[Belleweather]

I don't want to start another Tv/TV-Free argument, but I am curious and want to collect some data about the whole sordid issue.<br><br>
DH and I are TV-free by virture of being a) busy and b) poor. We own a television set and watch movies, but we don't have cable, and ergo don't get TV stations. I can't imagine that we'd bother to change this when DC come along, so for us, it isn't so much an issue of being "TV Free" as it is an issue of continuing to be lazy.<br><br>
But it seems to be that this is *not* the case for the majority of families who find TV to be an issue? I'm wondering if those of you who are "TV Free" watched television prior to having children, and then felt the need to cut down because of DC or family life in general, or if you've always been not interested in televison?

 

[mocha09]

I used to watch TV up until my daughter was born, and while she was a young infant. (never had cable though....used rabbit ears!)<br><br>
When she got a little older, I made the decision to get rid of the TV.<br><br>
I think, I *used* to watch TV as often as I did because I didn't really have anything else to do, not because I found TV particularly interesting. After dd was born, I was far too busy too watch TV.<br><br>
I also don't want my dd to watch TV. Especially commercials. Now, she does watch the occassional DVD on my laptop.<br><br>
So...I suppose to answer your question, for us it was both reasons.

 

[polka hop]

*

 

[MamaMonica]

We were TV free before kids for a long time. Without cable we don't get any stations either and we were cheap. We did watch movies once in awhile, though. I do some exercise videos once awhile, that's all the TV is use for and it's downstairs.

 

[mamawanabe]

No cable here, but we spend WAY too much time watching crap network TV. I hate that I am wasting my time this way. I look forward to having kids because I think (like with junk food) it will be the inspiration I need to finally live the way I want to live.

 

[jraohc]

We own TV's and get cable. I think we should cancel the cable, or at least decrease what we get. DH disagrees. DD is 6 months old. DH and I used to watch TV most nights before DD was born. I almost never watch it anymore because I hate for DD to be watching TV. DH disagrees. Therefore, we have TV issues in our house. We are definitely not "TV Free". I wish we had started to cut down before DD was born, but I'm doing my best to cut down now - better late than never. I doubt we'll ever be "TV Free", but I'd like to get down to just a little TV.

 

[philomom]

I watch way less now that I have kids. There are some days I don't turn it on at all.

 

[Bellasmom]

We watch less than before dd - before I lived with DH days could go by without the TV being turned on, but DH likes to have background noise. But we are busier now and I also don't want dd to watch much TV, so we programmed the VCR to tape shows we might want to watch, and watch them if we get around to it. The bonus of this is that we can watch whenever we want, and fast forward through all the commercials (this cuts a 30 minute sitcom down to twenty). More often than not, I only end up watching a couple of the shows we tape - if I were to sit down to watch them as they were on I would probably end up watching other things that came on after, and wasting a lot of time on drivel that really doesn't interest me. This has been a good solution for us.<br>
Angela

 

[dharmamama]

I did not watch tv before I had kids and I still don't now. I am married to a football-watcher, which is why we even have a tv at all. Our tv comes on on Sundays and sometimes on Monday nights during football season. Occasionally we watch Now with Bill Moyers together, and even more occasionally we watch a movie together (together=DH and me, sans kids), but that's rare because it usually takes us a couple of days to get through a whole movie.<br><br>
I don't find watching tv a very rewarding experience, and I find the content of 99.9% of the shows worthless at best and downright offensive or damaging at worst.<br><br>
Namaste!

 

[Persephone]

We don't have kids yet, but I'd like to say we're moving in a TV free direction. I watched a lot of TV when I lived with my parents, mainly out of laziness and boredom. I never had my own TV though, so when I went to college, I didn't take one with me, and my roomies had them, but I was too busy to watch anything much cept the occasional movie night. I didn't miss it. When I got married, we got a cable modem, and for some reason, it was cheaper to have both TV and internet than just the internet. So, I watched a TON of Food Network and TLC. Now, we've moved again, and we have DSL, so we lost the cable too. I was relieved, hoping it would cut down on our TV watching. We watch basketball now, and I think that we'll always have a TV for that reason. But it's rare that we watch anything else on TV now. Last night we turned it on, and PBS had this great documentary about the clown, Bill Irwin. So we watched that. No commercials on that channel, yay! <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/smile.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="smile"> I hope that when we have kids, we'll limit the TV to just basketball, but I know dh will never agree to get rid of it, as long as there's still an NBA. But I am happy to say that when we decided how to set up our new apt, that we decided to make the focus of the room the fireplace, and not the TV. It always depresses me to have the blank TV being the center of a room. Ugh.

 

[1xmom]

I watched tv all the time before I had dd. Now it is all but impossible for me to watch a movie, b/c I usually fall asleep before it's even half over. I just get fidgety just sitting watching tv. I may watch a program here or there, but not as much as before. I do like to watch it when I do my ironing (makes the chore less tedious).

 

[captain optimism]

TV free before having baby, continuing to be TV free. I'm the one with the TV problem, not ds. When ds sees a TV, he gets excited because it is an object with "beeps"--buttons he can push and manipulate a machine.<br><br>
Now the computer is another problem. DH and I use our laptops for fun, for work, for family correspondence. DS is fascinated by computer animations one can see on the web--like the smilies on MDC. So I have to think about cutting back on this <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/greensad.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="greensad"> .

 

[CortLong]

We watched WAYYYYY too much TV before DD was born. This continued until she was about 18 months old and I felt a need for the TV to be cut off. <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/smile.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="smile"> Now we watch minimal amounts.

 

[hrheka]

My dh and I have never owned a tv, when I moved in with him it was with the condition that we not have a tv (this was a hard adjustment for him, for awhile he would go watch tv at our neighbors). After my daughter was born we still did not get a tv and we have no plans to buy one.

 

[sohj]

I was raised w/o.<br><br>
Have lived w/o.<br><br>
If I found myself dating a guy who watched, I dumped him. Found it supremely boring and like paying someone to brainwash you in your own home. Didn't want to be around someone who wanted that to happen.<br><br>
Don't have one now.

 

[IncaMama]

DH and i watched TV or a movie pretty much every night before DS...still do. <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/smile.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="smile">

 

[USAmma]

Dh and I watched more TV before kids but neither of us likes to watch the trashy, junky shows (except maybe out of curiosity sometimes!).<br><br>
After kids, we LOVE PBS. I can't imagine life without PBS and NPR. We don't have cable but get about 8 stations with just an antenna.<br><br>
Darshani

 

[guerrillamama]

I haven't owned a tv for about 5 yrs. My xbf was a tv addict, so when we broke up he took the tv and I never replaced it - and never missed it either. Definitely felt it improved my quality of life. I love to rent movies, but I can watch dvd's on my laptop. But now it seems my internet addiction is turning out to be almost as bad for me as tv was, so that's another hurdle...

 

[eminer]

We didn't watch much TV before dd was born. First we lived in a town where we would have had to pay for cable to get any reception, so like you, we pretty much just rented the occasional movie. Then we moved to New York City (great reception) but were busy with work and school and whatnot. Plus the vast majority of TV is crummy. We did have a problem with serial PBS watching occasionally. <br><br>
Then dd came along, and eventually, we were working from home on mindless database research, and dd sometimes liked to nurse for a really long time. So one way or the other, the TV ended up being on a lot, and we were half-watching a lot of stuff we didn't really enoy just because it was sort of there. (Background noise.) I didn't like this phenomenon, and I realized that we didn't really care for the vast majority of what we were watching, it was influencing my feelings about the world in general (this is like sohj's comment about brainwashing -- I definitely identify), and there wasn't room for the TV in our new apartment. So when we moved, the TV went out to the curb. (We can still play movies on our computer.) Amusingly, dd didn't notice. At all. She still hasn't mentioned or seemed to register the disappearance of the TV.<br><br>
The only problem for dh and me is that now on days when we don't have to be anywhere, we are seriously lacking in outside indicators of time. In retrospect, that might have been the core reason we were watching TV -- we are both pretty time-sense challenged anyway, and clock time pretty much used to = having to go to school, for me. So we've gotten more erratic.

 

[Ravin]

We recently moved our TV up to the bedroom. So it's not a part of our daytime activities for DD and I. I can watch while nursing her down to sleep at naptime and after I've read to her at bedtime, and we moved DH's computer up there and mine downstairs so that I could work/study at the desk near DD's toys and he has his computer where he can watch movies and baseball while he's playing his computer games. Stuff he usually does while I'm studying.<br><br>
I do watch less violent stuff than I used to. I'll tune into a science channel documentary or watch Ellen rather than reruns of Buffy while DD is awake.