As parents and as bloggers, we love to talk about television around here. The bad, the good, the ugly, the useful, how much, if at all. We're all products of our generation, with a healthy background in pop culture and so television, frankly, interests us both in and out of the context of childrearing. Several of us probably wish we could marry our Tivos, or maybe that is just me.

But the Strollerderby bloggers' observations of what other people are saying about television and our own interpretations thereof are just the ravings of people who happen to have kids. For a look at what card-carrying experts are saying about the question of whether young children and babies should be exposed to television, Babble didn't come to the blogging staff, but instead went to actual pediatricians for the scoop. And it breaks down just about how it does every time I get cornered into a conversation about television on the playground, so possibly being a pediatrician doesn't make you any more of an expert on television than being a parent does.

I notice that the quote from the "con" side of the television question admits that television isn't necessarily bad (although we know it might be), just useless. That is a pediatrician who has never ridden for eighteen hours in a Volkswagen Jetta through the barren Southwestern desert with two children under the age of two.

The American Academy of Pediatrics' official statement on television can be found here.