Elsevier

Academic Pediatrics

Volume 17, Issue 8, November–December 2017, Pages 844-849
Academic Pediatrics

Concerns for School-Aged Children
A Qualitative Study of What US Parents Say and Do When Their Young Children See Pornography

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2017.04.014Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

There is no empirical information about how parents react when they discover that their young children have seen pornography. To address this gap in the literature, the current study sought to improve our understanding of parental reactions to discovering that their children ages <12 years old have seen pornography using a mixed-methods approach.

Methods

A convenience sample of participants (N = 279) was recruited from the online survey service Mechanical Turk. Eligible participants completed an online survey comprising close-ended and open-ended questions about their reactions when their young children saw pornography. Qualitative data were analyzed using a content analysis approach.

Results

Parents had 5 main reactions when realizing that their children had viewed pornography: 1) angry, shaming, or punitive; 2) calm and factual; 3) ignoring, minimizing, or denying that it happened; 4) panic or fear; and 5) lying to the child about what the child viewed. Most parents reacted calmly, while a small percentage reported that they hit, scolded, or shamed their young children for seeing the pornography. Many reported not knowing what to say or do.

Conclusions

Development and evaluation of parental scripts for developmentally appropriate parent–child (or pediatrician–child) communication about pornography could benefit the field.

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.

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