The only film censor that really matters When I took 10 small boys to see Aardman's animation The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists two years ago, the last thing on my mind was strong content. The film was so captivating that the use of the word "c--p" passed me by, as did the topless mermaids on a map and the "stereotypical references" (painstakingly detailed by the website Kids-in-Mind) "to pirates, women, men, albinos, scientists, animals, reality shows, evolution, sea monsters, Elvis Presley, Jamaicans, the chronically ill, the rich, mad queens." Kids-in-mind.com pulls off the rare feat of being unintentionally funnier than the film itself. The fact is once you start looking for potential areas of offence to the young or delicate of psyche, it's hard to stop. Doesn't Snow White contain stereotypical references to dwarves and witches? So I don't envy the bods charged with making fine judgments on behalf of us all. The British Board of Film Classification has just announced that new guidelines are about to come into force, taking greater note of parental concerns - meaning The Pirates! might now be rated PG, rather than U. The BBFC also aims to monitor and rate music videos more stringently: no twerking for four-year-olds, in other words. This is all well and good, but doesn't take away the fact that the most influential censor in any child's life is their parent. My boys don't watch Miley Cyrus videos, or rappers dissing hoes, but then we don't have cable, or MTV, while my husband would rather take hemlock than watch manufactured pop. Before I sound virtuous, I must admit to habitually allowing both my sons - aged five and nine - to see DVDs rated 12 at home, while I know many another mother would not. My argument is that it's better for your child's imagination and future creativity to see an intelligent and inspiring film, such as Beasts of the Southern Wild, than brain rot like The Smurfs movie. Few people fret when they see an intelligent eight-year-old tackle Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, despite its complex themes about burgeoning sexual awareness and the death of God, and they applaud if a youngster listens to Wagner's Ring cycle. Incest and adultery, anyone? So why should it bother us so if an under-10 watches a film with sophisticated content? It surely depends on the emotional maturity of the child viewer and the parents" detailed research of the movie beforehand. I don't want my sons watching sadistic violence, so it's a "no" to the last two Batman movies, but I took my nine-year-old to see Gravity in the knowledge (spoiler alert) that there's a disturbing scene involving a dead astronaut. Context is all. Space missions do go awry and fine people have died, so why shield my son from that reality? This, after all, is a boy raised on Struwwelpeter. I don't expect other households to share my point of view. I am careful about what films I let my sons see when friends are around. I disappointed my 14-year-old nephew at Christmas when I told him Airplane! would regrettably not make suitable viewing for the assembled family offspring. And I've got it wrong in the past: most notably when I had to whip off a DVD of Beowulf, after finding my son and a friend giggling at a naked, CGI-animated Angelina Jolie. That said, I don't actually believe "scenes of mild nudity" corrupt anyone's innocence - hence the giggles - and far rather a bare bottom than the mindless destruction of so many video games. I am baffled by a society that frets that the Hunger Games films are worryingly violent (cert 12A), but which turns a blind eye to thousands of young boys playing Call of Duty (cert 15). The former is, after all, a polemic against societies where gladiatorial contests are staged as entertainment, the second is about shooting people for fun. I know which of the two I'll allow in my house.