Game Legislation and the Right to Be A Parent

Conservative blogger and GamePolitics reader Lori Ingham is a mother and a gamer. She recently wrote an opinion piece for New Hampshire's Union Leader about the videogame legislation. Ingham's editorial is written from the point of view of a parent who's also a gamer, a vantage too often absent from the debate. She explains how she and her husband do their own policing of their children's access to inapporpriate games while preserving their own ability to play mature-rated titles:

My husband and I allow his almost-14-year-old son to play a couple of M-rated (mature) games that we don't think are too bad. But most are off-limits. That's because we know him and know that playing "Call of Duty 4" is not going to cause him to go on a shooting spree. Games like the "Grand Theft Auto" series we do not let him play because we know they are highly inappropriate for him.

But because my husband and I also like to play video games, we do have a couple of M-rated titles hanging around for us to play that the kids know they shouldn't. How do we know that they aren't playing these? Because the TV that is hooked up to play these games is in the living room where I can see them, and so is the computer.

Simple but apparently effective.

Ingham's opposition to game legislation stems from similarly parent-minded concerns:

As a parent, I don't want to have my rights taken away in any regard as to what my husband and I think is appropriate for his kids as well as the son we have coming on the way. I don't want a clerk at a department store refusing to sell me a game that I want to play because he thinks I might be letting the kids play it. And I don't want some group telling me what is right for my children. Only I should be the one to determine that.

Most of the time, the argument against game legislation is cast in terms of the rights of artists to free expression or the "infantilization" of a medium that adults consume at least as much as children. It's refreshing to be reminded that the debate over game legislation is also a debate about the right to be a parent.

[via Union Leader]