How Pornography Affected My Journey as a Mom

Over the years, I’ve tried to be very honest about how my struggle with pornography has impacted different seasons of my life. It affected me while single, and then even in marriage, and now, I’ve noticed, even in motherhood.

If you’re a woman who struggles or struggled with pornography, I don’t share this to freak you out or discourage you, but just to keep things real. I share with you things that would have helped me if people had shared them with me.

I have to say I didn’t think that my years of struggle with pornography would affect my role as a mom.

It made sense to me that it would affect my marriage and how I approach sex in marriage, but parenting? No way. The two couldn’t be more unrelated.

And yet, here I am, a mom to two little girls under the age of two and I have to say, pornography has affected my motherhood in ways I didn’t anticipate.

There are two different types of effects.

On one hand is the obvious desire to protect my daughters from pornography.

Exposure to pornography is traumatic for a child.

If done intentionally, exposure to pornography is actually considered a form of child abuse. So, yes, as a mom, I am very much interested in protecting my children from pornography. As someone who was exposed to pornography at the age of 13, I have a heightened interest in doing what I can to delay their exposure as long as possible.

For parents, it’s helpful for us to remember two things:

1. It’s less an issue of if our kids will be exposed to pornography and more an issue of when.

2. It helps to view pornography like a predator instead of a bad behavior.

I wrote about this in a recent blog post for hopefulmom.net. 

As a parent, it can be very helpful to view pornography not as a bad behavior we engage in (which is often our approach with boys and men) but instead as a predator. Imagine it as the seedy character stalking the local park. It is evil, dark, and secretive, but it has tricks. It has candy and puppies and sad stories all designed to draw your children into its hold. (read the rest here)

Before our children were even born, my husband and I discussed ways to protect them online. That included things like limiting their screen time, not giving them smartphones until they are in high school and not publishing photos of them online. 

Someone once said, “Before I had kids, I had all sorts of parenting strategies. Now I have all sorts of kids and no strategies.”

Despite our best laid plans and intentions, our oldest, who isn’t yet 2 years old, loves mommy’s phone. I use it as my camera so she likes to scroll through pictures and video of herself. Heaven help me, I’ve created an “influencer.” And yes, there are days when I need a moment to be able to, let’s say, cook without risk of splashing hot oil on her unsuspecting head. In those moments, we turn on Netflix and she watches “Botty!” (Kwazee from the show Octonauts)

So no, the plans to be a screen free home where my kids don’t know how to use technology didn’t work. My child understands where all the on buttons are and is very quick to voice her opinion that mommy needs to initiate the launch sequence.

But the desire to protect my children from exposure is only one outcome of my struggle with pornography.

As a mom, my struggle with pornography has manifested more clearly in the ways I view myself.  

For years, I filled my mind with images of a “desirable woman.” And I didn’t realize it, but, for years after, I believed I needed to be her. When I became a mom, along with my daughters, I acquired stretch marks, extra pounds, wrinkly skin and thinning hair. 

None of those things are prevalent in pornography.

And I began to believe I was undesirable. It didn’t matter what my husband said, what mattered was what I saw in the mirror. I looked at my body, with the extra chunk and red squiggly lines and thought, “there is no way my husband wants this.” We spent some time with family at a lake and, in every picture of myself, my eyes were immediately drawn to what I felt was unattractive about me.

At first, it doesn’t seem like that is a motherhood issue, but it is.

I shared this on Instagram recently, but this became painfully clear to me when donning a swimsuit for the first time after the birth of our second daughter. I was three months postpartum from a 42 week pregnancy. My recovery had, yet again, been slowed by complications so I wasn’t even on the road to normal until 8 weeks postpartum. Still, somehow in my head, I believed I needed to be who I was before I got married. 

I stood in our bathroom and began picking apart my body. Out loud. 

My oldest walked in behind me. Remember, she’s not even 2 years old. She’s just at the age where she’s picking up language left and right and always repeating what we say. It’s adorable, but in that moment, as I saw her watching me, the thought of her repeating what I had said horrified me. 

I don’t want this for my daughters. 

I turned back around and thanked God for my body and prayed for the strength to give my daughters better.

See, it’s one thing to protect my girls from exposure to pornography. It’s another thing to protect them from its effects.

If all I care about is protecting them from ever finding it, I will become a controlling, overbearing, even paranoid mom. Life will be about rules and passwords and filters. None of those things are bad but they are all about controlling the behavior. I grew up in a home like this. I went to a college like this. And I can say from first-hand experience the result is shame. 

Remember, it’s less about if and more about when our children will find pornography. If we pride ourselves as parents on making sure they never do, then when they do, they won’t feel safe to come to us.

So, while delaying that exposure for as long as I possibly can is important. More important to me is raising children to be resilient to the messages of pornography and a pornographic culture.

My daughters will grow up in a culture steeped in pornography and a mindset influenced by it. They will hear messages about how their worth and identity is tied to their sexuality. They will be held to an unrealistic standard for what is desirable. That culture will try to bend, break, and tear them down. 

As a mom, it’s my job to say, “Not on my watch.” 

And I can try to do that by micromanaging every ounce of technology that comes into their lives and never talking about sex. OR, I can do that by protecting them as best as I can from unwanted exposure AND raising young women who will be able to spot the lies of pornography from a mile away. Women who are resilient and resistant to what porn (and culture) will try to tell them about sex, their bodies, their value, worth and identity.

Whether they end up seeing pornography or not, I want my daughters to hear a message loud and clear from me: they are precious, priceless, fearfully and wonderfully made. Nothing they do can ever change that- for better or for worse. And as their mom, I will do everything I can to protect them, train them, teach them, and ultimately be a safe place for them to land.