Concerns for School-Aged ChildrenA Qualitative Study of What US Parents Say and Do When Their Young Children See Pornography
Section snippets
Participants and Recruitment
Respondents were 279 US parents who found out that one of their children saw pornography, accidentally or on purpose, when that child was younger than 12 years old. Participants were recruited between April and May 2015 using the online survey service Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), which is frequently used for social sciences research.20, 21 MTurk is a Web site that posts opportunities for people who would like to complete surveys for money and has been used for more than 75 research studies.22
Results
Of the 384 survey responses, 43 were eliminated from the sample because they did not answer one or more of the eligibility questions, 23 were eliminated because they were duplicate entries, and 39 were determined to be ineligible. Of the 279 in the final sample, 71% were white, 8% black, 6% Latino, 9% Asian, 3% Native American, and 4% multiracial. The average age was 36 years (Table 1).
Parents were asked where they believed that their children first saw pornography. Of the 279 parents, 76%
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first study to collect information from a sample of US parents about how they and their children reacted when their young children saw pornography. We found that parents' reactions could be categorized in 5 ways; 4 are externalizing (ie, anger, shame, or punitive; being calm and providing facts; ignoring, minimizing, or denying that it happened; and lying to the child about what the child viewed), and one is internalizing (ie, panic or fear). Four primary findings
Conclusions
Some young children in the United States unintentionally view pornography. When their parents find out, many provide factual information calmly, but some may react unhelpfully, and a small percentage may react abusively. Many parents may be open to receiving guidance from pediatricians about what they can say to their young children who have viewed pornography. Materials that offer parents guidance on responding to young children who view pornography could be useful.
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Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.