I was not aware when I wrote to my sons about porn there would be people out there (mostly men, from what I can tell) who think that as a woman, that isn’t my job. They believe it’s a conversation for fathers and sons. While I absolutely agree that fathers and sons can and should be having these talks many times over the years, I also believe a mother’s perspective is important. If you are a mother who has shied away from this conversation because you believe it isn’t your place to talk to your boys about these things, let me tell you why I think it’s not just okay for you to talk about it, I think it’s imperative.
Mothers are the practical educators of the home. In our home conversations about sex, boundaries, and bodies happen early. When we start potty-training right around age 2, we talk about the correct names of their body parts and we start emphasizing privacy. You know who has most of those conversations? Moms do. I’m not saying dads can’t or won’t be part of it, but for many children their mother is going to be the person who starts the dialogue about the specialness of their body and God’s design for it. My husband is equally capable of addressing these issues, but is often less available than I am. When my kids have questions about something inappropriate they heard in school, they come to me. When a friend says or does something that makes them feel uncomfortable, they come to me. If they have a question about personal hygiene or a health concern, they come to me. If my kids see porn, I want them to COME TO ME. We let them know they should talk to us by initiating the conversation (in our house we use the book “Good Pictures, Bad Pictures” as part of that process). If I’m the one talking to them about boundaries and sex the majority of the time, but expect my husband to be the ONLY one to talk to them about porn, that doesn’t sit well with me. Porn is not some man secret that I’m unaware of or too scary for me to address.
Boys need to understand the impact of porn on women. I am fully in support of my husband having conversations with our sons about porn. He is going to address them from a different perspective and with a different level of understanding about how boys are wired. But here’s my issue– I think for FAR too long porn has been portrayed as some kind of victimless crime or a harmless guilty pleasure for men. I know my husband wouldn’t minimize it that way, but I think it takes a woman to emphasize the damage porn is doing TO WOMEN. We are suffering for this cultural acceptance of how sex and women are portrayed in porn. My boys need to hear from a woman what is sold to you in porn is not what women are like and it is not what they want. We are being bullied by porn into a caricature of womanhood that bares little resemblance to the reality. I highly recommend this piece about the research and advocacy of Gail Dines. She is quoted as saying:
“We are now bringing up a generation of boys on cruel, violent porn,” she says, “and given what we know about how images affect people, this is going to have a profound influence on their sexuality, behaviour and attitudes towards women.”
I am happy for my husband to talk to my sons about porn and how it will impact them if they engage with it, but my message for them will be about how it impacts women. I will not sit silently by and watch this generation of boys be socialized and educated about women by porn. In defense of their sisters, their friends, their future wives, I will speak openly with them about the lies of porn when it comes to how it depicts women. I hope the mothers raising the future husbands of my daughters are doing the same.
Some men may struggle to talk about porn because of their own shame. A pastor friend of mine put it well when he said, “In my day you used to have to go looking for it. Now it comes looking for you.” The men raising young children today have grown up in a porn saturated culture. Many of them have been impacted and may not have had the ability to talk through or find healing from what they’ve witnessed. That is a difficult place from which to start a conversation with your son. Women need to have these conversations with their husbands to know what their porn experience has been like and what their attitude is about it. There are going to be men who say this is no big deal. There are going to be men who are so overwhelmed by their own shame, they find it extremely difficult to have these conversations in a healthy way with their children. (And for sure there are also mothers who will have this struggle as well.) If either partner is unwilling or unable to address this, the conversation still needs to happen.
There is no such thing as “The Talk” that happens one time. We did not have the “Birds and Bees” conversation with our children and deem their sex education complete. Instead, we have had a thousand different talks with them about sex, their bodies, preventing abuse, pornography, privacy, procreation, etc. This is an open dialogue between us and our children that starts when they’re old enough to talk and ends when they’ve asked their last question, whenever that may be. Fathers should intentionally talk with their children about porn and as mothers see the need to address it, so should they. Maybe that means sitting down with them over ice-cream and talking about the damage porn does. But it may also mean when you’re running errands with two boys in the car and you see a billboard that’s problematic, you have a conversation about it. This is not a conversation I can just delegate to my husband because it is part of the daily conversations I’m already having with my kids.
Fathers should also be talking to their daughters about porn. I don’t believe mothers should only be talking to daughters and fathers should only be talking to sons. I want my husband to communicate to our girls what HE feels is important for them to know from his perspective as a man. We each bring something important to the table and the perspective we share with our kids is going to be unique. If you are single parenting, I think it’s important to find an opposite gender trusted adult that can be part of this process for your kids, but your voice is always going to be the most meaningful.
No conversation is off limits. Ultimately, there isn’t a talk I’m going to shy away from if my kids are asking the questions (and even sometimes if they aren’t). There aren’t many conversations where I’m going to demure with an “ask your father” unless they’re related to sports or car maintenance. When it comes to issues of substance, I want them to feel free to talk to both of us about what’s on their hearts.
Can I be real with you for a minute? I need all the help I can get in countering the idea that porn is “normal” and no big deal. It is important that their dad is in on that conversation, but quite frankly, I’m good if the rest of you want to pitch in too. If Grandma wants to talk to them about it (and I’m pretty sure she might), have at it. I know the pastors at our church have addressed it from the pulpit, for which I am thankful. If my kid is over at your house and you catch him ogling a lady in a bra ad on your kitchen counter, for the love, SAY SOMETHING. I hope the teachers at school will tell them how damaging porn is. I’m counting on Sunday School teachers, their aunts and uncles, their soccer coaches and Boy Scout Troop leaders to reinforce this message. I hope someday off in the future the random lady behind my son in the checkout line will tell him he should rethink his choices if she catches a glimpse of something on his phone that is clearly inappropriate. This conversation is not something so precious that only a father and son should have the right to talk about it on some boys trip off into the woods. Nope. Porn is rampant in our culture and I think we need to get a little more aggressive about countering the idea that that’s acceptable.
While it was discouraging to see men responding with a “this is none of your concern” type attitude, they were in the minority. What was much more heartbreaking to me were the many men I saw sharing that post with some kind of caption about “I wish someone had had this conversation with me.” I am not a person who gets terribly emotional, but that made me cry. SOMEONE. Be the “someone” for your kids. My children will have the freedom to make decisions that are harmful to themselves, as we all do. But my kids will NOT have the ability to make them unaware of the damage they are causing. There are too many men today who didn’t know and had no one there to protect or educate them. Moms, let’s not let that be the story for our children. However hard or awkward it feels, be part of that conversation with your child. Tell them what porn means to YOU.
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