Today we have another excellent guest post from Janey.
I ran across this story in an LDS publication about pornography addiction:
I was introduced to pornography when I was around eleven years old. I loved it and I hated it from the beginning. I think I soon became an addict. I grew up in what I call a “religid” family and culture. My mom cried when she found out I drank Dr. Pepper. There was no way I could tell my parents that I was viewing pornography, though I desperately wanted help. I felt there was no one I could trust with this shameful secret.
This story showcases one of the challenges of trying to raise a righteous child. If parents are too emotionally invested in their children making righteous choices, the children learn that their parents can’t be trusted with serious problems. Let’s be real about this anecdote – this young man was sexually abused at age 11, though he doesn’t tell the story that way. Saying someone introduced him to pornography means he didn’t seek it out voluntarily [fn 1]. He kept it a secret, because his mother couldn’t even handle finding out that he drank Dr. Pepper.
A woman in Relief Society in one of my past wards frequently shared her sadness about her brother’s life choices. She always included a mention of how upset she was with her brother for hurting their mother. The subtext was that the brother was doubly a sinner – not just because of his drug use and stealing to support his habit, but because he made their Church-going mother feel like she’d failed as a mother. This sister once told me that sometimes they (the siblings) worked to keep some of their brother’s worst behavior from their mom, so as not to upset her even more.
Can we be too righteous as parents? Is our household “religid”? In our goal to teach our children to be obedient, can we shatter their trust in our ability to handle the hard stuff? On Judgment Day, I picture Heavenly Father congratulating someone on teaching his children to go to Church every week and pay tithing, and then saying, “now let’s go through the list of things your children kept from you because they didn’t trust you not to freak out.”
Parents and grandparents, watch your words. If your child (adult or a youngster) hears you casually condemning someone in trouble (“they deserved it!”), then that child may think twice about asking you for help if they’re in trouble. This goes for more than just parent-child relationships. I had a college roommate who broke up with a boyfriend after hearing him say that an assault victim “probably just didn’t fight back hard enough.” She had an assault in her past, and there was no way she was ever going to trust him with her history after he made that comment. She didn’t trust him enough to tell him the real reason she was breaking up with him either.
How do we build trust in relationships? I’ve worked on this with my children. It means I’ve had to overcome my flash temper – my first reaction has to be to sit down and listen, not snap at somebody. I also worked hard to overcome being judgmental – I say something compassionate about people in trouble rather than finding a way to blame them for creating their own problems. Another thing I’ve had to work on is my own inner strength. I can’t rely on my children to validate me. If I guilt-trip my children into being obedient, I’m manipulating them and that damages trust.
I think one of the greatest signs of parental success is when your child comes to you, having created their own problems, and asks for your help, trusting you to be compassionate and strong. This is what Heavenly Father and Jesus ask us to do over and over.
The story of the prodigal son is probably the best example of this teaching. The prodigal son definitely created his own problems, and yet when he returned, his father ran to give him a hug and welcome him home (see Luke 15:11-24).
The Church does us all a disservice when talks and teachers suggest that we can disappoint Heavenly Father, or that he feels bad when we sin. That weakens our trust in him. We’re not going to pray to somebody who’s up in heaven, shaking his head about how stupid we’ve been or crying into his hands that we’ve disappointed him. The truth is that “he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted” (Psalm 22:24). We can’t sin so badly that he abandons us. “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there” (Psalm 139:7-8).
You can’t demand trust as a parent. You have to actually be trustworthy. There’s a whole other essay I could write about people who don’t believe in God because their trust in him was broken, but the main focus of this post is on our own parent/child relationships. What does it take to be a trustworthy parent?
Questions:
- Do you trust your parents? Why or why not?
- Do you believe your children or friends trust you?
- Do you trust Heavenly Father?
Discuss.
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[fn 1] Something society in general, and the Church in particular, fails to acknowledge about child sexual abuse is that victims will commonly act out sexually as a result of the abuse. A porn addict, like this young man, may be a child sexual abuse survivor. I remember a friend in a Young Women’s Presidency who talked to me about her concerns about a sexually active Beehive. It took about three sentences before we were discussing the very real possibility that this ‘promiscuous’ 13-year-old was a sexual abuse victim.
Wheat & Tares 
Another excellent post. I love the “religid” word which I had not heard before, and which I think is a better descriptor than “too righteous” of what you are referring to. I think young parents are often somewhat more rigid than older people, just due to their own developmental stage and life experience. Some people never move past that stage.
The best advice I ever received as a parent was to “pick your battles”. This was said to me in the context of one TDM (an older friend) telling another younger TBM (me) that he and his wife had learned not to stress over the small stuff that Mormons sometimes get upset about. Of course, we all define “small stuff” differently. But I tried to remember this advice when I would get upset over minor infractions (modesty issues, skipping seminary, etc.).
As a post-TDM I am even more thankful for that advice now that I can see how absurd some of our LDS rules are. The virtue signaling, the conformity, etc. I think we can indeed be too righteous and too rigid. The key is to have standards in your family but make yourself approachable so that your kids always know it’s safe to talk. I’m not saying it was easy but when you pick your battles your kids don’t feel like every issue is nuclear war and that tends to build trust and produce better outcomes.
This is the best religious sermon I have read/heard in years. Truly. Thank you Janey.
Do you trust your parents? Why or why not? I’m just not that close to my parents. My dad passed away two years ago and since then I’ve been trying to have a relationship with my mom. But we live several states apart, she can’t travel due to health, and it’s hard for me to travel due to life. We are re-figuring out our relationship in real time. The lack of relationship isn’t due to my parents being bad. They just didn’t cultivate strong ties with their kids during our formative years, and so the model was we all moved out at 18 and never looked back.
I do trust her, but her view of the church is religid, and so I don’t tell her everything in my life or my non-binary child’s life for example. I just try to avoid talking church at all and talk about other things. If she insists in talking about some church thing, I try and just listen.
Do you believe your children or friends trust you? I’m an OCD perfectionist that criticizes myself in my head about 200 times a day. Some of this is unhealthy, and I’m working on that, but some of it is actually helpful as I have a strong inclination to a growth mindset and in learning from my mistakes and being better. I say that because I noticed a few years ago that I was criticizing others too much. One easy example was criticizing my kids when they practice the piano. I stopped doing that and let their teacher fill that role. I just thank them for the music and leave it at that. So long story short, I’m working on re-building this thanks to knowledge gained from the likes of Brene Brown, Eckhardt Tolle, etc.
Do you trust Heavenly Father? Short answer is yes. Long answer is it’s complicated.
One phenomenon I have seen occasionally, with dismay.
The father gets into a “righteousness contest” with one of his sons (it was never a daughter), competing with the boy, letting him know that his efforts do not measure up to what the father does, and what the father expects of the son.
The fathers I have seen do this think sincerely that they are setting good standards for their sons. But then the sons grow up, and often wind up telling the father (and the Church) to kiss off. Leaving the father to self-righteously mourn a son labeled as wayward.
I think the core problem is that church is a community, and it can outlast your relationships, even with your children or your spouse. It’s one reason why some find it easier to divorce a spouse who rejects the church community. The believing spouse still has a social network (or so they think) via the church. (Nevermind the fact that the church community isn’t always great with divorced or single persons whose status is often lower). Someone on Twitter was asking about whether people would leave their spouse if their spouse left the Church, and what struck me is that (we think) we marry a person, not the Church (the sealing ceremony, especially coupled with the endowment might disagree), so there’s no grounds to leave an otherwise faithful, supportive spouse in this situation.
But there are plenty of people who really did marry the Church more than they married the person who is their spouse. These are the same sorts of people who view their children as their own legacy and glory, not as individual, complex people to be understood and loved. Not all parents see their children as separate people in their own right. Not all parents can deal with adult children as adults, respecting their differing opinions, learning from them as well as seeing them as people to be molded and taught. When our relationship to the church is more important than our relationship with our actual family members, I have to think we are really just focused on social acceptance and status in the church community, not on actually caring about people.
Thank you, Janey. Well done.
I didn’t have a lot of trust in my parents growing up. Both my parents had a tendency to occasionally be emotional and reactive when something bad happened, and they did it inconsistently, so I was to afraid to seek help from them with personal problems (even small ones) for fear that this problem may be the one thing that sets off their tempers. Religiously, my parents were active members but not super-TBM, yet they were very concerned about status and placed a lot of value in how they were perceived by other members of the community. For example, they forced me to complete 4 years of early-morning seminary despite my protestations, not for my benefit but for their own bragging rights among the other parents in the ward. Any time me or my siblings did something stupid (but no more stupid than any typical teenager) the first reaction from my mom was about the potential damage it would do to our family reputation (which is strange because we were not a wealthy or high-status family by any measure). In hindsight, I think my parents were in a constant state of feeling like failures (and the Church was almost certainly a factor in this), and they unintentionally pushed that insecurity down to the next generation.
With my own kids, I feel like I have a much better, trusting relationship with them than my parents had with me. I think it has much to do with the fact that I’m parenting post-faith crisis, and have a more nuanced approach. I teach them the basics of our faith (more Jesus, less Joseph) and how to be a decent human being, but I don’t cram religion down their throats. Family Home Evening and family scripture study don’t really work for our dynamic, so I don’t even try anymore and I don’t beat myself up for not doing it. We get far more quality family time going on hikes, bike rides, working in our garden, arts & crafts, cooking meals together and just plain unprogrammed recreation/relaxation time than through force-fed spirituality. Recently, my 11-year-old told me that she doesn’t want to go to primary anymore because it’s “stupid” and “lame” and “for little kids”. I told I agree with her, and she doesn’t have to go anymore if she doesn’t want to, but when she is eligible for YW next year I ask her to give it a fair try before she decides to reject that as well (odds are she probably will, eventually, and I’m OK with that). If its a beautiful Sunday and we decide to go kayaking on the lake instead of going to church, so be it (COVID helped legitimize this practice somewhat). Members of my ward are often taken aback by this approach. Mostly, these are the same people who are slowly driving themselves insane trying to get their kids to toe the spiritual line and check all of the boxes. They struggle, and resent me because I’m “less righteous” and not struggling like they are. Ok, whatever.
Overall, the family I have now is much more happy and less dysfunctional than my family of origin.
Great topic. My kids are 4 and 7. They seem to be of a trusting age. My 4-year-old is a momma’s boy and might have a tad bit of OCD. He always wants him mom to get him out of the car or put him in the car when we’re traveling together. If I do it, he will go into a rage. So we figured that we’ll give into his demands over small things like that from time to time just to keep peace. Other than some peculiarities with the 4-year-old, I feel blessed with the kids I have. Very well-behaved, very smart, and relatively easy to parent. Those who have harder kids have my sympathy. It probably isn’t the parents’ fault, with obvious exceptions (i.e., if they’ve abused them). It is just the way their kids are. But my general parenting philosophy is to reserve my firepower for three big things. Right now it is don’t go in the street without a parent, don’t play video games without a parent to play them with you, and don’t wake mom and dad up unless you have an emergency. I stick to those three. If I use firepower for too much, it becomes ineffective. Too many rules, too, and they forget which ones are the most important.
On church and morality, my wife is raising my kids in the church. I don’t participate in teaching the kids anything about the church but I also don’t intervene or interfere in what my wife says and does. On porn, I am quite certain that both my sons will look at porn repeatedly throughout their lives. Hopefully this doesn’t start until later in their lives. But when it starts, my aim is to help guide them so that their porn-viewing 1) doesn’t become excessive and interfere with their abilities to have good sexual relations with a partner and 2) doesn’t interfere with their ability to work and progress in life and have normal relationships. The problem in Mormonism is that too many parents are overly sheltered and overreactive over minutiae. A teenage boy gets aroused by a girl in a bikini and all of a sudden he has a porn addiction, not only that, but the girl in the bikini is considered “walking pornography”. Small infractions are met with heavy shaming. It is counterproductive in the extreme. If they can’t handle small things, how can they possibly handle larger issues? In fact, many larger issues, such as rape and abuse, aren’t dealt with at all. Maddy Barney is raped while a student at BYU and because she reports it to the police, she gets kicked out by the Honor Code office. An abuser confesses to a bishop in Arizona and the bishop does nothing to hold the man accountable to the law. A respected news outlet reports how the leaders did nothing to stop the abuse and the church leaders, through the church newsroom, act like a bunch of victims, as if they couldn’t have required the bishop to notify law enforcement. And then they accuse AP News of lying. Someone is lying, alright, and it isn’t AP News.
Great post I love it. I think many in the church believe the fallacy that if you love someone unconditionally even when they make bad choices that this will encourage them to continue making bad choices, but if you show them “tough love” then it will help them to change and make better choices. That is false.
From a psychological perspective, when people feel judged/condemned/shamed, etc… the natural reaction is to feel defensive and to rationalize the behaviors (and sometimes double down on them). Even if they do change their behaviors, it doesn’t help people to change their hearts, and if often leads to people hiding their behaviors rather than changing them.
When people feel unconditional positive regard, there is no need for defensiveness and no need for rationalization. When people feel accepted for who they are, the natural reaction is to change their behaviors to match up with the ideal of their highest and best self (self-actualize). The change is more lasting because it comes from within. (See Carl Rogers person-centered therapy).
From what I understand, God and Christ always love and accept us (hold us in place of unconditional positive regard)- That’s part of the healing power of the Atonement. As I feel their love even though I’ve made mistakes, it makes me want to be better and allows me to change to become my best self.
It looks like my comment made earlier today got lost in cyberspace, so I will try to re-post. Apologies if it later appears twice.
“Can we be too righteous as parents?”
Probably not, because righteousness means being a good, just, decent human being, not a fearful obsessive checklist rule- follower who places moral value on a caffeinated soft drink. I think in these days many confuse those meanings as we hear from the pulpit in general conference that not only is obedience the first law of heaven, but that God expects exact obedience. And the church provides an ever-growing checklist. It’s easy to slip into being self-righteous parents by modeling the checklist approach and expecting the same from our children. We obsess about angering God by non-compliance to an arbitrary behavior list; we fear for our social standing among church members. We fear God will zap us for not saving our children, forgetting, or worse, denying, that we are all in our Savior’s hands, that He is the one who saves us. He just wants us to love our children by being an example of a good, just, decent human being. When we operate out of fear (often masked as anger or judgement), we weaken our trustworthiness as parents, the opposite of our goal.
I love this! Such great points!
On a related note: a couple of years ago my department at work got an award from corporate for reporting the most mistakes that year – and it was sincerely appreciated.
“this young man was sexually abused at age 11, though he doesn’t tell the story that way”
It absolutely DOES NOT mean this! How dare you impose this upon the person telling the story! Who are you to create this “category” and place him in it?
In doing this, you are no better than the persons you describe. Under this same logic, the mother is an abuser because she rejected him drinking a caffeinated beverage, and thereafter disabled his ability to communicate with her on any other subject.
There is abuse around every corner and in every stranger. Every situation that causes even the slightest but of trauma is now labeled abuse. Even the crossing signal at the intersection is abuse if you’re in a hurry.
Where does it end? He’s abusing his body according to his mother. Do you think so too?
Don’t be rediculous.
Having an adult child in drug rehab and finding out they may have been abused as a child might change your acceptance/status paradigm, I”m just saying…
AW – that is the oddest take on child sexual abuse I’ve ever heard. Yes, introducing a boy to pornography at age 11 is absolutely sexual abuse. An eleven-year-old can’t consent to having a sexual experience, so anyone who imposes a sexual experience on a child of that age has sexually abused him. One of the common after-effects of abuse is addiction, whether that’s a sexual addiction (like porn), or a drug addiction, as Chet points out. Abuse survivors frequently struggle with a variety of addictive behaviors. Addictions muffle emotions that a person can’t stand to feel. Becoming addicted to chemicals or experiences that cause such loud and strong emotions that the victim doesn’t have to feel the emotions caused by the abuse is a survival mechanism, a way of self-soothing.
The mother didn’t abuse him by crying about the Dr. Pepper. That just showed him that she couldn’t handle a serious situation, if something like a caffeinated beverage threw her for such a loop.
And yes to this: “Every situation that causes even the slightest but of trauma is now labeled abuse.” Abuse causes trauma. Yes, absolutely. I don’t see how anyone could be traumatized by waiting for a stoplight when they’re in a hurry though.
Trying to equate introducing a young boy to pornography with overreacting about Dr. Pepper and waiting for a stoplight shows how illogical you’re being. In no way are those experiences equal.
@Janey So this constitutes an understanding of what the definition of abuse is and what the definition of pornigraphy is. You definitively stated that the boy experienced sexual abuse based on an assumption of the situation, as stated by the author. You can’t make that assumption any more than the author could. The author assumed ALOT. Since the young man didn’t disclose any further information, it ends there. You can’t assume anything more. The definition of abuse requires a lot of supporting evidence. He didn’t provide it, therefore you can’t assume it. No court of law would accept that charge from his statement.
He says he became addicted. That’s fine. But an addiction can come from the slightest and smallest introduction of something. It only takes one hit if meth. It may take months or years of cigarettes. It may take a lifetime of alcohol. And in the end addiction may not happen at all.
So, then, abuse is in the eye of the beholder. Was he abused if he was shown pornography if he DIDN’T become addicted? Would he have considered it abuse if it had no affect on him? If he walked away and said that he was fine, would you still cry abuse? Probably. That’s fine for you.
You can go cry abuse at whatever you want. I used the example of his mother decrying his consumption of a caffeinated beverage. Oh so very many people say that doing so is abusing your body. There’s abuse again. Or is it really. Eye of the beholder once again. If you want to make a legal case out of it, you have quite a job ahead of you.
Ironically, many of our laws come from just that. I dare say that the WoW even came from that. JS in response to ES and her dislike of spitoons in the meeting houses, moved in that exact same line of thinking. “I don’t like it so you shouldn’t do it. And you shouldn’t do it because it’s bad for you. And because it’s bad for you it’s abusive.”
COULD it have been abuse? Yes, it could have. Was it? Probably not. Can you make a legal case out if it? No way.
You stated that a “common side affect of abuse is addiction” means nothing to say that he was abused. You are making even more gross assumptions than the author did. Everyone can struggle with a variety of addictive behaviors. And sufferers of abuse can struggle with none. You escalate the (likely non-existent)abuse even more with this statement…
“Abuse survivors frequently struggle with a variety of addictive behaviors. Addictions muffle emotions that a person can’t stand to feel. Becoming addicted to chemicals or experiences that cause such loud and strong emotions that the victim doesn’t have to feel the emotions caused by the abuse is a survival mechanism, a way of self-soothing.”
That’s way out of left field and means nothing regarding what this Young man has said. Let’s reinsert here :
[Pornography] survivors frequently struggle with a variety of addictive behaviors ( ie Pornography). Addictions (Pornography) muffle emotions that a person can’t stand to feel. Becoming addicted to [Pornography] that cause such loud and strong emotions that the victim doesn’t have to feel the emotions caused by the [Pornography] is a survival mechanism, a way of self-soothing.
It is absurd to claim addiction by abuse when the claimed abuse was the addiction. Chet’s example was stemming from other actual, real abuse. ( Can I make the same broad aggregious assumption that you did here? Sure I can.) The drug addiction wasn’t the abuse. The abuse was something else. The addiction was in response to the abuse, as you claimed.
But you can’t say the same thing about this young man being introduced to “bare shoulders” in some beer commercial. Was it a beer commercial? Was it a rap music video? Was it a pop up add on some wayward website? Was it conversation overheard by him of his friends? Was it the birds and bees lecture in school? Was it the National Geographic Magazine? Was it the talk in church on the requirements for women to be modest so as not to “entice” the brethren?
What was it? Then and only then can the discussion of abuse even start. But YOU just throw it out there as though it is blatant and grossly obvious.
It wasn’t. And it isn’t.
I remember watching an interview with Chris Evans a few years ago. The interview drifted into how he was brought up by a single mom and his relationship with his mom. He related the experience of seeing a nudie magazine at his friends house, and telling his mom about it the next day. His mom asked what he thought about it, and he responded, “Well… I liked it.” Then he talked about how his mom had a good talk with him about it. I remember seeing that and thinking about how if that had happened to me, I don’t think that I could have told my parents about it, and also how should that happen with my kids, I want it to be a positive outcome. I shared the interview with my spouse, who also wanted the same outcome.
Thanks for that story jader3d. Being able to talk to your parents is definitely the ideal situation.
AW – I’m at a loss to understand why you’re so emotional and upset. Yes, I made some assumptions from the story that I quoted which I think are logical. No, of course I can’t prove abuse occurred in a court of law. W&T is not a court of law. I was involved in the porn addiction recovery efforts the Church ran for several years, and many of the “how I got started in porn” stories involved being sexually abused.
The purpose of the post is to talk about what sort of parental behavior builds trust so that a child can talk about sensitive topics.
An 11-y-o boy can be “introduced to pornography” without any other person acting as an abuser. Sadly, it is so easy.
Janey- you wanted an emotional response. Or you wouldn’t have said what you said. Words have meaning, a frustrated Army Colonel once told me, so you better know what you are saying and mean it.
The church wants us to believe that all Pornography consumption is an addiction and they only address it as such. They don’t want to recognize the why behind it at all. It’s just a sin and an addiction and evil. It’s so easy when it’s just black and white like that. It’s a clear enemy. Take it down. Not the reason. Not the why. Not the let’s understand where this is actually coming from.
Humans are sexual beings from birth. It is a biological fact. Children are sexual and society needs adults to guide them in all aspects of their sexual development. When it goes wrong, abuse can happen. Exposure to Pornography can have negative effects or positive effects(heaven forbid!!!!) or no effect. It depends on the person and the situation. You implied the worst possible scenario (abuse) without any cause or justification. But you DID want an emotional response from the reader. (It’s how we get our point across as writers. Get them emotional and you get them involved.) So, you succeeded. And now you wonder why?
The allegation of abuse is absolutely serious. There is no lightly applying it to a situation. Even here on W&T. Which actually is a court of public opinion… OR WHY WOULD THEY EVEN HAVE A COMMENT SECTION. So yeah, what you are saying is on trial.
The purpose of this article is to discuss trustworthiness of a parent to a child. Well, this turns out to be a perfect example of it. Are you a trustworthy parent, Janey, if you are going to cry abuse when your son says to you that he has a porn addiction? If you tell your son, “let’s be real about this, son, you were sexually abused.” (From the quote,”Let’s be real about this anecdote – this young man was sexually abused at age 11, though he doesn’t tell the story that way.”)
Now, your son just thought he had a Pornography addiction and now you are telling him he was also abused by it? How does this parent-child conversation unfold? Are you telling him the truth? Was Chris Evans’ mother telling him the truth when she DIDN’T tell him that he was abused by the Pornography?
So, “let’s be real about this anecdote…” wasn’t actually being real. It was being a “assumption” (your words). An assumption that would garner an emotional response. Which worked. Because that’s how abuse accusations work. I was abused alot as a child (now I’M trying to get y’all emotional) and I would absolutely not want anything I claimed, to be anything more or less than exactly what happened. Because it MATTERS what happened. And the words used to spell it out MUST be precise and true. If someone came up to me and said that I was abused when I wasn’t, I’d most certainly correct them if they are wrong.
So your claim of abuse without just cause is just as much of a roadblock to parent-child relationships and communication, as this poor young man’s mother flipping out because he drinks the best beverage on the planet.
What more do you want, Janey? You can analyze your communication with ANYONE in the same terms as a parent and child. Are you listening? Are you open? Are you judgmental with or without cause? Do know know what the child is saying? Are you responding to what they are ACTUALLY SAYING? Or are you hearing what you want to hear and drawing your own conclusions?
When I find out someone isn’t listening to what I am saying, I stop talking (except for these comments, to which someone is listening). This young, Dr. Pepper swilling (God bless him) young man realized that his mother wasn’t going to listen and was going to react poorly or (I’m sure he realized quickly) inappropriately to what was being said, and he decided to stop talking.
Why are you pleading confusion here? It’s pretty plain from where I’m standing. You loaded the story by what you said. I’m reacting, as expected, to the charge.
AW – you’re welcome to disagree with me, but I’m still taken aback by your fury. I’m not going to try and engage in a discussion with you and you’re welcome to not read anything I post if it raises your blood pressure so much. I posted my opinion, you posted yours. We’re not going to meet in the middle.
Janey- if you can’t understand me from what I have said, then I am at a further loss of words.