Page 162 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Born-agains and mainstream believers 151

frequently because of his work schedule. Both Lynn and Jay hold junior
college degrees. She works in daycare; he is a truck driver. They moved to
their current location from out-of-state a little over a year ago.
Their social activities are centered on their church, with the exception
of the “Young Marines” organization that 13-year-old Ray belongs to and
7-year-old Laura plans to join when she is old enough. Lynn is the mother of
all three children, but Ray and Laura have different fathers. Four-year-old
Rich is Jay’s son, but Jay wants very much to be considered a father to the
two older children, though Lynn is the custodial parent for each. Their
family income is just over $35,000.
Like many families, the Millikens contend with the presence of media in
their homes. While we might expect their habits and behaviors to represent
a strict – or perhaps moralistic – approach to media, they experience the
ubiquity and presence of these technologies in their lives. At one point,
they begin talking about Ray’s media habits:

Lynn: He bought this one tape, CD, that was called Baby . . .
Interviewer: Babyface?
Lynn: Baby something . . .
Interviewer: Was that the artist or was that the title?
Lynn: The title. It was an Afro-American. . . .
Jay: Well, we heard the lyrics, and then. . . .
Lynn: So what we did was we looked at it and listened to it first, you
know checked it out. And then we told Ray he had to go choose
another one.
Interviewer: Is that a common thing?
Lynn: Well, it’s just like the games on the computer. We have the parental.
Jay: The parental filter.
Interviewer: Oh on the Internet?
Lynn: Yeah, on him, we do. But he knows how to access ours.
Jay: He knows how to get around everything.
Lynn: He tries, but you know what? We pretty much... [to Ray] I think
we monitor you on the computer, don’t we?
Jay: I think we ought to turn it [the computer] the other way, actually,
because when I walk up sometimes I see him go “click” and I don’t
know if he got rid of the screen or what. I have no idea.

This is the universal parental experience with teens and media. The
inroads of culture into the home via the tastes and choices of the house-
hold’s children is a fundamental fact of life in the media age, as we saw in
Chapter 5. For the Millikens, it is clearly something they think about and
care about, but yet they find themselves dealing with conditions over
which they have less control than they would like. The Millikens are thus
like many other parents in terms of the role of media in their lives. It is