Parenting Today

Hip Hop For Your Teen: Good or Bad?

Atlanta-December 7, 2013
By:Alex Poche

Parents talk to their kids. Parents listen to their kids. Parents nurture their kids. Parents
protect their kids. Parents allow their kids. Parents restrict their kids. The job of a parent is one of the
most difficult jobs you can sign up for. The world is a big and dangerous place and it can be
terrifying for a parent to even think about all of the horrors and threats that it might have on their
child. But there comes a time in every child's life where their in this transition stage of trying to find
out who they are on there own, without their parents, and they are growing up from a small infant to
an adult who is bigger then the mom who carried them in her arms 16+ years ago.
In this stage of growth and development, the type of music that teenagers listen to is crucial
to them. In a Stage of Life survey, all 413 teenages who were surveyed reported that without their
music they would be lost and that music helps them through a difficult time. they also reported that
listening to music gave them the strength to carry on after a troubling moment in their
life. Teenagers use music as an outlet, to unplug from the world for a little, unplug from the stress
that girls, school, work, family, and other things the teenage years brings.
Now every teen is different, with different taste and different styles. Many children listen to
Hip Hop/rap. However, because of Hip Hops negative connotation of valuing material items,
violence, sex, degrading women and other messages, Hip Hop is perceived as what is destroying
your youth. Prohibiting your children to listen to Hip hop is a very extreme way to try and protect
your child from these suggestive themes.
But the Truth is, preventing your teen from being exposed to these themes does protect them
from negative ideas but then it also shelters them from learning about the world around them. Then,
if they encounter the same things that you try to shelter them from, they will not know how to go
about dealing with them when they encounter them in the real world. This exact scenario happened
with a mother her middle school daughter. The article reports that the daughter was shocked at
hearing the f word in a song on her first day in middle school. Imagine if this child did not hear her
first curse word in middle school, but lets say She first heard it in high school or in college? The
child would by then be old enough to do many things but still not be aware of the suggestive themes
that a song had.
Not letting your teen listen to a certain music genre will also not let them be who they want
to be. Behind every style of music there is a culture that goes with it. With culture comes lingo,
dialect, clothing style, ideas, and other things that will make an individual part of that culture. Not
only this but this is a culture that the teen would choose and not is simply born into.
Kimberly Sena from Psychology Today tells a story about a mom and a son in the car with
the radio on and a song that the mother found angry, sad, and confused. Kimberly suggests that
instead of trying to take away what the parent doesnt feel comfortable with the child listening to,
rather use it to further have conversations with the teen and understand what they are feeling or why
perhaps they connect with a certain song or artist. this will open up the child into talking to their
parents as opposed to closing their parents out of their personal life. This is one alternative to
completely cutting the teen off to their music.
Hip Hop is art. The poetic flows with wordplay and rhymes and each lyric with an underlying
meaning that the artist puts together so cleverly over the beats, the rhythms and melody that make
you bop your head back and forth and give you a sense of actually feeling the music.
Hip Hop was born in the Bronx where there were the youth used rapping, DJ-ing or dancing
to express their feelings and used the art to cope with the economic and political problems that they
saw around them. Though the art spread all across the nation and the world, the artists who rap still
even to this day use the music to tell stories about their struggles and what they go through on an
everyday basis. Today, rappers like Jay-Z show how they come from dealing drugs in the slums to
being one of the most influential people of the world. Other rappers show how they stand for what
they believe in like Macklemore stands for gay marriage. Hip Hop artists express how important it is
to be passionate about what you do and to never be afraid to follow your dreams.

These positive themes can all be found in the songs of mainstream artists but even more
positive themes can be found in Hip hop songs that arent on the radio. There are many artists who
incorporate religious themes into their raps to spread their beliefs in a way that a certain audience can
understand and connect with.
Hip Hop is art. it can however be harsh and inappropriate. but its up to you, the parent, to
make sure that you plant a seed of wise conscience so that your child can make the decisions by
themselves, without you on their shoulder, to know what is and isn't appropriate to listen to. So trust
your child, and trust yourself inn that you did a good job teaching the right morals and they will have
good judgement. Let them make the decisions for themselves, and you will end up more proud then
you could imagine.

Works Cited
"Birthplace Of Hip Hop." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/birthplace-of-hip-hop/>.
"Culture History:Hip Hop." WNYC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.wnyc.org/story/89709-south-bronx-hip-hop-year-zero/>.
Dennis, David. "Hip-Hop Isn't Destroying My Child." MommyNoire. N.p., Feb. 2013. Web. 07
Dec. 2013. <http://mommynoire.com/4003/hip-hop-isnt-destroying-my-child/>.
"Do You Let Your Child Listen To Hip Hop?" Staydaddy. N.p., May 2013. Web. 07 Dec. 2013.
<http://staydaddy.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/do-your-kids-listen-to-hip-hop-music/>.
"High School Statistics." Inspiring Music Essays by Teens and College Students. N.p., 2012.
Web. 07 Dec. 2013. <http://www.stageoflife.com/music.aspx>.
Selko, Lori A. "Does Hip Hop Affect Behavior in Kids?" Everyday Life. Demand Media, n.d.
Web. 07 Dec. 2013. <http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/hip-hop-affect-behavior-kids-
5073.html>.
Simmonds, Ross. "Six Reasons You Should Let Your Child Listen to Hip Hop." Ross Simmonds.
N.p., Feb. 2013. Web. 07 Dec. 2013. <http://rosssimmonds.com/2013/02/21/children-hip-
hop/>.