I like so much of this piece from Time…but some of the language leaves me a bit unsettled.
Lines I love:
“It’s time to rethink “the talk.””
YES! This is a long-time coming.
“Parents must help kids understand that pornography is real, but it’s not reality.”
YES!
“It’s not what the parents think about pornography that matters, it’s how the child learns to process it and incorporate it into his or her understanding of sex.”
YES!
“Once parents have managed to get a sense of an adolescent’s feelings about the pornography they might have experienced—recognizing it’s not easy to get an adolescent to share feelings about anything—the door is open, at least a crack, for parents to inject their own values into the conversation.”
As long as those values are clearly “labelled” as personal, emotional responses.
“Kids need to know that what they are seeing, in all its often disturbing variety, is not what sex really is.”
Kids need to know that isn’t what sex is for everyone, but it is for some.
“The sex on porn sites is not the sex that is a wonderful part of life.”
And here all perspective is lost and judgement comes raining down, somewhat negating some wonderfully open dialogue.
