This memory is from over thirty years ago, but while in college, I moved into a neighborhood
close to school.
The hearsay and gossip on the block, was that a certain family allowed their young children to look at pornography, and watch pornographic movies.
The ages of the children were from eight to about eleven or twelve.
This family, under scrutiny, was trippy hippy, but educated and fairly well off financially.
Parents in this neighborhood were adverse to these porn watching kids playing with their own children; and understandably so, if one believed all the stories that were going around.
One of the problems I heard of, was that these children, maybe quite innocently,
acted out the things they were seeing in the pornography, when playing with other children.
I was not fully invested in what was going on, nor the outcome, because I was leaving at the end of the school year.
Also, I was not a parent at the time, so I was not completely sharing the larger group’s level of concern, and some were considering a call to the authorities.
I did notice these children seemed a bit off, and had dark shadows under their eyes, but I could not say for sure what was really going on with them, and only went by what others were saying.
My opinion now, is that shame about sex is most likely going to be a part of our upbringing, in this society, and it probably starts at a young age.
I have read that pedophiles often groom their child victims by first exposing them to pornographic images.
But also children may innocently come upon pornography, and share it with other children, like the typical situation of finding your father’s hidden stash.
In a perfect world shame and sex would not have to go hand in hand, but also in a perfect world, children would not be in danger of sexual predators.