A multi-speaker YouTube discussion led by Nick Stumbo (Pure Desire Ministries) about why parents find it difficult to talk to children about sex. Panelists note average age of exposure to pornography is roughly 7–9 years, attribute parental discomfort to family-of-origin and faith-community models, and recommend early, incremental conversations that normalize bodies and sexuality while taking cues from each child. They warn against 'under-educating' while children are 'overexposed' to cultural media.
Statistics kind of give us a ballpark of the average age of exposure to pornography being somewhere between nine and seven years old. Seven to nine years old. If we know this to be true, why is it so difficult for parents to bring this topic up in the house with their kids?
Well, many times it just comes back to the individual, the family of origin, the families we grew up, how comfortable were they talking about sexuality? And many times even our faith communities, how open were they about talking about human sexuality? So I think it's awkward talking to our kids because many times it's awkward talking about it in general. So this is just where the more we familiarize ourselves and understand some of these things, the easier it is to have that conversation when you're seven, because you're not starting at seven, you've started long before there. And therefore it creates a comfort of just normalizing your body and sexuality.
I think there is an understanding too, more and more that we do need to talk about it at younger ages. So I think parents are understanding that. So we find with parents, most of them didn't have a lot of conversation in the home or in their faith communities about sexuality. But people are realizing that in the culture that we live in, in the access that is so easy and exposure that is so widespread, that we really do need to start younger and that our kids are being exposed younger, even if we're trying to protect them.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking about when I heard this question was, I think many of us make assumptions that, oh, well, not my kid, my kid doesn't need to know that. I mean, even when we hear like a number of seven to nine years old, we think really, I mean, maybe some kids without parent involvement, but my kids, I'm sure that's not an issue. And yet our kids are growing up in a very different culture than we did. And so we can't just assume that they're somehow going to be immune to that or not be a part of that statistic. And so it does invite us to say we need to start having conversations earlier and earlier. And I think maybe the other piece that can get in the way is as parents, when we think about this phrase talking with our kids about sex, we maybe think like the whole nine yards, like the whole sex talk. And it's like little Johnny at seven years old, we're just like, I can't imagine why he would need to know all that well. And that may be the case that they may not need to know the whole nine yards, but they need to Start to have some framework, some language, some context around their body and sexuality and understanding why we do or don't do certain things. That doesn't mean you're going to explain the particulars of the entire, you know, connection between a male and female body. That's something that, what we've said a lot is you need to take the cues from your child. Like when you start to introduce some of these conversations, if they seem really eager to know more or they bring up, yeah, here's things I've heard and they don't understand, then you may need to go deeper into the conversation with that child. Where, and I've seen this in my own four kids, like when we started having conversations, some of them was like, oh, thanks dad, you know, what's for dinner? And then a couple of our others were like, wow, why? You know, and they had follow up questions and you could just see that they needed to have a deeper understanding. So in that regard, you can take the cues from your kid. But it just. The reminder is when we say talk to your kids about sex, we don't mean the entire ball of wax right away. So it's an incremental process.
Well said, Nick. Sometimes we assume intercourse rather than. We're just sexual beings, male and female. And so starting off from just this is how we're made sexual beings in God's image and creating that narrative creates a much easier way to build on this conversation.
Totally. I think another thing too, and I just can imagine maybe someone who's in this season where it is uncomfortable for them to talk about sex, to not beat yourself up because a lot of us were not given a model of what that looks like with our parents. And so you're operating off the script that you were handed. And so keep that in mind that you can change the script and flip and flip it and make it new. But just know not to shame yourself because you feel awkward about it.
Yeah.
And a lot of parents are concerned about overexposure. They really, you don't want to. I was that parent, you know, I don't want to overexpose my kids. So I wait and wait, you know, and then we don't know what to say. Like, I'm waiting because I don't want to overexpose them and I really don't know what to say. So I think that's part of that is preparing yourself. And we're going to talk more about that today, I think, but preparing yourself.
And the flip side of that is under educate, overexposed, under educate. And I think that's where sometimes we've lacked it. Just we've under educated our kids. Someone else be theater totally.
