Not a parent, just an ex-child, but this whole "kid-friendly" mindset is so opposite to how I was brought up. My parents had one flat hard-and-fast rule: if the kid knows to ask for it, and pays for it out of their own allowance, they can have it. I remember Mom waffling about it a couple of times, but for Dad it was non-negotiable, and he always won.

The net result was that my sister and I grew up to become robust, non-shockable, hard-to-manipulate adults with no particular perverse taste for either gore or titillation for their own sakes, two of the only grownups I know who can tell the difference between gratuitous grossness or sex and meaningful, internally consistent, honest adult portrayals. Almost everybody I know who grew up "protected" from "adult" content (which is to say, almost every American I know) got permanently stuck in a kind of extended adolescence on this subject, where horror content and sexual content are still Really Important one way or another, with a kind of Forbidden Fruit sick fascination for them. And whether they anorectically deny themselves the Forbidden Fruit or bulemically gorge themselves on it, either way, it's still tiresomely adolescent.

My sister and I don't have a lot in common, and seldom see each other much these days. But one thing I know that we have in common, and for that matter that I have in common with her kids who were raised the same way: we spend a lot of time rolling our eyes and wishing that people would just GET OVER IT on the subject of sex and violence in art, film, literature, and yes, gaming.