I got this video from Patrick Madrid’s new blog and as a father of four girls this kind of thing has been worrying me lately. I detailed in another post (My Porn-tastic Christmas) about my trip to the mall with my children and how each of the windows had ten foot posters featuring sex. So I’m warning you that this video has some suggestive pictures in it but I think it clarifies the point rather well.
January 6, 2009 at 7:55 pm
I work as a chaplain to a co-ed second level (12-18) school here in Ireland. Long before the girls, and the boys, get to us the damage is done. Bulimia and Anorexia are just the extreme symptoms. I know of students that are already saving up for breast implants or who spend large sums of cast on cosmetics – some come to school done up like models. Their self-esteem is built on their looks,on what they have, who they hang out with. No wonder drugs are rife and this school is one of the better ones. As long as we let big business ‘pay’ our politicians big business will never have to pay for its crimes. The film ‘the Corporation’ is a must see.
January 6, 2009 at 10:40 pm
As a father of a VERY beautiful daughter (she’s 9 months now) I do worry about the effects of body-image. But I sincerely feel that as long as we parents make sure our children (this includes my son) have a good self-esteem and know what makes US as parents happy (as opposed to their peers) then we’ll win this battle.
But on the “porn” front, I didn’t see anything in that video (or posters) that you wouldn’t find out on an innocent day at the beach. I remain unconvinced there.
January 6, 2009 at 11:00 pm
I guess I’m hyper-sensitive to this now because my daughter is an anorexic. After 14 years of homeschooling, we let her go to the local public school part time, and she was roadkill. She was pretty, so the girls hated her, and the boys slobbered over her. At 16 1/2, she only cares now about her weight and looks. And we thought we HAD taught her right. (I was a chastity educator, for Pete’s sake!) Hate to be a pessimist here, but I’m not sure if there is anything guaranteed to keep a daughter from falling for the traps the world sets.
January 6, 2009 at 11:57 pm
We have four beautiful daughters. We homeschool and drastically limit their access to television and the internet. What really chafes us is that when we leave the house we have absolutely no control over the images our daughters (and two sons) see on billboards, in store windows, or on the covers of magazines. I’d like to know where the “choice” is in that!
On a related note: We are being subjected here in the DC area with the most salacious and disgusting ads on the Metro buses. Backs of buses query “Got Syphilis/Aids/Herpes?” along with a graphic of two pairs of apparently discarded underwear. The sides are sporting a large ad featuring two, partially clad, homosexual males in an embrace with a slogan encouraging “couples” to get tested together if they really love each other.
Why, might I ask, are our children being subjected to this garbage. It is all very discouraging. Our only hope is the prayer we pray after Mass, begging God’s protection of our children’s innocence.
Anyhoo, I’ll get off my soapbox now.
January 7, 2009 at 12:15 am
Federoff, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope that the enduring truth you and your wife have taught her will help. Maybe she can get to one of the Dove Self-Esteem days or something.
Dove isn’t a perfect company, but I have so much respect for them for choosing to not have any ads that show whole bodies, for featuring women who could be considered overweight. When I can, I try to support them by buying their products. It’s a tough fight, but it’s not a foregone conclusion yet.
~Nzie
January 7, 2009 at 12:38 am
Mau, sin exists. There is no two ways about it. You cannot hide your children from sin. What you CAN do is explain it to them and provide a good example and hopefully, the right information to allow them to make their own decisions when they are old enough. So, seeing ads of homosexuals embracing or underwear on the floor is just a fact. And we have to explain how we don’t want that to happen to our children.
I don’t know how old your children are, but to me that would have been a golden moment to say, “you know what syphillis is, right? No? It’s a very contageous disease that people can get when they have innappropriate contact with each other outside of marriage. Even kissing someone on the mouth has its risks. I want you to be very aware and prepared, so be sure to ask me anything if you don’t understand.”
January 7, 2009 at 2:22 am
Deusdonat;
Our children range in age between 2 and 16 and I do not feel I am trying to “hide” my children from sin. In fact, they are all (with the exception of the two year old) very aware of sin and could give a fairly impressive explanation of our fallen nature. I am trying to protect their innocence. That is my God given right and responsibility as their mother. Thankfully, my children are innocent and so they DO NOT know what syphilis is and as we are able to control what they are exposed to, to a certain extent. I don’t feel I need to discuss the ins and outs of STDs with them yet. All in due time. Our oldest is aware of sexual sin, including homosexuality, and we have had several conversations about why we feel it is important to protect her and her siblings from immorality, but that does not mean she should be inundated with images of it. What is wrong with protecting the innocence of children?
January 7, 2009 at 5:20 am
Deusdonat,
As a matter of fact, you can hide your children from sin and scandal for quite a long time, time enough to form them up as strong young Catholics. You can keep the television out. You can keep the Sunday paper out. You can bring the lives of the saints in. You can bring the catechism in. You can bring good literature in. You can fill your home with wonderful stories and music and song
As a Catholic father, you have NO obligation to expose them to temptations to mortal sin or to the ways of the world.
The idea that you can explain modern culture to them is something that probably causes knee slapping hilarity in Hell. You live and move in a world filled with snares and plots and stratagems of which you have very little idea.
Even your explanation would be a snare.
Fathers were created for the express purpose of protecting their children. They have a moral obligation to keep them from scandal, and NO obligation whatever to explain it to them.
You can bring them up practically to their teens without exposing them to grave scandal. You can form up their character, intellect and imagination along strong Catholic lines so that when a whiff of evil comes their way, they know it, and know what to do about it.
We raised a daughter in the eighties and nineties, years not known for their chastity and holiness, and packed her off to Europe when she was 18 for her Rome Semester, where on breaks she travelled with a few friends all over Europe. There was plenty of scandal all round, of course, but on our part little to fear.
All of this, ALL of it, was the grace of God who dealt with me sharply as a young father to keep my home clean of scandal.
And now He has the Carmelite he evidently wanted.
“Nothing impure in the home,” said Pius XII, quoting the pagan poet Juvenal.
And now a pet peeve- parents who complain about the culture on their way to Target to buy an even larger entertainment center.
In other words, Catholic parents are the main vector of scandal into the minds and hearts of their own children. And they will answer for it.
January 7, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Lee Gilbert, you ROCK!
The FatMan
January 7, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Our oldest daughter is 4. It’s constant work shielding her from all this garbage. She knows who Hannah Montana is from her friends at PreK, but she’s never seen an episode. She begged for Barbie dolls for Christmas–she got paper dolls and a Baby Alive. We talk alot about “pretty is as pretty does.” She likes princesses and fairies. Innocent enough for now. What the world has to offer is scary. Right now–she only wants to grow up, get married, and have 6 babies. God, please, protect her.
January 7, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Lee, it sounds like you have done a great job at raising your daughter and you should be commended for that. However, to insinuate that I am/would be sending my children on a road to hell for the way I choose to bring them up, which happens to differ from yours is morally repugnant, cowardly, uncharitable and not at all Christian. In short, if your children have turned out at all like you, then I personally don’t think you’d have anything to be proud of.
MAU, there is protecting innocence and then there is shielding them from reality. I am absolutely not advocating telling a 2-year-old about the intricacies of sexuality. You mentioned the poster about Syphillis, so I was assuming they knew how to read. And should they ask “what does ‘god syphillis’ mean, Mom?” Then depending on their age, I would have given the simple explanation I gave earlier.
I am also an advocate for shieldingg agaisnt popular culture to the extent that we avoid certain places where there is a lot of drinking/partying, TV, movie and music programs that show this type of behaviour, anything that is sexually explicit obviously as well as anything that gives off an anti-Catholic message. But at the same time, I don’t cover their eyes with my hands as I’m walking through a mall.
To each his own, I suppose. But let’s be carefull of condemning anyone to hell just because we have different parenting styles. Let’s let the results speak for themselves.
January 7, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I am not in a position to condemn anyone.
I just want to comment that boys and young man are also harmed by the messages of popular culture about sex. Sometimes directly, by drawing them into the attitude of using girls/women. And sometimes indirectly, when the girls they love and want to be faithful to, have been taught that they should have a wide variety of partners and sexual experiences before they settle down. At least three of my five sons have been hurt by women in this way. The women eventually suffer, because by the time they are 30 and decide they want to marry, the med are jaded and wary.
Susan Peterson
January 7, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Deusodant,
Thank goodness I don’t use my children’s ability to read as the mark by which I measure whether I should be teaching them about syphilis! I’m sure my 6 year old daughter, 9 year old daughter, and 12 year old daughter can do without that information for a few more years.
The point I wanted to make in my original post was that despite our calling to protect our children from the harmful nature of early sexualization, we are thwarted in our efforts by the world in which we live. I think I am justified in feeling frustrated, indignant and angry when our choices/parenting style are not respected, but trampled upon.
Thankfully we believe our children remain under the protective mantle of Our Lady and in her Son is our Hope.
Treasure the innocence of your little girl. She is a gift beyond all measure. I mean that in all sincerity and with the best of intentions. Many blessings!
January 7, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Mau, I understand and respect your decisions. We have also entrusted our children to God and his servants (for which both children have been named). And once again, I think you really did miss my point. I am not saying that if your children are old enough to pronounce the word syphillis that you should teach them about it. YOU said you took them on a subway and were worried about the particular ad. I countered saying if they DID notice and see it and ASKED YOU about it, then it could have been an easy and contextually innocuous way to explain it.
I absolutely treasure the innocence of my li’l tyke-ette. But as we have learned with our son, innocence should not equal ignorance. So, we don’t pretend or lie to them either. If they ask, we explain to him what it is appropriate for him to know at his age, stressing the positives and negatives while always giving him role models to work from (not always us, unfortunately, but we’re working on it).
January 8, 2009 at 2:36 am
Deusdonat,
Perhaps you took my letter too personally and I feel especially bad that you think it was uncharitable.
In listing my attributes, somehow you missed “extreme,” “judgemental,” and “rigid” which in my view are highly desirable qualities in a Catholic parent. Not really, but if those adjectives are not coming at him on a regular basis he’s a human marshmallow.
So I take even your note as a kind of lefthanded compliment. These words are like buoys marking the channel, the narrow way.
As a matter of fact, a good bit of my motivation for our program was precisely to produce children very unlike myself, so I am sure that you will be sending even more fulsome congratulations my way on the news that in this I succeeded admirably. They are nothing like me, thanks be to God!
As far as “success” goes, though, having a wife who prayed a rosary a day for each of us, and who acceded to my requests to keep the “world” and all its allurements out of our home, was simply indispensable to any kind of “success”
And for my part, a good bit of my motivation derived from a very heartfelt desire to avoid the judgements of God- of which my sins had brought me several belliesfull in my earlier life. So it was- and is- ALL grace.
However, I did not mean to insinuate anything. I thought and think it is the most friendly and charitable thing in the world to flatly state to every Catholic father that if you will (not wish) your daughters to be chaste, holy and Catholic, the world, the flesh and the devil pose little threat.
For if you energetically oppose their entrance into your own home, the grace of God will come to your aid and theirs when they are not under your physical protection. If you do ALL, He will do ALL. If not, not.
Do not be like that father who after raising his daughters on several hours of televsion a night saw them leave the Church and a chaste way of life and then exclaimed, “We did everything we could!” They did go to Sunday Mass, they did go to Catholic schools, but…
In other words, the greatest threats to your daughters’ chastity, holiness and fidelity to the Catholic faith derive from any weaknesses, worldliness or foolishness in yourself.
In other words, dad, you are the main threat to your own happiness and theirs.
To this problem the Church offers many remedies in her sacraments and teaching, and especially in the example of her saints.
If you are not aiming at great sanctity yourself, how will have the wisdom to recognize threats to your daughters’ holiness’ or the innner strength to combat them?
In other words, the problem is not in “the culture,” in television or movie producers, in advertisers or the fashion industry. It is in ourselves- ourselves only.
January 9, 2009 at 1:47 am
Boys are also affected by all this because it tends to teach them to objectify girls / women instead of love them in purity of heart.
January 9, 2009 at 5:02 am
Lee, for you to say “The idea that you can explain modern culture to them is something that probably causes knee slapping hilarity in Hell” was not only uncharitable, it was immoral. ONce again, to insinuate that my parenting skills in explaining “modern culture” would cause either myself or my children to go to hell is actually blasphemous. Do you have the power to send anyone to hell? I thought that was the sole perrogative our Our Lord and Saviour on the day of judgement. If you feel He shoulder tapped you for this job, I’m afraid you are dilluding yourself.
And to say “You live and move in a world filled with snares and plots and stratagems of which you have very little idea” is also a grave sin of bearing false witness, since a) you do not know me and b) you have no idea of what I know or do not know regarding the “snares and plots” of this world and how I struggle every day to keep my family safe from them.
It sounds to me like you are suffering from the sin of pride, the sin of bearing false witness. That’s not me being “judgemental”, that is me practicing discernment as a parent. Once again, if your children came out great, then kudos to you. And if you have any advice then as a father I am glad to hear it. But if you are going to get on a soap box and pretend to have some special knowledge of what and how people are sent to hell, then you may find that all the rosaries your wife says for your are for naught, as your own deadly sins may get the best of you.