TELEVISION : Do Families Matter?...

Would you want your 10-year-old to watch a sitcom in which the star makes a joke about jailhouse sodomy?

Kurt and Cindy Kassebaum wouldn’t, and thus won’t let their daughter Danica watch CBS’ “The Nanny” on Monday nights at 8.

Fran Drescher, who plays the title role, delivered the gag on the Sept. 25 episode by way of dissing the boyfriend of the girl she cares for: “I hope he ends up in Attica with a cellmate who finds him attractive.”

Granted, the carefully worded reference probably sailed over the heads of most adolescents tuned in. But “The Nanny” teemed with enough blatant sexual dialogue and adult situations, the Kassebaums said, to make it way out of line for the 8-9 p.m. hour when Danica and her 6-year-old sister, Courtney, are allowed to watch the tube.

“Even in the first three minutes they were talking about cleavage and breasts and hiking up [the Nanny’s] skirts,” Cindy Kassebaum said during the recent show’s first commercial break.

What else bothered the Kassebaums?

Repartee about eating to cope with “sexual frustration,” the Nanny’s grandmother’s admission that she married because she got “knocked up by the seltzer man” and a French kiss shared by the voluptuous Drescher, clad in a clingy mini-dress, and her date, a man she’d known for only a week.

“There’s no need for that between 8 and 9,” said Kurt Kassebaum, “when supposedly you could put anybody in front of the TV.”

“The Nanny” was not the only show the Kassebaums objected to after watching a week of the CBS 8-to-9 p.m. lineup. Indeed, only four of 11 programs got thumbs up as family entertainment: “Bless This House,” “Dweebs,” “The Bonnie Hunt Show” and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.” “Dr. Quinn” was the only show they would let their daughters watch unsupervised.

“You would like the children to be able to have [more] to watch by themselves,” said Cindy, a free-lance graphic designer.

Only one show, an episode of “John Grisham’s The Client,” in which a woman was seen lying in blood after being shot, was too violent, the Kassebaums said. And the convoluted plot of “Murder, She Wrote” was just too confusing for kids.

More troublesome, they said, was other shows’ myriad sexual references and a “carefree attitude about sex,” neither of which jibe with their “family values” and religious beliefs. The Anaheim couple are churchgoing Lutherans who send their daughters to Zion Lutheran School.

At a recent meeting of the school’s Parent-Teacher-Student League, Cindy, the league’s president, discovered that none of 20 league members she informally polled find the 8-to-9 p.m. hour suitable for families.

Relaxing in the living room of their three-bedroom home, the Kassebaums, both 36, cackled throughout the Oct. 1 episode of “Cybill,” the Sunday 8 p.m. sitcom starring Cybill Shepherd. But no way would they let their kids watch.

For starters, guest star Marilu Henner played an unwed mother. “That’s not a good example for children,” Cindy said. “We’ve raised ours that you wait to have sex until you’re married.”

In order to have a baby by her ex-husband, Henner’s character had frozen his sperm, and such quips as “the iceman cometh” and “Frosty the Sperm Man” had the Kassebaums shaking their heads. Even worse was Henner’s description of the “incredible” sex she had with her ex: “He did this one thing he called the Jeff Robbins Siamese Special.”

“I couldn’t even fend off all the questions that Danica would have right now,” said Kurt, a McDonnell Douglas engineer.

Another egregious offender? “Almost Perfect,” which follows “Cybill,” the Kassebaums agreed. The Oct. 1 episode opened on cuddling stars Nancy Travis and Kevin Kilner, who have just had sex--after only a couple of dates.

“That’s really bad,” Cindy said.

Moments later, Kilner greets Travis’ friend by saying, “You have that certain glow. You must have had sex”--which she has.

“Oh, geez!” said Cindy, put off by the repeated references in the show’s first few moments.

Even subtle, carefully worded references can be dicey, she said.

“You have to give children more credit than the [producers and networks] do,” she said. “They think that a lot goes over the children’s heads, and that’s why they put it on at this time, but kids are more aware of things than when I was growing up. They’re smart enough to put two and two together.”

Even some shows on the Kassebaums’ OK-for-kids list contain some iffy material, they said.

The words crap , ass and bastard peppered the script of the Sept. 27 “Bless This House,” starring Andrew Clay and Cathy Moriarty, whose 12-year-old daughter Danny went on an unchaperoned movie date. Those are forbidden words in their home, Cindy said, and that’s too young to be dating and dealing with getting to second base: Danny’s date Matthew tried to caress her breast in the theater.

Still, the Kassebaums said, the good outweighed the bad because the show was devoted to family matters and Clay and Moriarty portray parents who play a caring, active role in their two children’s lives. First, they agonized over whether to let Danny go out alone, then they insisted that the recalcitrant adolescent open up about Matthew’s groping.

Furthermore, Cindy said, the show ultimately conveyed the right message about Matthew’s behavior: It’s not OK.

Even better was “Dr. Quinn,” in which the 19th-Century townsfolk of Colorado Springs displayed team spirit to win a big baseball game and star Jane Seymour castigated a cheating opponent. “It was thoroughly entertaining, and there was nothing at all wrong with it” for children, Cindy said.

As it turns out, though, the Kassebaums’ favorite family show on CBS airs at 9 p.m. on Saturdays. “Touched by an Angel,” which the children are allowed to stay up for, is about an angel who helps people in crisis and always ends “with a reaffirmation of belief in God,” Cindy said.

“That’s a wonderful show,” she said, “and I’m, like, why is that on at 9 p.m. instead of 8, where it would have been perfectly appropriate?”

The Kassebaums realize the odds against any proliferation of religious-themed shows on network TV. Nor would they want to see the 8 p.m. hour dominated by educational programming. But they would like to see more balance. How about more of the sorts of programs they grew up with, such as “Wild Kingdom,” the nature show, or the long-running Sunday night Disney series?

“I don’t think it’s TV’s responsibility to be teaching moral values,” Cindy said, “but for those families that choose to teach the proper things, they make it very difficult.”