Parents have been wringing their hands over their children's entertainment choices for hundreds of years.

Mozart's opera Cosė fan tutte was considered scandalous in the nineteenth century. In the 1920s, short-haired flappers shocked their elders with their brash, androgynous look. Even the early rock-n-roll music of the '50s, considered quaint today, was so disturbing to the general public that when Elvis performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, television censors only showed his body from the waist up!

Today, moms and dads are navigating an entertainment minefield littered with sexually suggestive dolls aimed at little girls, nightmarishly violent video games for boys, and musical lyrics celebrating misogyny, promiscuity, and drug use.

What's a beleaguered parent to do?

Take a breath. Take control. Take a step back.

Take a Breath

Before you decide what's appropriate for your kids, consider the big picture. "Parents should know that the rate of violent crime among juveniles has plummeted in the last 10 to 12 years," says Dr. Karen Sternheimer, PhD, sociologist at the University of Southern California and author of Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions About Today's Youth. And there's more good news: statistics show that the teenage pregnancy rate in this country is at its lowest level in 30 years.

Considering the big picture also means asking yourself if your child's choices are harmful or just different from what you liked as a kid. Your daughter is wearing tons of black eyeliner to achieve the Goth look that drives you nuts—but is that worse than the layers of blue eyeliner you caked on a la Madonna in the 80s?

Are the lyrics in your kid's favorite song actually more suggestive than the raunchy double entendres from the Grease soundtrack that kids memorized in the '70s?

How about toys? You may think the makeup set and plastic nails your young daughter received for her birthday are sending the wrong message about beauty and self-esteem, but are they any more harmful than the big Barbie salon heads with the long fake hair and makeup from your childhood?

"There's a perennial fear that kids are taking us down the road to the end of civilization," says Dr. Sternheimer. "Confucius and Plato both asked, 'What's wrong with kids these days?'" and the answer is that there's nothing wrong with them. Kids are kids—they've always been attracted to what's exciting, scary, shocking, titillating, gross, and just about anything that will get a reaction out of their parents. If this sounds like your child, he or she is likely perfectly normal—and you are normal for wanting to protect your kids from undesirable influences. Just try not to overreact, because you were once a kid who saw things, read things, and heard things that would have given your parents conniptions… and you turned out all right in the end.