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iQuestions Faculty, Ted Baehr 
 
 
Question: 
 
My 12 year old wants to see a PG-13 movie and I refuse.  Are some 
PG-13 movies okay? 
 
Answer: 
 
PG-13 is the most confusing category. There are some great PG-13 
movies that have tremendous values that are good for 13 and up.  
 
And then there are movies that contain nudity and sex and violence.  
 
In fact, Harvard, of all places, did a study of ratings and they said that 
some of the values of R-rated had crept into PG-13 movies.  
 
I saw one the other day that had nudity in it. In fact, it was extensive 
nudity. That was sort of “artistic,” they were hugging together in a 
swimming pool.  
 
But that doesn’t change the fact that for little children with raging 
hormones this is nudity. This is pretty salacious type stuff. 
 
You need to be careful about those ratings.  
 
I have an example from a friend of mine who was a Boy Scout troop 
leader, and he said that one of his kids kept saying, “I want to lead. 
Let me go ahead of everybody.”  
 
He said, “OK, you can take my 90-pound backpack,” because he was 
carrying all this stuff for the other kids, “and if you can carry that, you 
can lead.”  
 
 
 
The kid went a few feet, fell over, and said “I think I’ll wait until I get 
older.” 
 
So you can’t deal with everything at that stage of development. And 
really, most 13- and 14-year-olds are on our side.  
 
I have two of my children who made a commitment to each other not 
to watch television at all—and I’m not recommending that for people, 
people who want to watch television should just be discerning—but 
they haven’t watched it for years. They’re now reading the 100 best 
novels of all-time.  
 
There’s so much good out there that we need to choose the good, and 
we need to be self-regulating. Really, it’s easier to control the good 
when you’re putting it into your machine—whatever it happens to be, 
DVD player or whatever—you’ve made the choice intentionally ahead 
of time to choose something because you know what’s in it, and you 
know what kind of values it has.   
 
 
 
 
Baehr -2- 
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