Stating the Obvious

Look, our popular culture is a cesspool. It's blatantly obvious. But my advice to mothers out there is to turn off the boob tube, deny (or at least limit) internet access, and take away the video games. We got rid of cable TV and the world didn't stop.

WASHINGTON – Forget about the "mommy wars," in which stay-at-home mothers were supposedly locking horns with their working sisters, at least in popular perception.

What's really happening with American mothers of all stripes - from full-time homemakers to full-fledged workaholics, all income levels, all racial backgrounds - is worry about popular culture, and what feels like a tsunami of forces threatening parents' ability to impart positive values to their children, according to a new survey of more than 2,000 mothers. Moms report a cultural onslaught that goes far beyond Hollywood movies and TV, and into the world of the Internet, electronic games, and advertising.

"We heard mothers talking about the kind of hypersexuality that's out there, about violence and disrespect, about body image, all the things that are not exactly news, but cutting across a huge and diverse sample of mothers," says Martha Farrell Erickson of the University of Minnesota, lead researcher on the study, released by the Institute for American Values in New York. "What they would really like to see is mothers and fathers joining forces more effectively to take on some of these issues."