AS169: Parenting as an Atheist: Sex and Porn Edition

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:04 Clip: You're listening to Atheistically Speaking.

0:00:32 Thomas: Joining me currently is Parent Panel Volume 2, and after a long, lengthy battle with technology, we are here, we're going to see how this works, and most likely this will never see the light of day because my computer will explode, killing me instantly, but if that somehow doesn't happen, I am joined by Gerald, I'm joined by Allison, I joined by Angie, and we're here to talk about the morality of parenting when you're an atheist. See, the way that I was thinking about it that I thought was kind of interesting was when you're religious, you get such an easy answer to everything. You know, you can just kind of say, oh, no, just never think or talk about sex, never have sex, ever do anything relating to sex. It sounds easy.

0:01:17 Thomas: You can just take a hard-line stance on it. But when you are an atheist, you have to have a little more nuance in there. So, with that in mind, let's go ahead and introduce you. So, let us start. Allison, how are you doing?

0:01:30 Panel: I'm doing good. Thank you. You

0:01:32 Thomas: You Know, what would maybe be a good idea that I should have thought of earlier is how about you say a little bit about yourself and we'll kind of go through the group and cover everybody.

0:01:43 Panel: Sure. I'm married. I have two boys and they are 13 and 14 and we live in Texas.

0:01:50 Thomas: All right. Yeah, as someone commented off mic, off air rather, we have a very diverse group of all people in the central time zone besides me. So that'll be fun. So then how about you, Angie? Why don't you say little bit about yourself?

0:02:06 Panel: Um, I am also married. I also have a boy, but just one. Um, he's 11. Um, and I also live in Texas, or soon to live in Texas. Like, two days, I'm moving.

0:02:20 Thomas: Well, now that you've heard how cool it is, because everybody else is there.

0:02:24 Panel: All the cool kids are doing it. Yeah, peer pressure, man. Totally.

0:02:28 Thomas: All right. So, and then I'm ending with Gerald because I think I'm going to make Gerald speak first. How are you doing, Gerald? Say a little bit about yourself. Oh, well, you've been on the show, but yeah, update.

0:02:37 Panel: Yeah. Yes, so I was on the Ex-Mormon Podcast, if you've heard that. That was from March. Um, so yeah, I have one son, he's eight, and a dog and a cat, and I'm married in Texas and

0:02:48 Thomas: And we're going to talk about the morality of raising that dog and that cat as an atheist and how that's going to work with... No. So I thought I'd go ahead and let Gerald start with maybe a little story about what kind of spawned this, because he was actually the one who contacted me and said, hey, we should do another parent panel. And here's some issues that I've had. And I thought, wow, that's a great topic. So why don't you go ahead and take it away, Gerald?

0:03:13 Panel: So the story that spawned the idea was, um, my son, he's eight, like I said, and he has his own phone, smartphone, that we used to stay in contact and play games on with each other and all that. And it's just more simple for me to have him using my same login ID and everything like that, so we have some overlap between different apps where, um, you know, I'll see stuff like his YouTube history. Um, and it was interesting to see these, uh, clips of, of cartoons, slightly, almost risque things, develop into cartoons, slightly almost pornography, develop, develop into, one day he watched the video called "All I Needed to Learn About Sex I Learned on Pornhub.com." And, oh shit, that was it. So, uh, the next, the next time he had me, uh, update something or put in my password on his phone, I, uh, just looked at the internet browser real quick and, oh, Pornhube.com, there it is. And I didn't exactly know what to do so um yeah that was the idea that started this panel.

0:04:15 Thomas: Well, and it seems to me that eight is pretty damn early for that, right?

0:04:20 Panel: Oh, yeah, I would say. Yes. It's a little early.

0:04:25 Thomas: You've got a precocious child on your hands.

0:04:29 Panel: He's an overachiever.

0:04:30 Thomas: Is it like when I know every parent or so many parents when they have, you know, toddler age, they're always like, yeah, my kid did, you know, knows all the shapes at seven months, but the average is like 9.2 months. And they always have like the exact average of when every kid is supposed to know something. And They're always proud of like, oh, my kid was like three months ahead on this. This would be one that I'd recommend maybe you don't brag about like per se.

0:04:32 Panel: Is or age like Don't share that per se. Yeah.

0:05:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's impressive to me, but I don't know that everyone, you know, will have my same reaction to it.

0:05:10 Panel: It's The average age is 11 for first, uh, seeing porn.

0:05:10 Thomas: Wow. And that must be a graph that's very active, I would guess. That's probably a graph that's rapidly just tanking downward. Because back in the 1800s or something, you know, how old did you have to be before you saw your first cartoon porn that someone decided to draw on some parchment? But now it's got to be getting younger and younger.

0:05:38 Panel: Oh, well, it's all there. There's... there's no way to stop it, you know? Um, there's so many parental family friendly doesn't let you on this side or that side kind of things, but but there's really no way to to stop. The only thing you can do is try and squeeze the balloon, but it's just gonna pop out somewhere else.

0:05:56 Thomas: That's a disturbing analogy, but I think it probably is accurate.

0:06:00 Panel: I was kind of wondering where you were going with it at first. It was kind of, yeah, I was iffy on that.

0:06:06 Thomas: So, Gerald, where does that issue sit now for you? Did you find any resolution to it? Are you waiting for the results of our prestigious panel? What happened?

0:06:17 Panel: I would never base my parenting on you people.

0:06:20 Thomas: Okay, good.

0:06:22 Panel: That was probably the beginning of this summer, and I talked with my wife about it. She said, you're Paul, you do it. And so I just didn't know what to do. And I was waiting for the moment where I felt like I had my thoughts gathered and I would just speak as a father speaks to a son. So I was actually driving him to his summer daycare a couple weeks ago. And just looking at him through the rear view mirror, I decided to say, hey, so just so so you know, know the kind of videos you've been looking at on your phone. You're not in trouble. I just wanted you to understand that I know about it. And there isn't anything with doing that in private. There's nothing unusual about it, and I was just totally improvising. I had no idea where I was going with this.

0:07:08 Panel: But the next thing I said was, you know, there is something something that is unusual, though. It's not normal that an eight-year-old boy would have access to all of the information that's out there on the internet. It is normal to be curious about it, though. So I told him that, you know, when I was eight years old, there was no internet. And our mutual friend, who's 10 years younger than me, I said, when he was eight-years-old, there wasn't internet, but there wasn' t anything like it, like pornography on the internet at that time. Um, and so I just want you to know that I don't exactly know what to say to you, but I just Want you to Know that you can ask me any questions, or talk to me about anything that you want to. And you're not in trouble, by the way, again.

0:07:54 Panel: And that was the whole that was whole thing. He just sat in the back and uh huh. Uh huh. And that was it. So we haven't rediscussed it since.

0:08:02 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Did he, I mean, are you still trying to keep track of it, keep an eye on it? Has anything come up?

0:08:09 Panel: Well, for context, I'm probably going to get into TMI, too much information, right now, but I remember my parents moved a lot when I was a kid. So I know exactly how old I was because of which house we lived in. So when I was eight years old, I remember I was in, you know, in third grade and a writing assignment that me and some friends were given in our class. You know, we got to go in our little corner and write a story. We finished our story early so we decided to write a, you know, a naughty story that we obviously didn't turn in, and I don't know how or if I only learned it then, but I know that our story included actual intercourse, um, which was, you know, graphic and there was sperm, even though we probably didn't know a lot about what that was, but that was me in rural Utah, super Mormon, super Mormon, um, you, you know, being a naughty little kid and in the same age in the 1980s.

0:09:03 Panel: So I don't feel like the knowledge is dangerous. I don'T feel like knowledge generally is dangerous, but the question I'm still sort of wondering is, you know what are the limits of personal autonomy and privacy? Where does it come to the point where too much knowledge too quick is damaging, not not necessarily soul or some shit like that, but rather it could damage his impression of what sexual activity is and what sexual expectations one should have when one reaches the age, regardless of what age that actually is.

0:09:42 Thomas: Yeah, well, and you use the term knowledge, which I think is a good, you know, no-value judgment-based way of looking at it, but at the same time, could you look at it as, I mean, sure, there could be knowledge of some sort of drug or alcohol or, you know, addictive substance. You could have knowledge of it but it might be a different thing to be binging on it, You know, so it's not necessarily just information. There could also be, and I'm just adding this as a concern, not as a, you know, like that could be one element that as a parent, I would be concerned about, like, is too much of something, too much access to something. Okay, maybe you take the stance like, I don't mind that, you Know, my child knows about this or, you Now, has seen such and such, but too much unlimited access to it. That could be a different story too, I Would think.

0:10:31 Panel: Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, when the little spiel that I ad lib to him that, you, it's not unusual but it is unprecedented in the history of humanity that an eight-year-old has had access to unfettered kinds of porn and and whatnot. Um, but, uh, you know, when you think back on all of human history, like, like the last 100,000 years of human history, animal sex was an observable part of of life. Human sex must have been as well, you know, living in single room dwellings, it had to have been a part of normal life. Now that doesn't mean necessarily that that's directly analogous to sitting in your room under the covers with an iPhone and porn all day long. Uh, that's that's very different, but, um, yeah, I don't, I don't really know. I guess the concern is what unintended, well, unanticipated outcomes would be from, like you said, overindulgence or a young obsession with pornography.

0:11:27 Panel: Think for me, I know my upbringing, you know, I grew up in a very, very religious home and you, sex was not talked about. Sex was not discussed other than then just don't do it. We never had any conversations about the actual mechanics or safety or anything. And it was such a repressed thing. And the access to information was so so limited. And way that it was presented, like the actual act was put so high on this pedestal and it made it such a big deal that like, I almost feel like, you know, because the access to information and stuff was our attempt to limit my access to information.

0:12:22 Panel: I mean, you know, I was a kid and I went to a public high school, like we got information about sex, But, you know, I mean, it like almost swung in the other direction, like because it was such a taboo, it just intensely focused you on this thing that nobody wanted to talk about, except under, you know, secrecy and like in hushed whispers and things like that. And, you know, I almost feel like it takes to have the exposure and the access and to just see it frequently and for it to, you know, I'm actually like really, I mean, I know you don't need my approval on how you parent Gerald, but like, I mean, I really was pleased with the way you handled it because, you know, you took all of the, um specialness out of like, Do you testify?

0:13:11 Panel: Yeah. And because it's like, and again, I guess I'm going to go into TMI now, but like, I mean, the way that I was brought up to think about sex, like it was such this important part of your life, an important part part of who you were, and I was sexually assaulted when I was 14, and because of it was like a two-part thing. Number one, I was afraid to tell anyone because I thought that everyone else would look at me differently because, you know, I was no longer pure, and then, you know, on the flip side, like, I, I viewed myself as no longer pure, whatever the hell that means.

0:13:58 Panel: It and was like, because just the simple, like a simple physical act was made out to be this thing that was so much more important than it is. I mean, it's like, we don't treat eating like it is this special, you know, thing that you've got to wait for the right time, you know, and the right meal and all this, you know, we don't treat going to the bathroom and like it's this mysterious and mystical, you know, what I'm saying, like none of our other like biological imperatives are treated in the same way, and it's so weird to me. And so I think like the more access that you have to it and the more you see it and the more you realize that it's it's just bodies and it's just people and it's just it's a biological imperative and it's an about it, you know, it feels good, it's fun, and if you do it safely, it's good time for everybody involved, but it's nothing like spiritual and and, you know, you know, I, I don't know if I'm Making, I

0:15:05 Thomas: I totally know, and I feel so much sympathy, although maybe sympathy is not the right word, but I feel really bad for hardcore Christians I know, or I guess Mormons or whatever, people who are super religious who save themselves for marriage, and then that is their first sexual encounter, really. That just seems awful to me, but I don't know. Maybe it, who knows, maybe they can...

0:15:29 Panel: It was, it wasn't, it wasn't that bad. But I actually

0:15:31 Thomas: Actually, you know, it's sort of sexist of me. I think it would be worse for the girl, but anyway, that's a different discussion.

0:15:39 Panel: The Girl, but I don't, but anyway, well I Think that It's not necessarily sexist to to think that because because the impetus to do so is imbalanced regarding gender. The pressure for the female, you know, and I'm sure that the other female panelists, formerly religious, might have gotten the same sort of Sunday sermons that the Mormons get. Where the women and the girls are told, don't be that chewed up piece of gum for your husband on the wedding night. He wants to chew on chewed-up gum. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, as, as the, you know, they, they didn't tell us that boys, they said, just don't be naughty.

0:15:55 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:16:21 Thomas: All right, get out there, guys. Go do your worst. No, yeah, and it's really interesting. I think of everything in terms of evolution, and maybe I'm doing some armchair evolutionary psychology or something, but I do think that on the whole, even if someone like me who likes to think of things in terms OF the possible evolutionary or biological reason for everything. Even if I'm wrong once in a while, I think that's a better method than, say, a religious one where you're trying to grasp, okay, what does God want us to do with sex? And what is, you know, why do I feel this way? Like, why would God make me feel thisway? You know, so I bring it up because when you mentioned the, we don't act this way about eating or going to the bathroom or any other biological imperatives, Ithink that's definitely a comparison worth thinking about.

0:17:12 Thomas: And maybe that's That's an enlightened way to look at sex, but at the same time, there's such a bigger cost for sex, and I think throughout evolutionary history, that would likely be the reason it's set apart from all the other things for us, because for women especially, there is a huge cost to sex, back dating and the periods when we maybe didn't have birth control and maybe didn't all the technology we have now, and most women died in childbirth even. In. I mean, there's a huge biological cost to having sex. So I think that's why our intuitions and our instincts tell us to treat it a different way than most other things. But that doesn't mean that we have to hold to that.

0:17:57 Thomas: There's a ton of evolutionary intuitions that we have that we likely don't want to listen to because they would be awful. So

0:18:05 Panel: Yeah. Well, Gerald, I think you did the right thing, especially by being open and even just willing to bring it up is courageous, really. And a lot of parents do not have that courage. We had something similar happen with my older son, I was up in the middle of the night looking at my Netflix account, and it was just movie, sex movie, sex movie, which is, it's not the porniest of the porn out there, but it was disturbing to see that my 12 year old had been looking at that. 12 is a little more now.

0:18:35 Thomas: Now, 12 is a little more... Now,

0:18:38 Panel: That's a little more makes makes sense It really is, but the other part was I didn't have my Netflix account broken out into different accounts, so I honestly couldn't, um, tell who, who had been looking at it. My husband was out of town on a trip and just three in the morning. And I was sitting here thinking maybe my husband was looking at it. And then I thought, is this my life now? But I'm hoping my husband.

0:18:38 Thomas: That's a little more makes sense to me.

0:19:05 Panel: So I found out it was my older son. And, you know, after I flipped out for a day or two and tried to think, how are we going to handle this? And what did he see? And what didn't he actually looked at?

Because it looked like he went into this whole rabbit hole of movies and, um, so I did kind of the same thing, I cornered him and I just said, you know, you're not in trouble, I did the same things you did, you're absolutely not in trouble, I did see the movies that you looked at and I know that it was you, but, and I actually told him, I did something a little different, I told him I did not want him looking at those movies and the reason I gave him, I told him, I, you know, it's completely natural for you to be curious, um, and it's enjoyable to look at that kind of thing, but it's not the image that we want you to have in your head about how sex is.

And then I've talked to him more recently about it too, and, you know, kind of reiterated, we do not want you to have those images right now in your head because they're impossible to get back out, and it sets you up, also he's a little bit older now, looking more at relationship type of issues, um, you know, I told him it's unrealistic, it's fictional sex, so, actually, can I challenge that assumption a little bit? Sure.

0:20:24 Thomas: Sure.

0:20:24 Panel: I mean, well, I mean, it's just for 12, for a 12, 13, 14 year old, you, you should not expect, but go ahead. So the wording, and I don't know if you're quoting yourself directly, but you said those aren't the images we want you to have in your head, or or the thoughts or whatever, regarding sex. What are the ones you would like him to have on his head as a 12 year old boy? Because a 12-year-old boy is going to have sex in his mind. It's just the way it is.

0:20:54 Panel: We've got news for you. From this source, which source would you prefer? Because it's going to come from somewhere or nowhere.

0:20:53 Thomas: Yeah. We've got news for you.

0:21:04 Thomas: And Netflix is honestly better than most, to be honest with you. They

0:21:08 Panel: Well, I've looked at porn. I know the difference between Netflix and real porn. To be honest, I was a little too chicken to really look at all those movies. But it was like, anal sex this and that in the title they have back I have never gone back to look at it again. It freaked me out too badly. But um, not that I'm personally opposed to looking at it, I don't want my middle school son to look at it. I'm working under the assumption that he will be looking at porn because that is a human thing to do, most people are going to do it. I have to give, but I don't, don't really want him doing it now.

0:21:26 Thomas: Have this on Netflix? I'll be right back. Hold on. No, just kidding.

0:21:51 Thomas: I don't know. Do you, do you think that you're going to be able to make that call though? I mean, okay. Well, I also have, well,

0:21:56 Panel: No well I have to give him a reason that will work for him because I also don't want my kid to be the one at school saying hey look at this. Well, and that's actually how my son, um, learned how to look up videos on YouTube, is it's a little friend from my kid to be that kid and, uh, yeah, I don't know how the who did what and what search strings and whatever that that uh isn't none, but I know that it was someone else who showed them how to look up videos and what to look up in the first place. But

0:22:31 Thomas: Did you, I hope you didn't have that reaction that I know some, some people do. And frankly, I find these people to be a little too, a little too full of themselves or their kid where they, they automatically think it was someone else's kid that did all the bad stuff. And then their kid was totally innocent. And I just, just as someone who's, I am still relatively young, I can remember the time when my, when friends' parents would go through that and I was like, wait a minute, you're blaming me for this? I didn't have anything to do with this.

0:22:45 Panel: Innocent and I just, just anything to do with this it

0:22:58 Thomas: It was your kid. But to some parents, there's no telling them that, you know?

0:22:58 Panel: Was your kid but there's some parents, there's no telling them that you know, yeah. And I'm always careful to not say, hey, you remember that time when Mac showed you how to look up YouTube videos? No, of course not. But yeah, because the the truth, this is what, one, what he chooses to do is his own choice, and what he chooses to allow people to do in his presence is also his choice to be part of it. So I'm not shifting blame there at all. There are a lot of parents out there like that. Very much. And I'll be perfectly willing to admit that I'm, you know, we are a little bit more traditional in our expectations that way. But I'm working under the assumption that they will be doing these things in the future, they'll probably be doing a lot of things in high school, I don't necessarily want to actually know about them, and I don't want them to think that it's okay, you know, there's, it's, it's hard to to really explain, but yeah I I want to, there's several thoughts I'm having an apology if I was interrupting, but I, I

0:23:51 Thomas: Well, yeah, I want to, there'S several thoughts I'm having, and apologies if I was interrupting, But I do I do want to explore. Sometimes I wonder maybe this is a crazy thought. Maybe it's not a crazy thing. Let me know what you think, parents. But sometimes I wonder if it's almost in a weird way, a role of the parent to be, again, hypothetically, a little bit disapproving or at least not endorsing of things like this. But with the full knowledge that, okay, my kid's probably going to go just look at more porn. But like, do you sometimes wonder if like that's a component of a healthy upbringing? Because when you think about us, I mean, again, I didn't get everybody's ages. I'm assuming I'm younger than you guys because I don't have any kids, but maybe that's an weird assumption. But when you think about maybe our generation or whatever among our ages, that was kind of what happened to most everyone I know. It was, oh, we tried to look at stuff and our parents said, hey, no, don't do that, or some, some parents freaked out way more than others.

And then I wonder, like, well, is that the norm? Like, is that what's a healthy thing for development if everybody, everybody I know had that experience and we're all virtually fine, you know. Like, is dat normal? Is it, you know, do you, do you ever have those thoughts now?

0:24:22 Panel: But like, do you sometimes wonder if like that's a Yeah. Well, my, when I was about 16, my dad told me about, in an attempt for my dad to give me the big boy talk. He gave me a recitation of his dad giving him the big boys talk and, and he said, so my dad sat me down and he says, don't, but I know you're going to anyways, so use a condom. My dad here, and then that was, that was it, um, now. Did I Can't Wait Did Your it

0:25:31 Thomas: Did I Can't wait Did Your It would be so funny if you, or your, your, your son, thought you meant just for looking at porn. And so you wore a condom every time you looked at porn? Well,

0:25:41 Panel: My dad actually Didn't know what he was talking about because he didn't, what a condo was, and my, my grandpa didn't introduce the subject, he just sat him down and said, don't, but I know you're going to anyways, use a condom. So yeah, that was all the guidance my dad ever got. It was this disapproving, I know your going to anyway, but don't. And And I'll kick you out of my house when you do, but don't. And when you don't, you know. Well,

0:25:58 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I think that's a little too far. I'm not suggesting that, I don't think any sort of attitude of I'm going to kick you out of the house for any of these little, like, tiny moral offenses. That's pretty rough. But just, I don't know, because who was it? I'm sorry, Angie or Allison, who said you were, you thought they were going to do it anyway, but you weren't, weren't, who was that? I'm sorry.

0:26:22 Panel: Probably me. Yeah.

0:26:24 Thomas: Okay. Okay, so Allison was saying, you know, she didn't think she could control it, but I'm wondering then if that's what you really think. Like, if you don't think you're actually going to stop your son, is the response then to say, hey, this is visible? Like, the problem isn't that you're doing it, it's that it's showing up in my browser history or whatever?

0:26:24 Panel: Okay. Yeah.

0:26:45 Panel: Browser history or whatever.

0:26:47 Thomas: Like that's the issue?

0:26:48 Panel: That's the issue?

0:26:48 Thomas: I don't know.

0:26:49 Panel: I don't know.

0:26:49 Thomas: What do you think?

0:26:49 Panel: What do You think? Well, it's more about maturity, the expectation of, you know, him making the right choices for himself when he's ready, but he needs to know what the consequences are and and the, you know, the pros and the cons, basically, you know, it's risk informing, but I mean, I think I'm coming off sounding like a prude. You do sound quite a bit more traditional than the rest I think say, that's okay. Me personally, it's uh, and this is not a criticism of anyone else's, I don't criticize other people's parents until my own children are grown and out of the house, then I will criticize, um, but um, I think that they need the balance.

I think what you're talking about is giving them a boundary to push against, a little bit yeah, because everybody needs that boundary, to and that's just, you know, we've chosen to give them the boundary. Um, am I going to to expect him to be perfect and am I going to kick him out if he gets his girlfriend pregnant later? No, you know, there'll be consequences if that happens, but I'm trying to prevent that. But actually, um, you know, I actually sat on a committee, uh, to choose our sex ed curriculum for a whole school district for a, that was a two-year project of being completely immersed in sex education for teenagers.

0:26:52 Thomas: Hmm.

0:27:11 Thomas: You do sound quite a bit more traditional than the rest of us, I will say. That's okay.

0:27:32 Thomas: Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.

0:28:08 Panel: Yes, they don't have that in Utah. Literally, They didn't have that in Utah, yeah, so it's just more about developmentally appropriate and you know what they think that you approve of and um

0:28:24 Thomas: Well, I want to try to split a few hairs here because are we talking about, because it sounds like you're transitioning to talking about sexual activity in general. And I'm wondering, I think, I do think Gerald and I maybe had a bit of the same reaction to what you were saying about porn and having the right idea about it.

0:28:39 Panel: And like having the right idea about it and

0:28:42 Thomas: And I do Think there's going to be some gender gap here going on. And I think that'll be something interesting to talk about. But can you separate the two? So are you saying, because I think when you say, oh, I don't want him to get someone pregnant too early. I think, well, then porn is where you'd want your kid.

0:28:58 Thomas: That's what you want your kids to do. That's the kid to be doing rather than the actual real thing. But are you not separating those? What are your thoughts on that?

0:28:57 Panel: Kid that's what you want your kid to be doing rather No, no, those are two different things for me. Okay, So I don't know, I'm just not okay with approving that, I guess. Now, am I going to condemn him? Like I said, he was not in trouble, but no, I'm not going to approve it as a household activity. No, well, I think, I think it's impossible for a parent to, and it's, it's part of our DNA, it's how we evolved away from incestuous tendencies, mostly, hopefully, um, we don't instinctively approve of our child's sexual activity, we just, right, so we're never going to be okay with it happening on the couch while the rest of the family's watching TV, but ever at any age. One thing that I think is kind of the core of this topic is the number one priority of parents, regardless of how it's being applied, is to protect their children.

0:29:10 Thomas: Okay.

0:30:01 Panel: So the question is, what is protection? What is dangerous? And I err on the side of of information isn't dangerous, it's empowering. You know, the discussion I had with my son wasn't, of course, in a vacuum. We have our whole lives of history, his whole life rather, of history together. And, you know, I can remember, when did we move to San Antonio? He was three years old and he learned how something could be genetic. You know, his hair color is my hair color, his eye color is mine, but his big toe looks like his mom's big toe. So we talked about genetics and how you get things from your parents and that's from a gene. Now that's three-year-old's understanding. And then maybe about two, three years ago, so about kindergarten, we started to talk about, well, how come I have some of your genes and some of mom's genes? And well, because they blend together to make a baby. Oh, okay.

0:31:02 Panel: So, and then maybe only last year, when he was in second grade, you know, we started to talk about, well, the Cosmos series, you know, where they talk about plant reproduction and other things. You know, what is all this pollen that's making a sneeze all day long? Well, actually, Ivan, that's the trees trying to make more trees. It's tree sex, tree sex.

You know, and so we talked about how the boy part of the plant needs to get to the girl part of the plant in order to make a seed that can grow into a new tree. And oh, okay, so that's good for plants. And, you know, and and I purposely tried to build this, sex isn't a purely human thing in his mind before this day would ever come.

Of course, I didn't think it would be in, you know, book before third grade, but um, um, demystifying, I think, is a good way to put it, because, you know, if you look around you and you see all the other things that are doing the same things that we humans do, it puts it in a better perspective, um, to put your own personal, uh, at least I'm, I'm guessing, because I definitely didn't develop myself this way, I didn't, I wasn't given the opportunity, but um, to develop a broader understanding of what it means to have these desires and why they're there, and maybe it's practice mode for the first, you know, 10 years of these desires, then it gets into the real mode, or, you know, whatever, but.

But that's sort of where we had a pre discussion about this, know, and then actually after we had this, I know what you've been doing on your phone discussion. We were driving home from school and NPR was on, and they were talking about birth control and attempts to limit it and Supreme Court decisions, whatever they're talking about.

0:32:44 Panel: And he asked me what birth control was. And I said, well, how do I do this now? Yeah. Um, I said, well, it's, uh, something, sometimes they're pills. Sometimes there are other things that prevent the male's sperm from getting to the female's egg. And that can happen by either making the sperm never get there or by making it so that the egg can't receive them and stuff. And he's like, oh, huh, okay, why would anybody ever want to take that away from people?

And so then we just had a, uh, intellectual discussion about it. And I knew he was on that, that wavelength rather than nope, nope, nope, can't talk about it, sorry, let's go back to radio, a different station on music. You guys don't think that it's any big deal, not, I don't, like, it was interesting to hear, you know, and I guess I've heard all my life that I don't act like a typical girl, but, you know, you guys thought it would be very divided, united, among the gender lines, that us ladies would have a little bit more of a problem with the pornography versus the men, but, like, I don't. And I guess part of it is, I think in a lot of ways, and I recognize this in myself, but my view on sexual morality is in a lot of ways, very reactionary to my own upbringing. There are a lot things that I, I experienced it. It's like, I absolutely will not let that happen for my child.

And so, you one of the things, I guess, because it took me a long time to come to a place to where I thought of sex as just sex, just a good time and, you know, a physical connection, and sometimes in an emotional connection with someone

0:34:24 Panel: Else. And you, when I kind of let go of that, I was already, you know, I was already a parent and, like, I guess this sounds super weird, to be thinking like, my son, I remember, you know, my son being kind of like toddler age, and, like, when I finally, like, really was getting into that mindset, you know, about sex, like, you know, I very consciously remember thinking, like, I want him to, like, for it to not be a really big freaking deal for him, like, I want him to understand that there are consequences to it and that you have to do it safely, and there are, like, interpersonal consequences, you know, like, you need to understand that once you have sex with someone, your relationship with them is changed forever, ever.

Um, you can't go back from that in a lot of ways emotionally, and so you need to understand what that's going to mean for you, and you need to understand, you to be mature about that, and you, but I, I don't know, man, like I don't, I honestly, like, I don't care, care if he watches pornography, and when he gets to the age where he wants, I really don't care if he has sex, as long as he's safe about it and as long as he is treating his partners well, um, and as long as he is, um, you know, I would have a problem if he was still at an age where, like, whoever he was dating or whatever, like, their parents weren't comfortable with it, which, which is probably going to be the case for almost everybody, you know, because I realized that I have a very different mindset than those parents, but I'm very much like, like, like I said, as long as he's being safe and smart and respectful, I honestly don't care.

0:36:05 Panel: And so I don't like, I think that is more of my focus, you in terms of like, when he starts getting to certain developmental stages and starts becoming, because I don't think at least I'm not aware of any like interest in porn and like sex talk and stuff like that um you know there may be, how did you get on this panel then?

0:36:27 Thomas: Well, how did you get on this panel then? I

0:36:29 Panel: I thought this was just for porn addicted sons, look, I just, and I just invited myself on and you know made you guys work around my crazy tech issues and all that stuff, you know, and then I have nothing to offer because apparently I'm not, I don't have any oh, not at all.

0:36:30 Thomas: Thought this was just for porn addicted sons, parents. Yeah.

0:36:50 Panel: Um, you know, when you said that you don't really worry about it, I think that that's something that that a parent can do if, if you recognize, as, as I feel anyways, that um his His personal morality will carry over to every other part of his life, which, you know, people, I think, are scared. And I know I would have been scared that the kinds of things that people can find in porn violence or, you know, just acts that other people aren't into or OK with, you know, I think that that that's not going to, you know, poison him in any sort of way, because I know that he's still going to be the same person. Um vis-a-vis other people regardless of whatever he's seen on on the internet yeah and

0:36:47 Thomas: Oh, not at all. I

0:37:36 Panel: I also, I feel bad for the women, in you know, in the porn videos. This for me it's kind of entangled in there too. I'm not sure exactly how empowered they are in their positions. It, so there's part of that too, so I'm not entirely comfortable with that, but um, that actually makes, makes me feel better, you know, that the two guys don't think it's a big deal. I didn't mean to leave the mom out, but I just meant from a guy's point of view. No, no, I, I thought, I didn'd take any offense. You're good. Well,

0:38:09 Thomas: Well, yeah, I said, there may be a gender gap in this. I of course didn't mean to suggest that Angie would have a huge problem with, with, uh, with porn. But I do think because my own personal experience and what I, what I heard in the contrast between Allison and Gerald made me think of it because I remember, and I think we're all just going to go full on TMI mode. We'll just, that'll be the, uh, the, a disclaimer on the podcast, but I exactly that we'll just we won't publish this.

0:38:31 Panel: The Therapy with Tom, exactly. We'll have the bumper music,

0:38:38 Thomas: This is just for us.

0:38:38 Panel: The porno background music. That's right. Please.

0:38:41 Thomas: Oh, that is a great idea.

0:38:41 Panel: Oh, that is a great idea. Okay.

0:38:43 Thomas: Okay. Hold on. Let me write that down.

0:38:43 Panel: I'll write that down. Porno

0:38:44 Thomas: Porno music.

0:38:45 Panel: Music. Okay.

0:38:46 Thomas: Okay. Gonna, gonna do that at least once.

0:38:47 Panel: Gonna, gonna do that at least once.

0:38:48 Thomas: Okay.

0:38:48 Panel: Okay.

0:39:12 Thomas: There you go, I was true to my word. Plenty more Parent Panel Volume 2, where that came from, awesome discussion. Really, like, really, I mean, this whole thing I'm going to use in my life when I have kids. This discussion was very important, I think. So, there will be more, and thank you so much to my panelists, and thank you, so much, to you, dear listeners, for supporting me, for listening, for everything. And if you'd like to support the show go to patreon.com/atheist and you can do it there all right I'll see you on thursday for more parent panel