Porn-Proof Your Children – Part 2

Porn-Proof Your Children – Part 2

MCAG is Radical and Revolutionary… you may be surprised by what you read here. And if you haven’t read the main series of articles on the MCAG site, you should probably do that first.

My previous post discussed how people in a naked culture grow up around the unclothed body with a normalized perspective, never learning to view the body pornographically. Can experiences of such cultures help us in porn-proofing our children?

You Can Stop the Cycle

A frequent concern raised in emails sent to us by fathers with porn problems and by mothers married to porn addicts is how they can help keep their children from succumbing to the strong pornographic mindset saturating our culture. There’s a very effective answer: stop promoting a pornographic view of the body in the home. It must be rejected by precept and example.

At their level of understanding, children should be taught the principles given on the MCAG website. They need to learn the truth of body acceptance long before they reach their teens.

You Have to Live It

But demonstration of body acceptance is more powerful than explanation. Children cannot be porn-proofed if a porno-prudish view of the body is continually reinforced in the home by how we act, even if the mindset is mentally and verbally renounced. Parents can pass on a true family legacy of body acceptance only if they practice it. In other words, nudity at home should be routinely seen without ever being treated as obscene.

For most American families, the practical living out of body acceptance would mean courageously reversing old prudish habits, establishing new body-friendly customs, and inventing creative opportunities for ordinary nakedness to teach its crucially needed lessons. Some new of these might be:

  • Adopting the age-old, healthy habit of sleeping in the nude,
  • Never shutting bedroom doors for dressing or undressing
  • Celebrating a relaxed “birth-day suit breakfast” on the weekends
  • Keeping bathroom doors open for sink or toilet access while tub or shower is in use
  • Investing in a Hot Tub for no-swimsuit family fellowship
  • Building a backyard enclosure for full-body family sunbathing

Practical changes like these are powerful when body acceptance is simultaneously taught as a moral standard. But to insure that this healthy understanding works at a social level—not just in the home—children must be shown that nudity beyond that of parents and siblings can also be decent and nonsexual. It might mean sharing that new Jacuzzi or backyard sunbathing enclosure with relatives or like-minded friends who are also trying to raise porn-proofed children.

As radical as that last suggestion may sound, it is therapeutically realistic. In the context of such social realism, fathers fighting porn or mothers struggling with poor body image often gain as much healing from past thought-patterns as their children find reinforcement for a wholesome view of everybody’s body. Beyond-the-family nudity won’t be intimidating if home nudity is already a comfortable routine.

Instill Body Acceptance

A picture is worth a thousand words, but words are still important. The family practices mentioned above can quickly kill body shame and instill body acceptance. But open verbal communication is just as essential in porn-proofing children as open visual illustration. Children will be strong in behavior only when strong in understanding. Still living in a world where the body is toxically sexualized, they will be bombarded with sex-obsessed messages in the media and confronted by people indoctrinated by them. When questions arise, parents must be prayerfully open and ready to discuss the truth and its implications. Body acceptance is a holy way of seeing that is stronger than the cultural falsehood of body shame. Only by keeping children grounded in the truth about the body can they walk in freedom from the lie of porn.

Pastor David L. Hatton

9 COMMENTS

comments user
Noah

So if there is a family friendly resort nearby where the atmosphere is non-sexual, would you recommend taking the family there? Or perhaps a family friendly beach that is clothing optional? This sounds wonderfully healthy, as does the whole #freethenipple campaign that advocates for body equality by promoting toplessness for both sexes.
These two blog posts were very enlightening.

comments user
Caroline Wright

I really appreciate a lot of the things mentioned on this website. I think you are definitely on to something here. However, it was brought to my attention that if nudity is not shameful or private, and masturbation is not shameful or sexual, and sex between spouses is not shameful, but is rather the ultimate physical display of the plurality and unity of the trinity; then why not encourage masturbation and marital relations to be done in front of our children as well? There seems to be no command in the Bible against either of these. Even public sex in the Bible was only seen as wrong when it combined with temple worship or prostitution. And if there is no inherent wrong or shame in any of these things, can we publicly practice them ethically when our culture and laws say all three are illegal? I would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

    comments user
    Gordy

    Heellooo, Anybody there? A response to “Caroline Wright on March 4, 2018 at 12:05 am” would be helpful.

    Dad’s big sex talk was about women’s breast’s being nothing more than bags of skin filled with fat and not being any thing of sexual interest 😉

    comments user
    David Martin

    Caroline,

    I’m very sorry for not seeing or replying to your question. Another reader saw your comment and brought it to our attention as unanswered!

    So… let me see if I can offer some comments on your question… although I would hesitate to claim any “authority” in my answer beyond my own efforts to understand the Scriptures and to reason accurately in view of our culture and personal experience.

    Let me start by saying this…

    Regarding the natural state of our bodies, there is a LOT of benefit to children when they are taught the naturalness of the unclad human form, and that it is not shameful to see or be seen. It is very good for them to learn the counter-cultural truth that the simple sight of an unclothed person is not a “sexual experience”… that it is not intended by God to be the “trigger” that ignites sexual passions. So, for this reason, it is very wise for parents to note that the Bible does not command clothing for “propriety” or “modesty” and make sure they don’t teach the sexualized view of the body inadvertently in their home by requiring clothing at all times or presuming the same sexual response that our culture teaches and practices.

    But what about actual sexual activities? You are correct in noting that the Bible doesn’t forbid coitus in the presence of others any more than it forbids nudity. This is certainly understandable when you consider that the OT Law was given during a time when ALL families lived together in tents… and Mom & Dad did NOT have their own locked and sound-proof “tent-room” inside the family tent. Pretty much, everyone slept on the ground inside the tent. And the Israelites were fully expected by God to “multiply.” So… marital coitus must have happened a LOT in close proximity to the rest of the kids (and grandparents?) that lived in the same tent. I would suppose that it was a “That’s-something-Mom-and-Dad-do-a-lot…Just-ignore-them.” sort of thing. God was more interested in there being more kids than he was from shielding kids from knowing what their parents did to make them.

    That said, we don’t know what the actual practice was… only after the kids were asleep? Only under covers? Regardless, it would seem that it would be nigh on impossible in those days to completely hide the fact of marital union happening with some regularity. You’d probably hear it happening even from nearby neighbors’ tents.

    But… what does that mean for us today? Well, here I can only give my opinion…

    I would suggest that young children are not ready for any sort of “sexual experience.” And while I believe it’s a good thing to be very matter-of-fact about the mechanics of sexual union even while children are very young (and the fact that, “Yes, Mommy and Daddy still do this.”), actually watching sex performed is likely a lot more “sexual experience” than they are ready for… particularly in a culture where it is otherwise so hidden. Furthermore, unlike our view of our bodies, there’s not a pervading false view about sexual union that can be corrected by nonchalant exposure to sexual activity… in other words, open sex would not combat any of the cultural lies about sex that have invaded our minds and our homes. Consequently, there’s no real strategic benefit from open sex, and it would more likely play into the “pornographic” mentality that we actively trying to combat in our lives and homes.

    And then there’s the legal angle.

    I don’t believe that we should feel and obligation to follow laws that reach beyond the scope of the Government’s true bounds, but only if we need to do so to uphold our own convictions about what is true and right. In this case, while I would defend and encourage openness about the unclad body in the home (even if the government wrongly forbade it), I could not defend open sexual activity in the home or in public.

    But… all this does mean that we do not need to be embarrassed about talking with our kids openly about sex. We don’t need to make sure they never know what Mom & Dad do in bed. And we don’t even need to be all embarrassed and concerned if our kids happen to “walk in on us.”

    One man’s thoughts… hopefully you’ll find them reasonable and helpful.

    David Martin

      comments user
      Caroline Wright

      Thank you for your thoughts. It is very helpful to have the context for what sex may have looked like way back when. Interesting that it was not always such a private and secretive thing. Love what this website has to say on most everything. So freeing for me and I don’t even struggle with porn. This is a balm to any woman who was raised in modesty culture and who has body image issues. Thank you.

        comments user
        David Martin

        Thank you so much for your encouraging words.

        I have recognized for a while that the pornographic view of the body—taught by porn AND (through “modesty” culture) by the church—is more damaging to women than it is to men… For men, it distorts how they view others (women), but for women, it distorts how they view themselves.

        David Martin

comments user
caroline Wright

Side note: How would you convince a spouse/family member of the positivity of nudity and the wholesomeness of our bodies if he believes nudity is shameful/only sexual. Walking around naked is not received well. lol does anyone have experience or insight on raising children with two parents that have apposing views on the issue.

    comments user
    David Martin

    Wow… I wish I had an easy answer to this question, Caroline. But the reality is that I have never successfully convinced anyone of these truths.

    The LIE is so deeply entrenched within our cultural mindset that I don’t believe that any sort of argument alone will be able to successfully break its grip in someone’s heart and mind.

    I have, however, seen people’s minds changed… but it has always been the work of God in their hearts. A site like MCAG is frequently used by God to support and affirm God’s working in them, but the change comes by God’s supernatural work in their hearts, not the strength of the argument.

    I don’t know your story, but I’m quite sure that God has been disrupting the LIE’s stranglehold in your life for some time now, so that when you found and read MCAG (how did you find it?), you were already ripe to be liberated by its truths. In other words, you were not convinced by what you read, but rather, the teaching at MCAG confirmed and gave biblical evidence for the truths that God had already been revealing to you inside your heart. Am I right?

    So, your job is not to “convince” your husband of these truths… it will never work. But, the good news is that God can change his heart through your prayers. In fact, you may find that efforts to “convince” get in the way of God’s changing them more than they help. So, pray, pray, pray… and especially when you sense a heightening sense of antagonism to the truth.

    That said, here are some recommendations…

    1. Pray first and foremost (worth repeating!)

    2. Keep alert to evidence of God’s working in your spouse’s heart, and be prepared to support that work, seeking God’s leading as to what (and if!) to say.

    3. Be ready to express what you believe when the topic comes up. Not as an “argument,” per se, but to articulate why you believe your perspective it more biblical and healthy.

    4. Ask your spouse to support their perspective biblically.

    5. In your conversations, make it about your kids, too… how else are we as parents going to inoculate our children against our pornographic culture?

    Perhaps David Hatton (who wrote this article) could speak to your question on raising children; his wife never fully embraced the MCAG teaching, and he raised his children with that lack of unity with his wife in this area. I myself was blessed to see my wife change her mind in response to God’s work in her heart (not my arguments, I assure you!). And our kids—now mostly raised—are now very grateful for the openness we implemented in our home now over 10 years ago.

    Finally, if there’s any way that any of us at MCAG can support you, we are eager to do that. You can find our email addresses here on the MCAG site. If your husband wants to contact us to discuss the issue, we’d be happy to do that, too. We’d love to hear what God does in your life, too… please keep us posted.

    David Martin

      comments user
      Caroline Wright

      Thank you for your encouragement. You are so right that I was not in need of convincing when I found your website. I was actually searching the internet for any male who could debunk the view that “men are created more visual and therefore will always struggle more with porn then women, and as a woman you will never understand.” This is what essentially was being argued and I knew that Biblically this was false, but I had never heard a Christian male (or any male) defend another view. I found your website after many hits on feminist ones, that only touched on half the truth and were all by women. It took some searching but finding and reading it truly “confirmed and gave biblical evidence for the truths that God had already been revealing to me inside my heart.” It is an encouragement to remember that it is God who works in us, not my arguments that will change a heart or mind.

      I’m thinking of starting the art route, and wondered if you have any websites where there is tasteful nude art for sale? Especially wondering about an adam and eve in the garden one. I remember scouring all the picture bibles as a kid to see what was under the leaves and would love to spare my kids at least that unnecessary tension and obsession. lol 🙂

      Thanks again for your helpful responses and encouragement.

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