I was listening to the radio this morning when a woman called in. To shorten up the long story, she found a porn DVD in her son’s room (aged 14). Having never seen/watched something of that nature herself (another long story) and being curious about both the contents of the disc and what her son was ‘in’ to, she watched it, then returned it to its hiding place and hasn’t said anything about it to the kid or her husband.
The calls that followed after that focused (of course) on the mother’s admission that she really liked the DVD, etc. etc., yawn, this is what will give us good ratings, etc.
My focus was on the offhand comments made by most of the parents calling in, that the kid having porn was ‘perfectly normal for his age’.
I disagree.
Now, before I get a bunch of ‘you’re a repressive bastard’ emails, let me clarify:
- There’s nothing inherently wrong with porn.
- It is natural for fourteen-year olds to be insanely curious about and/or (inner parental shudder) exploring sex.
Parents: you do not get to combine these two sentences into “There’s nothing inherently wrong with a fourteen year old insanely curious about and/or exploring porn.” Porn is not sex, it is an artifical visual stimulant, useful in the way any sex toy is useful. Most adults get that, because they know what normal relationships are like, they see the difference, and use the toy accordingly, along with (or not) whatever else trips their trigger.
Kids (news flash here) are not adults. A fourteen year old has no real basis for comparison between porn and a normal intimate relationship, thus the porn can become their imprinted idea of ‘normal’ (depending on the level of openess the parents display on the subject). THAT’S dangerous: it’s misleading and obviously not the place from which you want your kid to start his (cue dramatic music) journey into intimacy. Porn’s not an educational tool (okay, not this kind of education, anyway). I think that that’s the sort of thing that could seriously mess a kid’s social development up for a good long time.
So, summing up: nothing really wrong with porn, but it’s the sort of thing I think is best approached as a sex toy. Like any other sex toy, it should be included in a person’s life only after they understand what intimate relations are like without it.
That’s me. This is me getting off the soapbox.
