Mothers, Fathers Fret Over Different Threats : Poll: Sex, violence in media are apt to worry women. Men fear children’s exposure to homosexual lifestyles.

Parents worry.

It’s their job; it goes with the territory. But parental fretting is apparently not an equal opportunity enterprise, at least not in Orange County, where most of the hand wringing about exposure to sex and violence in the media and teen sex is done by mothers. However, when it comes to the subject of their children’s exposure to discussion about gay and lesbian lifestyles, dads tend to have more Maalox moments than moms.

There may be a payoff, though, for all that female worrying: More women than men feel close to their children living at home, and they fully expect to remain close to them once they grow up and move away.

Those were part of the findings in The Times Orange County Poll, which surveyed 750 residents about their hopes and fears for themselves and their children. And, say county psychologists, they reflect not only traditional male and female reactions to threats, real or imagined, but they may also account for a gradual evolution in the roles of mothers and fathers.

The findings, specifically, were:

* A total of 60% of mothers worried a great deal that their children were being exposed to too much sex and violence on television, at the movies and through music. Only 40% of fathers said this.

* Mothers were also more likely than fathers to worry about their children becoming sexually active before reaching adulthood (32% to 24%).

* Conversely, fathers were more likely to say that their children were being exposed to too much discussion about gay and lesbian lifestyles and issues (43% to 36%).

* Mothers felt stronger family ties to their children. A total of 82% said they had a “very close” relationship with their children who live at home (fathers, 72%). Mothers, more than fathers, also said they expected the closeness to continue when the children grew up and left home (75% to 59%).

All this doesn’t mean that dads are uncaring or inherently easygoing, say psychologists. It probably reflects different perceptions and different ways of fulfilling parental roles.

For instance, “with the greater concern among mothers about sex and violence, it may have something to do with the difference in the way women were raised, where sex may be discouraged and violence also,” said Roderick Verbeck, an Orange psychologist specializing in marriage, family and child counseling.

“With men, when someone upsets them, they’re more likely to bloody someone’s nose than talk about it. Men tend to be more up front about their sexual expression, and more demonstrative than women as a whole, although that is changing.”

That’s the more traditional side of things. However, said Verbeck, the worries among modern mothers about sex and violence, as well as early sexual activity on the part of their children, may be more complex, even progressive.

“Mothers of today,” he said, “are looking at things differently. They want them to get an education, to have what they may not have had. They may be telling their kids to wait to get married and have children, to avoid teen-age pregnancies. They want the kids to go out there and get a good job.”

John Briscoe, a 40-year-old real estate broker from Huntington Harbour who responded to the poll, picked his worries carefully--and hewed fairly closely to the traditional male set of concerns about children. He indicated he was “somewhat” worried about sex and violence in his 3-year-old son’s life, and “not at all” worried about any eventual premature sexual activity.

His wife, Debbie, shared these worries, but bore out Verbeck’s comments when she immediately said her No. 1 worry for her son concerned any societal violence he might be exposed to. She also appeared to be somewhat less concerned about exposure to information about gay and lesbian lifestyles than was her husband--again roughly paralleling a more traditional model of mother-versus-father worries.

Neither one of the Briscoes, however, was firmly and absolutely polarized on any issue; each left room for interpretation.

Both John and Debbie Briscoe agreed that education about sex and morality should begin in the home, and that proper parental direction and a loving home life would give their son the emotional stability he would need in order to delay sex until he reached a more responsible age.

Both said they felt strong ties to their son, and expected those ties to continue as he grew older and eventually left home. Debbie Briscoe said that she felt the greater number of mothers who said they felt close to their children had to do “with a mother’s instinct, just part of the birth process. There’s more of a bond between mother and child that the father will never experience.”

John Briscoe may have spoken for fathers universally when he said, half in jest, that “the kid has to grow up and get a life of his own. I hope he eventually leaves and doesn’t come back.”

Male and female parents may not be as far apart in their thinking as the survey indicated, said Linda and Gerry Owen, married psychologists who practice marriage, family and child therapy in Brea. It may be more accurate to look at the family as an integrated whole, with each member performing different functions, Gerry said.

“There’s a metaphor I often use when looking at a family,” he said: “The mother is the hub of the wheel, the father is the rim and the kids are the spokes. The mother is the one who is holding things together one way or another and the father is the one out touching the world. Even if the roles have started to change, I don’t think many of our expectations have caught up. The father may be less close to the kids in an emotional way and the mother may be more nurturing.”

Also, Linda Owen said, today’s parents may have come “from a generation of absentee fathers. People who are now raising children don’t necessarily have the model of a father who knows how to be a nurturer.”

This gap probably explains, in part, why moms and dads worry differently, about different things. But, the Owens said, gender tradition still applies. Mothers, they said, probably worry more about sex and violence, and early sexual exposure, because “women and mothers are the victims or are vulnerable to both illicit sex, rape and violence,” said Linda Owen. Men, on the other hand, see themselves as protectors rather than potential victims, Gerry Owen said.

The best defense against these worries, they reiterated, is a strong, cohesive home life among family members.

Poll respondent Ann Miranda of Anaheim bears this out. The mother of two boys, ages 13 and 5 months, Miranda, 35, said: “I think you have to have more control over these issues in the home. We’re a Catholic family, we’ve talked about morals in raising our oldest son and I think he has a pretty good viewpoint on a lot of things, like early sex. A lot of kids his age are out there having sex, but he said that’s not the way he wants to go and I trust his judgment in that area.”

Miranda, in her survey response, said she was “a little worried” about her children’s exposure to early sexual activity but was worried “a great deal” about their exposure to sex and violence in the media. She also said she feels very close to her children now and expects to when they mature.

The opinions of her husband, Rick, 33, a computer network administrator, were similar. The closeness he feels to his sons, he said, is somewhat mitigated by worries that they may be exposed to too much sex, violence and temptation to become sexual too early in life. He expressed some frustration that monitoring his children’s behavior is difficult as they grow older.

“I’d say it’s pretty much out of my hands,” he said. “It’s difficult to censor them. I think my older son can put things into perspective, but to what degree I’m not sure.”

It was only when the poll addressed the issue of children’s exposure to discussion about gay and lesbian lifestyles that fathers began to bridle. Forty-three percent of fathers felt children were seeing and hearing too much about gays while 31% said they’re exposed to the right amount of discussion about them. Thirty-six percent of mothers complained of too much discussion about gays while 44% felt children were exposed to the right amount.

“The amount of exposure (to discussion about gays) does concern me,” said Rick Miranda, “but it’s almost taboo today to consider homosexuality aberrant behavior. People are kind of afraid and hesitant to say anything against it, or if they do they usually qualify it. The discussion about homosexuality is more out in the open than it would be if he were talking about heterosexuals; heterosexuals don’t go around advertising. It’s a personal thing and should be treated with the proper decorum.”

Some discussion about gay lifestyles is instructive, said John Briscoe, but “I think the amount of time and effort and discussion spent on gay and lesbian lifestyles far and away, dramatically, hugely exceeds the presence of the gay couples in the world,” he added. “But if that’s the way people want to conduct their affairs, God bless them.”

On the other hand, his wife, Debbie Briscoe, said the issue didn’t concern her “as long as (the children) understand. It goes back to the education process, family education.”

Why were fathers so concerned about this issue? Simply, Verbeck said, “a lot of times what we find is that fathers are much more homophobic than mothers. They try to project a more macho image.”

Also, said Gerry Owen, where many fathers may not recognize exposure to heterosexual sex and violence as a threat, “alternative lifestyles might be perceived that way. It has to do with the sensitization of the parent.”

When will all this parental fretting end? Probably never, said Gerry Owen.

“In the future,” he said, “the more parents are involved with second incomes and other kinds of distractions, the busier they are, the more difficult these issues are going to become. There’s going to be greatly slashed parent-kid time. And the less time they have to deal with these issues with their kids, the scarier the issues may be perceived.”

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Orange County Poll was conducted by Mark Baldassare & Associates. The telephone survey reached 750 Orange County adults during a four-day period ending June 6. Using a computer-generated random sample of listed and unlisted telephone numbers, the poll contacted residents on weekday nights and weekend days. The error margin for all respondents is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. For the subgroup of parents with children at home, the margin of error is plus or minus 5.5 percent.

The Embattled Family

* SUNDAY: Exposure of their children to sex and violence depicted on television and other entertainment media is the worry parents cite most often.

* MONDAY: Most Orange County residents are content but feel much less secure about their finances than three years ago, a concern that’s bleeding into other areas of their personal happiness.

* TODAY: Moms and dads fret about different issues, and this may reflect not only traditional male and female reactions to threats but also may explain a gradual evolution in the roles of each parent.

* WEDNESDAY: Divorce, remarriage and economics may be reshaping many families, but three-fourths of Orange County parents still believe their clans are close, especially young families.

* THURSDAY: More people still believe medicine will be the best job path for their children but, shaped by perceived dark economic winds, they have scaled back other expectations for the future of their offspring.