to the writers however, it was really just a reflection of the times as most people still talked that way back then.
And although Leave It To Beaver showed the first toilet on television, just the tank was shown where Beaver kept his pet alligator.
Wait, what? Beaver? On TV? Beaver of course meant something much different in those days as did the “pearl necklace” that Beaver’s mother June Cleaver always wore while doing her housework.
We didn’t look to TV for sex in the 50s or 60s. (That’s what our fathers' Playboy magazines were for.) Instead we watched TV for its real value of the day - the violence on the cowboy, cops and robbers and war shows.
“Parental Control in the 50s or 60s was a flyswatter or a belt.” jy
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| Laura and Rob Petrie slept in separate beds on the Dick Van Dyke Show. |
“Parental Control”, relative to the TV, was the “off” button which I didn’t dare touch after one of my parent’s had shut it off, for fear of invoking the other “Parental Control” - the fly swatter.
We only got 1 TV Channel in our house. Apparently it was black and white. As I have been colour blind since birth, my parents told me we had a colour TV and it wasn’t until I was 14 that I learned the truth.
I had cousins that lived in the big city (Toronto) however and they got what seemed like hundreds of TV channels to choose from.
Even so, I don't think there were any TV stations that required parental control back in those days. (Yes - that's how old I really am!)
Rob and Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke show slept in separate beds as did Henry and Alice Mitchell on Dennis The Menace. Even the Mitchell's elderly neighbours the Wilson's slept in separate beds.
There were plenty of single Dads on TV back then; Chuck Connors in The Rifleman, Fred McMurray in My Three Sons, Andy of Mayberry and Ben Cartwright of Bonanaza, but it would have been scandalous for a TV show to suggest a single mother was fit for television!
That didn't happen until the late 60s when Diahann Carroll starred in Julia, also as the first black woman to star in a TV series in a non-stereotypical role.
If a TV couple were even sitting on the same bed just talking, the censors required they have 1 foot on the floor at all times.
Lucy on I Love Lucy was the first pregnant woman on TV but they couldn't use the word pregnant. Pregnant ladies, that were always married in the early days of TV were “in the family way” or “had a condition”.
In fairness to the writers however, it was really just a reflection of the times as most people still talked that way back then.
And although Leave It To Beaver showed the first toilet on television, just the tank was shown where Beaver kept his pet alligator.
Wait, what? Beaver? On TV? Beaver of course meant something much different in those days as did the “pearl necklace” that Beaver’s mother June Cleaver always wore while doing her housework.
We didn’t look to TV for sex in the 50s or 60s. (That’s what our fathers' Playboy magazines were for.) Instead we watched TV for its real value of the day - the violence on the cowboy, cops and robbers and war shows.
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