Protect Your Kids girl looking sad
Protect Your Kids 4 minute read

My Daughter Has Been Looking at Porn: Advice to Christian Parents

Last Updated: October 30, 2020

If there ever was a time in our culture when porn was an exclusively male habit, that time is long gone. About half of young adult women today believe viewing pornography is acceptable behavior. About one third of young women today use porn from time to time, and one in five do so habitually—at least once every week.

These stats are far from surprising when we realize that more half of young women say they were first exposed to sexually explicit material by the age of 14, right in the middle of their most hormonally formative years.

But when it is your daughter, how should a good parent react?

Broaden Your Understanding of Women

Your daughter is a sexual being. Your daughter is becoming a woman. Sexual attraction and desires are growing in her. Teaching your daughter about sexual integrity is far more than just teaching her how to ward off the advances and leering eyes of horny guys. She must learn how to steward her own sexual desires.

This is a hard pill for some parents to swallow for a couple reasons. First, young girls are entering puberty earlier and expressing themselves sexually earlier than in generations past. (The early onset of puberty can be due to many factors, including abuse, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, or even exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals in the environment.) Girls today are having more sexual message imposed on them than ever before through all sorts of media.

Second, many parents grew up in an environment where female sexuality simply wasn’t something discussed. Sex was a man’s topic. For these parents, the thought of their “little girl” subjecting herself to hardcore videos and photos sounds utterly foreign.

If this is a hurdle in your understanding, simply acknowledge it. Embrace the truth that your daughter is becoming a woman who desires sexual pleasure and intimacy.

Impress on Your Daughter the Goodness of Sex

As you begin talking to your daughter, the undertone of your conversation should be positive. The “badness” of porn can only be explained when the goodness of sex is first celebrated.

“Sexual arousal feels good, and it should.” As a parent, we should say this to our daughters who likely feel a great deal of shame and confusion about their explorations of pornography.

Tell your daughter, “Your attraction to men and to sex is good and normal. God designed you that way. The Bible even talks about this. Read the Song of Solomon, a wonderful love poem right in the middle of the Bible. In it, the woman sings about the pleasure of having sex with her husband: ‘Kiss me and kiss me again, for your love is sweeter than wine’ (Song of Solomon 1:2). God has made sexual experience very pleasurable. The desire you feel when you look at porn is part of a drive God gave you, and it is an important part of who you are.”

Impress on Your Daughter the Problems of Porn

Sex was meant to bond us to another person. The Bible uses the phrase “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24) to describe this sexual union—a union so deep that it is more than bodies coming together. Sexual desire in a woman is designed by God to move her toward this kind of unity with one man.

This is why porn is so harmful. It hijacks that desire. As you fantasize looking at pornography, you are bonding yourself not to a person, but to a two-dimensional image.

Explain to your daughter, “It is like a fire. We love sitting in a living room with a fire in the fireplace. But if we take that same fire and put it in the middle of the floor, it could burn the house down. That’s the way sexual passion is. There’s a fitting place to start that fire—in the setting of marriage—but if you stir up that passion outside of marriage, it only ends up hurting you.”

There are two ways young women can misuse this passion. The first way is the way of fantasy, masturbation, pornography, or hooking up with guys. Doing this only makes a girl a slave to her passions.

The second way a girl can misuse this passion is to ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist. In some Christian circles, this is what is taught (either implicitly or explicitly).

Every young woman needs to be taught, “You shouldn’t deny you have this passion inside you. Instead, use it to ‘build your fireplace,’ to become a woman of character, the kind of woman who will love and serve one man for the rest of her life. Whether you end up getting married or not, learn to surrender your desires to God and trust His providence.”

I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me

Lauren Dubinsky, founder of the Good Women Project, talks candidly about her regrets from watching porn as a young woman. They serve as a good reminder to all parents to do whatever they can to teach their daughters.

I wish that 10 years ago someone had educated me on pornography. What it is, what it does and what it reaches in and destroys in the hearts, minds and bodies of men and women.

I wish that someone would have told me that researchers have suggested it sabotages your sex life.

I wish someone would have explained how dopamine, the chemical that is released every time you experience pleasure, drives you to return to what provided that feeling before…

I wish someone would have told me pornography would normalize things I wasn’t emotionally or physically ready to handle in my relationships with men, making me feel like I had no options or control over my sex life, filling me with much regret and physical pain.

I wish someone would have told me I would begin to objectify men, build up images in my mind and think of sex day in and day out, to the point where I couldn’t remain focused on anything else…

I wish someone would have pointed out pornography can establish your sexuality completely apart from real-life relationships, causing huge problems in your intimacy with real significant others…

I wish someone had talked about how women watch it too, so I wouldn’t have had to spend years living under the shame that comes with being “the only one” and thinking there was something wrong with me.

Don’t let your daughter think she is the only one. Don’t leave your daughter alone in this struggle.

Photo credit: 79959635@N06

lauren dubinskyLauren Dubinsky

 

  1. Ryan Williams

    If my kids are 14 or older, I see no harm in letting them watch porn if they enjoy it, as long as it is not obsessive or that the porn they’re watching is violent or abusive. Most kids have hit puberty at that stage and understand that their sexual desires need to be relieved. And it should be relieved in a safe manner, whether it with or without porn. Porn can serve as an alternative or placeholder prior to the introduction of real sex with a human being. Most people who have watched porn can learn sexual techniques and usually make better partners than those who don’t. There is nothing bad about watching porn as long as it stays within the realm of sex and not of a violent or abusive nature.

    • I am inclined to disagree with you on two grounds. First, studies show that porn has a damaging impact on the mind even when it isn’t violent, and second, most of the top-selling pornography available today that is violent.

  2. Elizabeth Duran

    Any book suggestions for the teens that have been watching sexually explicit material and videos? Please help… I want to help my teen daughter!

    • How old is your daughter? How much have you conversed with her about sex and sexual purity in the past? How long has she been looking at this material?

      I have a few thoughts but I’d like to get more information first.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related in Protect Your Kids

Editor's Picks

Phone and a computer configured to block porn sites.

Protect Your Kids

How To Block Porn Sites

The amount of pornography available online can be disheartening. But here are…

8 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Close-up of parent holding a child's hand.

Protect Your Kids

How Churches Can Rescue This Generation From Pornography

Culture is always changing. And there are things in our culture that…

4 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Female student writing a scholarship essay.

Protect Your Kids

5 Eye-Opening Revelations From 850 Scholarship Essays

Each year, Covenant Eyes holds a scholarship contest for current members who…

4 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Silhouette of a man walking through a tunnel.

Protect Your Kids

The Sound of Freedom and the Problem of Pornography

The Covenant Eyes Podcast recently sat down with Operation Underground Railroad founder,…

2 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

A group of three young computer programmers working on laptops.

Protect Your Kids

Porn and Artificial Intelligence

When Chat GPT launched in November 2022, artificial intelligence took the world…

4 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Parents with their teenage son.

Protect Your Kids

Why Parents Must Talk About Sex

When my son was sixteen, he attended a youth group meeting during…

5 minute read

Read Post

Related in Protect Your Kids

Phone and a computer configured to block porn sites.

Protect Your Kids

How To Block Porn Sites

The amount of pornography available online can be disheartening. But here are…

The amount of pornography available online can be disheartening. But here are some practical steps you can take to block porn sites on your computer or mobile device. Porn-blocking software makes it easier to block…

8 minute read

0 comments

Close-up of parent holding a child's hand.

Protect Your Kids

How Churches Can Rescue This Generation From Pornography

Culture is always changing. And there are things in our culture that…

Culture is always changing. And there are things in our culture that take us away from Christ. Every generation tends to feel doom and gloom at the rate of change. Ours is not different in…

4 minute read

0 comments

Female student writing a scholarship essay.

Protect Your Kids

5 Eye-Opening Revelations From 850 Scholarship Essays

Each year, Covenant Eyes holds a scholarship contest for current members who…

Each year, Covenant Eyes holds a scholarship contest for current members who are enrolled as full-time students. This year, we had over 850 applicants! These amazing students answered questions about integrity using today’s technology, their…

4 minute read

0 comments

Silhouette of a man walking through a tunnel.

Protect Your Kids

The Sound of Freedom and the Problem of Pornography

The Covenant Eyes Podcast recently sat down with Operation Underground Railroad founder,…

The Covenant Eyes Podcast recently sat down with Operation Underground Railroad founder, Tim Ballard. Tim’s story has been dramatized in the new blockbuster movie, The Sound of Freedom. In our conversation with Tim, we learned…

2 minute read

0 comments

A group of three young computer programmers working on laptops.

Protect Your Kids

Porn and Artificial Intelligence

When Chat GPT launched in November 2022, artificial intelligence took the world…

When Chat GPT launched in November 2022, artificial intelligence took the world by storm. And with good reason—the wide array of AI tools now available to the public offer truly breathtaking capabilities. At Covenant Eyes,…

4 minute read

0 comments

Parents with their teenage son.

Protect Your Kids

Why Parents Must Talk About Sex

When my son was sixteen, he attended a youth group meeting during…

When my son was sixteen, he attended a youth group meeting during which the male leader spoke with the guys about pornography and enumerated the ramifications porn could have on marriages and families. He learned…

5 minute read

0 comments