I'll answer your questions, Ebbie...

"Little Hawk, your dissertation requires a disclaimer to the effect that you did NOT spend most of your young years in Canada but in the US."

I spent years 1-10 in Ontario and years 11-21 in the USA. We were located in the upper part of New York State, however, and were able to pick up CBC radio quite clearly there, so that's what we listened to. The political situation around us in upstate New York was radically different from that in Canada, that's for sure, (it was far more right wing and reactionary) and we were radically in disagreement with it for the most part. I felt like I was living in exile... ;-)

"I would further note that a kid without television at home most usually watches it at friends' homes, especially when "every other kid in my school classes did watch" it. In fact, I know several adults without television at home are glued to tv screens at other people's homes."

I occasionally saw some TV shows at friend's houses. Not a lot, but now and then. It wasn't a big deal to me one way or the other. Mostly I loved reading books. I started reading very young (before entering primary school), read everything I could find to read, including my mother's Agatha Christie novels, and it served me well later in school.

Are you intimating that at such an early age you totally agreed with your parents' rules and reasons on the subject? That you were already so self-disciplined that you resisted any such exposure? Goodness gracious.

Yeah, I took my parent's lifestyle for granted and I figured it was good. There was no smoking in the house ever...except if visitors came...so I detested the smell of cigarette smoke and I've never had a desire to smoke anything at all (not even in my teenage years)...though I have smoked tobacco in some Native ceremonies (that was a courtesy)...and I have smoked marijuana on a handful of times so as to find out what "all the fuss is about". ;-) My conclusion: it's really not that big a deal and I can do without it.

It's not that I was particularly aware of being "self-disciplined". It's just that I naturally followed the example that I saw in front of me every day in my own home.

My parents didn't lay down any rules about not watching TV or not smoking or anything else like that. There were no such rules in place. They just didn't have a TV, that's all, and they didn't smoke, and they listened to CBC. There were no rules about this or that, they just did what they did, and it seemed okay to me, so that's what I did also.

As for alcohol, there were no rules in place about that either. We sometimes had wine with dinner...or a liqueur after dinner. Maybe once or twice a week we would do that. I was allowed to have some if I wanted it. I never saw anyone get drunk in our family, and I've never had any problems with alcohol since.

If you make rules AGAINST stuff like smoking, alcohol, TV watching, then young people will rebel against those rules when they hit their teen years, and they'll run considerable risk of going too far the other way. My parents didn't make rules against anything like that...they just demonstrated a certain lifestyle themselves, and I followed in that pattern. It made sense to me.

I later did watch quite a bit of commercial TV, by the way, mostly in the 70s and 80s, and I enjoyed it a lot, but I gave up on it by the late 80s.

As for my parents, they eventually got hooked on TV. (grin) My mother now watches the bloody thing all day long! What does she watch? Mostly CNN and stuff like that. She's a politics junkie.