Keeping My Children Secure From the Deadly Poison of Pornography

Pornography: As a mother of five boys, it's a word I dread, and yet I've learned to use it frankly and frequently. Pornography is poison, and whenever I talk about it with my boys, I encourage them to observe our prophets' instructions to shun it.

When my first son was born, I gave housekeeping and childcare for a single mom She was bright , educated, and pretty , and while I cared for her children, a charismatic man won her heart. She consented to his question of marriage and the two of them exchanged vows. They appeared to be a flawless storybook couple. Distressingly , they disannulled the romance in less than two months. He was addicted to pornography, and from that addiction churned the disillusionment, contention, and abuse that destroyed their marriage.

Pornography contorts a person's entire paradigm, according to inspired leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its effects are demoralizing ; its influence transforms the viewer's concept of the human body. Once consumed, pornography lures its victims to hunger after it insatiably. Additionally, pornography seems to be a parent vice, its offspring unrepressed licentious behavior. Its casualties are not only those who use it, but all those who mourn those people's choices, besides. Pornography's consequences are dreadful .

When I offered childcare professionally, I had to pass repeated home inspections to insure that my childcare facility met certain safety standards. Unexpected inspectors regularly searched my premise to insure that dangerous substances were all kept in places children could not access. I'd like to put a lock on pornography access, just as I locked up my Lysol and laundry soap. Yet pornography is left hanging within easy grasp even of young children. Even if pornography is kept from them in their homes, the current ambush of pornography has infiltrated so many venues of public life, children can hardly leave home and escape it. I must guard my children from pornography by doing everything within my power to eradicate it from their reach and by teaching them what to do should exposure still penetrate my best efforts.

Certain computer software and hardware make it feasible for parents to more carefully limit their children's internet access. We locate our family's only computer in a very public, high-traffic place in our home, with the screen exposed to the family's audience to discourage web-surfing secrecy. Passwords prevent our children from accessing the internet without parental agreement and supervision. Although coming across pornography in some form or another may be unavoidable, I can at least teach my children how to respond when they do stumble upon it. Whenever I can, I communicate examples with my children from religious publications or other trusted sources building up pornography avoidance skills through the medium of true stories about real children. The children in those stories succeed in avoiding pornography mainly by having decided prior to the moment of temptation not to succumb. An analogous standard principle applies to drug and alcohol abstinence. When coerced to choose, we hope our children will have chosen already.

I hope that standing lookout now will protect my children from suffering pornography's deadly consequences later.

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