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Born-agains and mainstream believers 161

Viewing together as a family seems to be important, and they report
doing so when they can. Like most families we’ve spoken with, their ideas
about what is appropriate are then rooted in their notions of what is best
for their children, the kind of role models they are in terms of viewing, and
the kinds of content they are exposing themselves and their family to.

Karl: To me, it’s ultimately a quality of entertainment kind of decision. I
don’t think there are any big-time prohibitions. We just... we prefer
other things. For instance, Dinah and I used to watch ER. And maybe
now that the new season’s rolled around. . . . That’s really the only
thing we settled into intentionally in the way of network TV.
Otherwise, life doesn’t gravitate around watching TV that much. I
enjoy watching sports on weekends, especially now that football
season’s starting. But, again, I’d say what we watch is not so much
rooted in prohibitions as a preference for stuff that’s truly entertaining,
as opposed to gratuitous in terms of language, sexual content,
violence. And I’m not even sure we know what they are.
Dinah: No. We just feel like we... I’d say our rule is, when we spend
time watching TV it’s going to be uplifting and something worthwhile
and we’re going to learn from it, or it’s humorous. That’s why we
don’t watch Saturday morning cartoons, because hardly any of them
have anything worthwhile or profitable, and I don’t care for that. I
don’t care for ridiculous silliness, and a lot of them are just slapstick
stupid. A lot of the things on PBS have good moral lessons or they’re
about reading. So I’d rather we use our time for things that are worth-
while. The main rule is limiting the time that we are in front of the TV,
and so really, I try to keep it to about an hour a day. Sometimes it’s
more than that. That would be my general guideline. A lot of time
we’ll watch our videos as opposed to watching TV. And they need to
make their own decisions when they watch at other kids’ houses. But
at our house, I know what’s on TV.

We see here an interesting contradiction that we see in many families. On
the one hand, the Callahans want to present an “account of media” in
their home that is clear on questions of the qualities and values of appro-
priate media content and media viewing behavior. At the same time, their
particular choices in these regards are not that different from those of
other families. Worthwhile television behavior is intentional and focused,
and worthwhile content is that which does not stress sex and violence. At
the same time, they want very much to not be seen as “prohibiting”
anything. “We want them to see that life is full of choices,” Karl says,
“and some are more beneficial than others.” It’s a better approach to
managing people, he observes, than trying to tell them what whey cannot
do. They seem to want to trust their children to make appropriate choices