Periodically one of my patients comes in quite agitated about it, or a parent comes to me in a panic about it. “I found my kid watching porn,” they’ll say. “What do I do now?”
Given the typical danger-oriented media coverage of pornography, it’s easy for parents to feel terribly anxious about this issue. Listening to Newsweek, the Parents Television Council, or various “morality” groups, you’d think that every American boy is in danger of becoming a porn addict—an obsessive, aggressive loser who hates women and eventually destroys himself.
Fortunately, it isn’t true. So let’s all take a deep breath and relax a bit.
We know that all children are sexual—they have sexual feelings, thoughts, and questions. Naturally, six-year-olds don’t think about intercourse, and thirteen-year-olds can’t imagine the subtleties of mutual arousal and satisfaction. But every human is born a sexual being. How you as a parent deal with your feelings about your children’s sexuality will shape how you feel about, and what you do about, your kid looking at porn.
So how do you, Mom or Dad, feel about your kid masturbating? That is, after all, why he or she looks at porn beyond mere curiosity. If you can’t handle that, your kid’s use of porn will of course be unacceptable—but beside the point. Whether talking about kids’ use or adults’ use, too many conversations about whether porn is harmful to users or society is really about the unacceptability of masturbation. If that’s your position, be honest and say “I don’t want my kid masturbating to porn because I don’t want my kid masturbating.”
Even parents who accept the reality that their kids have sexual feelings and masturbate can be concerned about porn. What if it’s violent? What if it encourages values of which I disapprove? What if it’s confusing?
The answer to all three questions is: it might.
The porn your kid watches might be violent—but it probably isn’t. Most porn isn’t—for the simple reason that there’s a limited market for that. Most people who complain about “violent porn” are either talking about a small percentage of what’s available, or they’re categorizing certain consensual activities—like fellatio—as “violent.” That’s a decision based on politics, not science or common sense.
The porn your kid watches might encourage values of which you disapprove—but it probably doesn’t. Most porn shows men and women as partners, wanting pleasure and wanting to give pleasure. Porn isn’t a love story, so if you disapprove of people having sex before marriage, you may object to your kid watching almost any sexual depiction, whether it’s porn or Desperate Housewives.
If your kid watches porn, he or she might easily get confused: Is that what sex is really like? Is that what most people look like naked? Do strangers really have sex together so easily? Are some people really rough with each other in bed? (This is where you explain that just as kids play games on the ballfield, pretending to be mean or brave when they really aren’t, some adults play games in bed, pretending to be bossy or submissive when they really aren’t.)
Questions like these deserve answers. And questions like these are a wonderful opportunity to talk with your child about your beliefs, your values, and your vision of sexuality, intimacy, and relationships. Equally important, your answers will provide a context within which your kid will watch porn, either now or in the future.
Because you can say “don’t watch that stuff, it’s bad for you,” or “only bad people watch that stuff,” or “I’ll ground you until you’re thirty if I catch you again”—but chances are, your son or daughter will watch again. Maybe a lot.
The response to “my kid’s watching porn, what do I do?” is—you talk about it. You ask lots of gentle questions. Your kid squirms. You explain stuff. You squirm. No one’s comfortable talking about this. You talk anyway. That’s what good parents do—they talk about important subjects even when they’re uncomfortable.
You already know that to deal with video games, movies, TV shows, and podcasts, your kids need media literacy. Similarly, to deal with the internet, tablets, and smartphones, kids need porn literacy. They need to understand that they’re watching actors playing roles in scripted scenes. They need to understand that just as Glee and Harry Potter are edited, so are porn films. None of these media products is an accurate portrayal of real life. Most porn omits many crucial parts of real sex—such as hugging, talking, and emotions.
All this implies a certain pre-existing parent-child relationship, doesn’t it? Surely you don’t want your first parent-child conversation about sex to be about porn.
So make this the year you raise the subject of sexuality with each of your kids—regardless of their ages. Both you and they will benefit. When at some point you need to discuss porn with them, you’ll already be in the middle of a loving, long-term dialogue.
Dr. Marty Klein is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist. He is the author of 7 books, including Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want From Sex, and How to Get It. For more of his work, see www.SexEd.org or @DrMartyKlein on Twitter.