Burkean, you are very well spoken, and I agree with most of what you say.
For example, you are correct when you, and the ALA even, says parents are responsible for what children are reading. But, and it's a big but, that is not the whole story.
Parents being responsible is fine, but two things are very important. 1) The ALA creates a pool of books from which the children may choose that contain quite a lot of inappropriate material. Sometimes, for example, the ALA gives such books awards, such as
Looking For Alaska. The ALA awards this for kids as young as 12. I personally got the award winning author to say he would not give his own award winning book to his own 12 year old if he had one -- he thought 14 would be more appropriate. This is like a hotel saying parents are responsible for children in the children's swimming pools but placing into the pools dangerous toys for children.
2) The other thing the ALA does is mislead the parents as to the contents of the books. Totally inappropriate books may be called "coming of age" books. mention of any controversial content is expunged from the material parents get to evaluate the books. The ALA even has contradictory pages on it own site sometimes recommending a book about sex with babies in Pampers and children performing oral sex on both parents and sometimes saying it is only for older students.
In other words, there is no informed consent. The ALA wins either way. If you are not informed, the ALA says you should be. If you get informed, and the ALA is the trusted source, you are misled about the inappropriate nature of the books. Either way, parents lose, children lose, and the ALA wins given the rules of the game are set up by the ALA and the full truth is never revealed.
This is like the hotel telling the parents the pools are perfectly safe and the children will enjoy the pools when there are actually materials unsafe for the children in the pool about which the hotel did not inform the parents. The parents are entitled to rely on the hotel managers. Similarly parents are entitled to rely on the recommendations of the ALA. But in either case, the parents were not informed, the children got harmed, and the hotel or the ALA can claim the children's safety is the parent's responsibility so no liability attaches. The hotel would lose that case. The ALA should lose as well.
That's more truthful. Now, knowing the ALA is recommending inappropriate books for children, and at the same time misleading the parents about the contents of those books, do you still feel the parents are at fault for their children reading highly recommended, award winning books about inappropriate sexual material and the like?
I still think it is the parents' responsibility, and if they are not taking that initiative, if they are too busy in their own lives, then they are failing their role as parents. Even that scion of the Kennedy clan Jackie Kennedy realized that the parents' MOST important role was raising children--long before Hillary Clinton turned the responsibility over to an entire village.
The examples you cite about books makes me think about the MPAA's rating system. I long ago came to the realization that the MPAA's standards are not my standards, and I feel sorry for the 13 and 14 year old child whose parents blindly believe that every PG-13 movie is suitable for dropping their kids off for an unsupervised afternoon.