TELEVISION : Do Families Matter?...

On a Sunday evening last month, in a quiet Montebello neighborhood, Linda and Steven Pacillas were watching television with their two teen-age children when they suddenly found themselves sitting alone.

The family had gathered around the 25-inch black box in the living room to catch the season premiere of NBC’s romantic comedy “Mad About You,” and the subject was sex. An effusive Helen Hunt was talking about having been “flung” around in the middle of the previous night by husband Paul Reiser in a long, reckless lovemaking session; Reiser didn’t remember any of it. Hunt feared she might get pregnant because she hadn’t used her diaphragm.

Uncomfortable with the subject matter in front of his parents, Joseph, 13, quietly slipped from the room to play with his model train set. Vonna, 15, had already split to watch something else on the TV set in her parents’ bedroom.

This is a fairly normal occurrence in the Pacillas household. Several days later, seated in the living room with his family, Joseph tried to explain why he walked out on “Mad About You.”

“I didn’t like parts of it,” he said.

“What parts?” Steven coaxed. “You can say it. The parts about sex?”

“The grown-up parts,” Joseph responded.

Steven Pacillas, 40, a deputy probation officer for Los Angeles County, tried to explain his son’s action: “Once in a while the kids hear things on television that are inappropriate, and they take it upon themselves to walk out of the room because they’re embarrassed.”

“I really enjoy ‘Mad About You,’ but this week the kids didn’t want to watch it,” said Linda, 42, a pharmacy technician. “It was too much of a grown-up issue--what happened during sex, the interlude.”

As if on cue, Vonna wandered into the kitchen.

“See, she just got up for water when we started talking about sex,” Steven said with a smile.

“I was thirsty!” Vonna yelled from the kitchen.

When asked by The Times to assess NBC’s programming for a week during the traditional family viewing hour, Steven and Linda were eager to participate. By loving their children and raising them well, the couple believes, they have protected their kids from any corrupting influence of television. But they still don’t like what they see.

“When we were asked to do this story, we said, ‘ Family hour ?’ ” said Steven, who has never brought cable TV into his home, because it’s less regulated than the broadcast airwaves. “I remember the family hour from when I grew up, but I didn’t even know it existed anymore. Everything is tainted with sex or foul language.”

Although Linda agreed, she was surprised at just how much programming from 8 to 9 p.m. actually does center on sex and romance, especially in the sitcoms. In the Sept. 26 episode of NBC’s “Wings,” a house was said to have burned down around Steven Weber and Amy Yasbeck when, while they tore each other’s clothes off, a bra was tossed into the fireplace.

“I feel uncomfortable that children are seeing that kind of behavior among adults,” said Linda, who ordinarily munches on fruit while watching a couple hours of TV a night with her children, once they finish their homework. “It’s pushing them too fast in the area of sex. Children should be able to grow and have fun and progress at their own speed.”

Linda did not understand why a network that ran responsible public service announcements--using young NBC actors to discuss such subjects as safe sex, date rape, sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy--was trading so heavily and, in her opinion, carelessly in the subject matter.

“I take juvenile wards to pregnancy clinics,” Steven said. “I’ve seen juveniles as young as 12 getting pregnant. I wonder how sex on television affects them. It promotes this type of behavior.”

In other NBC sitcoms that week, a bevy of leggy, buxom barely dressed models tempted the men in “NewsRadio.” On “Hope & Gloria,” Cynthia Stevenson accidentally sent a steamy love letter out on the Internet. In “The Single Guy,” a date of Jonathan Silverman’s straddled him atop his golf cart, trying to tease him into missing his next shot (“I’m going to take you places you only dreamed of”).

“The kids got up and left on that one too,” Linda said. “Maybe it’s because I’m looking at TV with a different eye, but it seems like they’re pushing sex in everything. They’re kind of saying it’s OK to do it, which is contradictory to their messages about safe sex.”

The Pacillases are Catholic. Vonna and Joseph attend a public school, although for many years they attended a private Christian school because their folks wanted a moral structure to their education.

“I would say that we are conservative but not too much,” Steven said. “We’re very open with the kids. I’ll talk about sex with them. Any questions they have they can approach me about. The same with drugs. I believe if you don’t discuss these things with them, somebody else will.”

By no means did Steven and Linda find everything on NBC objectionable. They enjoyed the network’s two big adventure hours: “seaQuest 2032” and “JAG.”

“You know what I like about this show?” Linda said when one of the female officers in “seaQuest” was on screen. “They keep the women on the same level with men.”

“seaQuest” contained several scenes of violence--the crew fell under heavy gunfire on a glacier, and the captain later got into a fistfight--but neither parent seemed concerned.

“What they see on the evening news is much worse than what they see in TV series,” Linda said. “If I had my druthers, I’d rather they see violence on television than sex.”

It’s motion pictures and music videos that Steven worries most about. At any given time there are 30 to 40 juvenile offenders in holding tanks at the courts where he works in Compton, Inglewood and Pasadena. When the TV is on, he watches the young offenders hoot and holler when an actor comes out toting a gun.

“People will say TV has no documented effect on minors, but you can see it,” Steven said. “You have these videos by Snoop Doggy Dogg, and it’s in the gangbanging, the clothing, the drugs, the talk, the walk, the view on authority figures. Then these rap guys get a better image when they go out and shoot someone or partake in violence. Their album sales go up. It’s falling apart, and it’s all on television.”

Steven praised the positive messages in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Brotherly Love” and “Minor Adjustments.” In “Minor Adjustments,” the father decided to forgo his personal dreams so that his son could attend classes for the mentally gifted.

“That’s something that I liked watching with my son,” Steven said.

“Most of these shows are pretty good,” Linda said. “They can make it on their own without sex or bad language. You just want to be able to come home and laugh without your kids having to leave the room. You always have to wonder what’s coming next. Will it be a short scene or the whole episode? You can’t just sit back and relax.”