Talking about porn with your sons

It's tough. It's weird. It's mandatory.

A few days ago, I finally had the conversation I'd been dreading with my 15-year-old son. The topic? Pornography.

He lives with me now. I’m glad to have him. It’s a strange season for us, we two bachelors building a household from the ground up. In many ways it’s fun. Yes, fun. Perhaps you’ve never known the joy and excitement of finding a big crockpot for $10 at a thrift store. I pity your diminished existence.

The downside—one of them, anyway—is that I still report to a day job. The ultimate goal is for me to build a career I can do from anywhere, on my own time, but until then, punch that clock, donkey.

This means that K is home alone for a long stretch of time. My neighborhood seems to be in a complete dead zone vis-a-vis bike trails, parks, etc. We’ve been looking for a summer job for him, but until he’s fluent in Spanish, that will be problematic. And besides, he is only 15. Unhirable.

The young man from not so long ago, discovering his love of climbing.

That pushes him to the computer, especially since he’s using the time to learn Python and other programming languages. We have some video games on the computer—a conscious decision on my part because it’s been years since we’ve just been normal. Standing against the world as a general in the culture wars is exhausting. Besides—when the kids are here they keep stealing my laptop, a.k.a. my Everything Tool.

He’s a good kid. He’s been praying the St. Michael prayer for at least a decade. He reminds me to pray at the end of the day before he goes to bed. I’m perhaps more proud of him about that than anything else. However, I’m not naive. I know the boy is walking through a minefield. Many years ago, several lifetimes ago, during a time when everyone wore something called “parachute pants” for some reason, a young boy I used to be found a Wonder Bread bag full of porno mags in a neighbor kid’s tree fort.

The world has not become more virtuous since.

Nowadays, we have the Internet: 24/7 bacchanalia where amoral barbarians of every age prey on young souls, and here I am, his father, forced to spend most of my day working for food tokens while he faces these dangers largely alone.

The weight of his vulnerability keeps me up at night.

But when I finally sat down with him for The Talk, something unexpected happened. What I'd imagined would be an awkward, fumbling disaster became something else entirely. He listened. Despite having to navigate delicate territory, the conversation flowed naturally because it was necessary—it was one of those moments that had to be, so it was, and it happened.

I get why most fathers avoid the conversation. Discomfort, sure, but maybe it’s the acute awareness of their own hypocrisy on the subject. (It goes without saying, dads—break the chains if you’re wrapped in them.)

More action is required. A dad can’t have The Talk, clap his hands once, and be done with it. You need to trust your sons, but you also have to protect them from themselves. You may have learned how to avoid the pornographic pitfalls, but young men who aren’t yet bloodied in battle—young men with nuclear grade hormones and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex—they don’t have the experience. At that stage of life, “Don’t look at porn” is mainly a battle of the will, and that’s a muscle still in development.

We are at war, and leaving our sons to fight it alone is nothing short of abandonment.

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You’ve probably seen the statistics: The average age of first exposure to pornography is now 11 years old. (That’s about when I stumbled into it). By age 17, 84% of males have viewed pornography.

Even worse, it may be that ten percent (!) of women U.S. women between the ages of 18-24 “create content” on OnlyFans, the make-your-own-pornography-from-home platform. I’ve seen stats like this floating around for awhile. If it’s only half-true, does that make it better?

I worry for my sons because there’s a far-greater-than-zero chance that when they make it into the dating pool, they’re going to have to consciously filter out online prostitutes.

I worry for my girls because there will be enormous peer pressure to get into online prostitution. That, and there’s more than a chance that the boys they find will already have years of struggling with porn behind them.

I don’t think I have to bitch and moan about the state of the world. “In my day, that was unthinkable!” It’s obvious to anyone with eyes: this is horrific.

Young men exposed to pornography show increased rates of depression, anxiety, and social isolation. They struggle with unrealistic expectations in relationships, decreased empathy, and a distorted understanding of intimacy. The very thing that promises pleasure becomes a prison that steals their capacity for genuine connection and love.

I want my sons to grow up into happy, holy, self-disciplined men. I want them to understand that their masculinity is a gift—but it needs to be exercised and nurtured. I want them to know that they’re called to be protectors and providers—men who stand between the innocent and the chaos of the world.

None of that happens by accident. It happens when fathers do the hard work of actually fathering—when we stop outsourcing the most important conversations to the internet, to schools, to culture, and take responsibility for forming the hearts and minds of our sons.

Every young man deserves to know that his sexuality is sacred, that his strength has purpose, and that his life has meaning beyond his own pleasure or comfort. But if we don't tell them, who will?

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I didn't press him about whether he's fallen or not. My point was to remind him of his calling and duty as a man—AND to remind him that forgiveness is always available. There is nothing that can separate him from grace unless he chooses it.

I explained that pornography isn't just "natural" or "harmless"—it is, as I’ve heard said many times recently, the “iconography of Satan.” It's designed to be addictive, to hijack the very drives that are meant to propel him toward authentic love and sacrifice.

We talked about what real masculinity looks like: not the aggressive, selfish dominance that pornography promotes, but the quiet strength that protects, serves, and builds up rather than tears down.

It's hard to tell with this kid, but I could tell that he appreciated it. It was an unusual break in the Dad/Son dynamic that fills the routine of our life together in this strange time. He’s a tight-lipped young man. Probably brilliant, maybe on the spectrum somewhere. He’s always observing and cataloging, and he doesn’t forget anything. (Believe me—I know. He’s brought up failures of my own from many years ago.) He doesn’t emote very much, and when he does, he seems nervous, as though it was a breach of his rigid external protective shell. However, at the end of this talk he seemed lighter and actually gave me a hug.

Dads, if you need a little motivation to have The Talk, consider this: Our boys appreciate—more than even they realize—our sincere, authentic efforts to form them.

Just do it

If you don’t talk to your sons about porn, literally everyone else will. The vast majority of people (it certainly seems) will say it’s no big deal, although that seems to be changing. Secular man-guru types are starting to tell men to quit porn because it “robs them of their power,” or somesuch. I’ve even seen chastity rebranded as “semen retention.” Yeah—another 21st century discovery of something old repackaged as a new discovery.

However, even the most vicious anti-porn crusaders aren’t going to have your sons’ best interests at heart better than you. Nor do they have the mandate. YOU are their father. Take the lead.

The conversation might be uncomfortable. You might fumble for words. You might feel like a hypocrite. But your son doesn't need a perfect father—he needs a father who cares enough to show up, to speak the truth, and to fight for his future.

Don't let fear rob your son of the guidance he desperately needs. Don't let the enemy win by default because you couldn't stomach fifteen minutes of discomfort.

Your son is worth fighting for. His future is worth protecting. His calling as a man is worth defending.

The question isn't whether you're ready for the conversation. The question is whether you love your son enough to have it anyway.

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