# Should parents tolerate children watching porn? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 29, 2012, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344 "2012-04-29T18:46:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/41 "2012-05-01T10:47:50Z")
I don’t think I’d have a problem with my (hopefully) future kids watching porn. But I’m not a parent yet so who knows how I’ll feel after watching them grow up from being a baby to being a tween-teen who is in need of sexual guidance. I don’t really have any hangups about sex, I openly talk about sex with my parents, or friends, or sister… so I don’t expect it to be any different for my kids. I would stress the importance of not getting malware or stealing credit cards to pay for porn. I’m not afraid of my kid thinking that porn = real life. I certainly never did, and I watched a hell of a lot of porn as a young teenager and beyond. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/42 "2012-05-01T10:49:29Z")
> [@gvozd](#): > > Almost all parents seem to think that their kids should not watch porn, and they should prevent them from watching, or least try to. As it is the case for 99.9% of male teenagers, it certainly didn’t stop me, and now that I’ve grown up, I sincerely don’t see anything bad watching porn since young age has done to me. I don’t plan on having children but if I had them, I wouldn’t really try to stop them as long as they watch it in a discreet manner at a moderate level. Certainly, proper sexual education is necessary, so that they don’t believe what they watch on porn is real. In fact you can’t really stop teenagers from watching porn - you just catch them on spot once in a while and humiliate them. > > Mods, I’m sorry if this is the wrong forum. You seem to assume that it has to be totally allowed or totally forbidden. If/when I have kids, I suspect porn will be officially banned, and my wife will want to install a porn-blocker on the computer; nonethless if I find the Penthouse my 14 year old son has hidden under his mattress, I’ll do nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/43 "2012-05-01T11:11:40Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Let’s face it, porn is a dramatized, fictionalized representation of a sexual encounter, designed to **look** exciting to the (mostly male) viewers rather than to **be** fulfilling for the participants. (Hence, for example, all the semen splashed around where the viewer can see it, even though most men having real-life sex most frequently prefer putting it somewhere it can’t be observed with the naked eye.) This is entirely true. However, it’s true of most behaviour in most films, pornographic or not. Someone getting ideas about how sex really is from porn is no different from someone getting ideas about relationships from Hollywood films. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/44 "2012-05-01T13:58:41Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > (Hence, for example, all the semen splashed around where the viewer can see it, even though most men having real-life sex most frequently prefer putting it somewhere it can’t be observed with the naked eye.) Actually, Uranus \*is \*visible sometimes… ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/45 "2012-05-01T16:44:37Z")
Yes they should ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/46 "2012-05-01T20:18:55Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > It’s not that (some) women don’t like to have PIV with their leg lifted over the guy’s shoulder, it’s that his hips need to be aligned with ours so his pelvic bone rubs on our mons pubis and clitoris. Can’t do that and still get a camera to film the ol’ in-and-out. Sure you can. There’s plenty of porn, complete with closeups, that doesn’t involve any standing-with-one-leg-over-guy’s-shoulder positions. But, I still say that it’s not any less ‘realistic’ than gymnastics is. I can’t even do a somersault, but I don’t have any problem with people who can do back flips. (P.S. There are also women for whom clitoral stimulation is unnecessary and for whom vaginal sex is more than sufficient.) ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/47 "2012-05-01T20:47:00Z")
There are some. Not many. Probably similar to the number of men who can come just from having their taints tickled. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/48 "2012-05-01T20:49:34Z")
I’ve seen figures at roughly 10-20 percent of women. Assuming that my own sample has been fairly randomized, that seems to be about right. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/49 "2012-05-01T21:01:02Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > The question isn’t so much “should parents let their children watch porn?” as it is: “Shouldn’t parents have responsible, honest conversations about sex and sexuality with their children? Oh and also let them watch porn.” > > This is the 21st century. We’re living in the future. Any kid with the 'net can get porn. Hell, that’s quickly becoming ‘any kid with a phone’. Which is also quickly becoming ‘any kid’. Humans like looking at naked humans as well as at naked humans having all sorts of sex. Such is life. There’s no point (and a good bit of hypocrisy) in ‘not tolerating’ such behavior in teens. The real issue is that parents are uptight and would rather not talk about sex with their kids. watching too much porn may give kids a twisted, skewed perception of what passes for normal sex. If you learned about sex from porns, you would only rarely use condoms, you would instead pull out right before ejaculation and spunk on the woman’s face and then take a dump on her chest. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/50 "2012-05-01T21:06:04Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > I’ve seen figures at roughly 10-20 percent of women. > Assuming that my own sample has been fairly randomized, that seems to be about right. I’d guess that greater than 20% can climax with no \*direct \*clitoral stimulation, but for \*no \*clitoral stimulation 10% sounds not terribly unreasonable, 20% is probably bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/51 "2012-05-01T21:08:21Z")
> [@Steophan](#): > > This is entirely true. However, it’s true of most behaviour in most films, pornographic or not. Someone getting ideas about how sex really is from porn is no different from someone getting ideas about relationships from Hollywood films. Absolutely true. Which is why I subject my children to torturous discussions about relationships triggered by nonsense in Hollywood films. (My favorite: “Twoo Wuv looks a lot like stalking, doesn’t it?”) I’m kind of a lecturey mom, as you might have guessed. I listen a lot too, though. ---
**Author:** ![madrabbitwoman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c37758/32.png) [@madrabbitwoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madrabbitwoman)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2012, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/52 "2012-05-01T22:42:04Z")
> [@Dogzilla](#): > > snip > I told him he watched too much porn, he thinks of women as subhuman, and if he was actually interested in me, as a human person with feelings, he’d be better off asking me open-ended questions and then paying attention to the answers. If you just want to try out all the gymnastic (high-risk) monkey sex you saw on your laptop last night, just go hire a hooker, because you obviously don’t care if there’s a real person there in the room with you and sex is obviously not about sharing pleasure with another actual live, breathing, sentient human. I have some qualms about posting this here - but I think my experience was relevant to some points. Quite recently I was sexually assaulted - to the point where I was hospitalised due to my injuries. various folks I have disclosed to since them (including the the police and my sexual assault counsellor) have made the comment that he appeared to be using my body to live out a violent porn fantasy.He was a big strong guy who had no difficulty throwing me around and pretty much did what ever he wanted with me. I’m sorry but I would rather not go into details but a lot of the things he did to me appear to have come straight from porn. Personally I have never watched that sort of porn so I can only go on what I have been told. I also believe that generally porn does not cause men to sexually assault women. I do believe that a certain type of porn (violent) was connected with how I was assaulted. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/53 "2012-05-02T01:24:53Z")
Yikes!!! Very sorry to hear that, **madrabbitwoman**. While I agree with you that there’s no evidence to show that porn makes men commit sex crimes, there’s no question that some guys who commit sex crimes want to pornify the experience. I guess the question relating to this thread would be “can porn watching **in adolescence** contribute to problems with relating to sex in a healthy way as an adult?” And I don’t think there’s any way to get a definite answer to that question. Even if a study showed conclusively that sex criminals watched a lot of porn as kids, that wouldn’t necessarily imply that the porn watching caused the criminal tendencies rather than vice versa, for example. ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/54 "2012-05-02T02:09:52Z")
> [@Steophan](#): > > This is entirely true. However, it’s true of most behaviour in most films, pornographic or not. Someone getting ideas about how sex really is from porn is no different from someone getting ideas about relationships from Hollywood films. Or, for that matter, getting ideas about _sex_ from Hollywood films. Most porn obviously isn’t very realistic, but it _is_ more realistic than what you see in most TV or movies. At any rate, I think FinnAgain pretty much nailed it. Porn isn’t the problem; the problem arises when kids can’t put it in context. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/55 "2012-05-02T09:29:34Z")
Yeah, sorry to hear that madrabbitwoman. WhyNot, I think I’d talk to my hypothetical child about firefox, noscript and adblock before talking to them about sex. Or Chrome… I can’t discriminate, really. ---
**Author:** ![GreenTreeFrog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3d9bf3/32.png) [@GreenTreeFrog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenTreeFrog)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/56 "2012-05-02T09:44:15Z")
> [@B.Serum](#): > > If I was a parent with a teen boy, I would just want to make sure he knows that he knows porno-style slam-fucking may not satisfy his girlfriend the way it satisfies himself. That he should take guidance from what she responds to, especially if it doesn’t look like what he’s been watching in Backdoor Bitches 7. Agree… I’m a bit surprised reading some of these responses… No porn till 17/18? Good luck with that :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Borzo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/43a26b/32.png) [@Borzo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Borzo)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/57 "2012-05-02T12:30:42Z")
My 2 cents: Kids learn from what they see. If they use porn as a tool to learn about sex, without context, they can grow up with some strange beliefs and views about sex. Your first experiences with something tend to imprint on you strongly, especially when young. If you had the cops come to your house every other night as a child, due to domestic abuse or something, you will associate the police with that negativity. If you grow up being abused by a short, bearded, green-haired stepfather, you’ll develop negative associations with short, bearded, green-haired men. If your first sexual experiences involve whips, chains, and high-heels, then you will associate those things with being turned on and sex in general. Obviously these are all generalizations, but that doesn’t mean they have no effect… they do. The strength of that effect depends on the situation and the person, but it’s there and often measurable. Many people with sexual fetishes develop them in this way. The problem some people have with porn is that most of it is very male-focused and just generally unrealistic. Many don’t want their children to use this kind of porn as a building-block for their future sexuality, otherwise they may have their adult life sexually unfulfilled. I know friends who’s first porn magazine they stumbled upon was very “niche” and oriented towards a particular fetish. Now, 20 years later, it’s painfully obvious how it has affected their adult sexuality. My girlfriend watched tons of strange porn when she was younger too… and it’s shaped her view on sex, and even seems to have helped develop her particular fetishes. Problem is… she wants to enact the impractical and nearly-impossible things she’s seen in porn as a child. Sometimes people like this simply cannot get turned on or interested in sex unless it meets their preconceptions developed from childhood porn-watching. I wouldn’t let my child watch porn without supervision and advice, for fear that their sexuality might develop into something that cannot be meaningfully sustained and satisfied in adulthood. ---
**Author:** ![Acid\_Lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Acid\_Lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acid_Lamp)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/58 "2012-05-02T12:56:30Z")
> [@DianaG](#): > > There are some. Not many. Probably similar to the number of men who can come just from having their taints tickled. Oh bollocks. Sex, and what is found pleasurable runs an enormous spectrum of practices; from those who purport to be able to “think off” to those who need to be near beaten to achieve orgasm. It can depend on not only the partners and their particular inclinations but the circumstances of each encounter as well. I don’t know of anyone whose first encounters resembled anything from a porn. Despite male braggadocio, every guy I’ve ever spoken with has related a similar experience until they got some practice in. A fumbling, intense, somewhat terrifying,(in a good way) experience where they are trying to figure out how things are done. The worst thing you could do was something would result in \*her wanting to stop. \* Likewise, I’ve never spoken to a woman who has reported that their first encounters with young men resulted in a gag factor video replay. There is plenty of porn out there that does not involve violent behaviour; in fact I’ll go so far as to say that the vast majority of it doesn’t feature anything worse than spanking or dirty talk. Those type of hardcore videos make up a small percentage of the market but get passed around a lot in a "stare at the trainwreck " sort of manner. ---
**Author:** ![Borzo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/43a26b/32.png) [@Borzo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Borzo)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/59 "2012-05-02T13:22:45Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > How does “girls’ porn” in the form of trashy romance novels and so on fit into this discussion? Print (non-photographic) erotica is generally a lot less closely monitored these days than the electronic-image kind, but it arguably provides just as unrealistic portrayals of sex and relationships. > > If you wouldn’t let your kid watch _Ivy League Hookers Gone Wild_, would you let them read _Lady Throbbingbust’s Passion_ or stuff of that ilk? This is why I hate fairy tales with princes and princesses. Women get it into their head that this is what a relationship with a man is supposed to be like. Some women never recover from their childhood Cinderella stories. If I had a daughter, her fairy tales would be strongly supervised and followed up with lots of discussion afterwards. Just as if my kids were watching porn. ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2012, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344/60 "2012-05-02T13:36:08Z")
For that matter, I doubt any amount of porn could give a young girl a more warped and twisted idea of what a relationship is supposed to be than she’d get from the _Twilight_ books. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-parents-tolerate-children-watching-porn/620344.md?page=4)