Protecting Your Children from a Sex-Obsessed Culture
8/29/2006 7:00:00 AM
By David E. Smith, IFI Executive Director
 | MTV as Teacher?
"If you believe Sesame Street taught your four-year-old something, then you better believe MTV is teaching your 14-year-old something, because the influence doesn't stop when we come to a certain age."--Dr. Jane Brown, journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. |
A recent study released by Rand Corporation found that the more young people listen to music with sexual overtones, the more likely they are to initiate sexual activity. The study found that over a two-year period, 51-percent of teens who consistently listened to sexually degrading lyrics advanced their range and frequency of sexual activities. (Read more HERE.)
This story only reinforces what is known about the ever increasing addictive and influential attributes associated with pornography -- be they visual, audible or written.
And that's just the point, it's not only the music that we should be concerned about. Young people are being bombarded with sexual messages from every quarter -- television, Internet, radio, billboards, pop music, even in the checkout aisle of grocery stores. We have a serious problem in our culture that only seems to be growing.
Our children are being immersed in sexual messages -- and make no mistake -- these will affect their thinking, beliefs and attitudes, language, and actions. Concerned citizens cannot afford to continue to ignore this situation while vulgar, sexualized messages become entrenched in our children's minds and are expressed through their actions.
Responsible parents restrict this type of material in their homes, but in the wider culture, it is available at every turn. Even as a big NFL fan, I am unable to watch the Bears game with my young sons without being visually assaulted with sexualized advertisements. The remote control must be in hand so I can quickly switch the station to avoid unseemly commercials that have become a staple of professional sports.
The distinction between appropriate and inappropriate sexuality is all but lost on today's culture. There once was a clear understanding that God created sex to be pure and sacred between one man and one woman in marriage. But today we live in a world where our children are going to come face to face with the reality of our sex-obsessed, corrupt society--often at early ages--even if their parents are vigilant.
I recently ran across an incredible statistic; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), by age 50, at least 80 percent of women will have acquired a genital HPV infection (a cause of cervical cancer). That's a sexually transmitted disease, folks -- something that you get through sexual contact. And STDs are not something that couples committed to a lifetime of monogamy contract. In fact, it is a disease that no one has to get! The rise in the rates of HPV and other STDs are a direct consequence of a sexually obsessed society.
 Today it is virtually impossible to shut ourselves away and remain untouched by the messages and attitudes of pornography. So-called "adult book stores" and strip bars were once the only places to secure dirty pictures of women. Now, all types of pornography assault the public--on billboards, through commercials, in the grocery line, and even in your e-mail inbox. Porn seems to find you, whether you are looking for it or not (hard core or soft core).
No one is immune to its lure: Christians, including even pastors and other church leaders, have become entangled in the snare of pornography. While our God-given duty as parents is to shut out as much of it as we can, we also have to do what we can to pass meaningful legislation to counter the growing acceptance and mainstreaming of pornography. I am not naive. I understand that we will never be able to shut it all out, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to put it in its proper place -- away from the mainstream of daily life.
Moreover, parents would do well to teach their children the healthy and God-ordained purpose of sex. Face it, young people will either hear it from a twisted pervert (a Larry Flint type), so-called "safer sex" classes in school, a clueless kid who is making poor choices or wild guesses, Hollywood, a book or magazine, the Internet, or ... from you. Which source would you prefer?
Dads -- this means you! If you tell your young children the information they are bound to learn -- from the standpoint of good (and God) -- they will be better equipped to recognize and resist the destructive, unhealthy casual-sex messages coming their way. Parenting, as I am slowly learning, is all about training, teaching, and preparing the minds and hearts of young children to respond to God's Truth. How they respond to the world's deceptively irresponsible message of sex and love depends heavily (not exclusively) on how they've been prepared.
I encourage you to be proactive. Visit Focus on the Family's web page Talking to Your Child About Pornography to get some good ideas on how and why you should plan to talk to your young children about the dangerous messages coming from our sexually-fixated culture.
David Smith is executive director of Illinois Family Institute, and the father of three young children.
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