Truth is, one could replace the word porn, with a lot of other words related to gender roles and it would read roughly the same. The distorted presentation of gender roles in media is legendary on almost any level and circumstance. Relationships in general are scarcely represented in any realistic way. Heck, life in general rarely is. I often want to scream at a TV show or a movie "don't these people have jobs?". The amount of time they have to "waste" on trivial endeavors is amazing.
And we don't often discuss many of these things much with our youth. We allow them access to these media representations and often don't explain or counter their excesses. Crimes don't get solved in a few days by detectives that can work one case for days. Professors don't drop everything to help the struggling student for a week. Doctors don't work on a single patient for 3 weeks helping them back to health. And boyfriends don't go to one counseling session and suddenly learn the error of beating up their girlfriend.
We argue in front of our kids, and make up in private. We struggle with issues of money, but never discuss it in front of the children. We question our jobs, our friends, and our life choices but rarely mention any of this to our children. We have friends with real problems, often involving money, sex, disease, death, and violence and all our children will hear is "Martha is having some problems right now".
I had a nephew that got in a bit of very minor trouble. It was all connected to some issues with depression. Years later, it discussing some of this trouble, he mentioned to me that one of his greatest fears at the time was the "realization that he was the first one in our family to have these kinds of troubles". I was bumfuzzled. I preceded to tell him the 5 MILDEST stories of his aunts and uncles that vastly exceeded any of his troubles. He was, to say the least, a bit shocked since of course all he ever heard about was the successes and accomplishments.
If we want our children to grow up understanding the "real world" we're going to have to introduce them to it ourselves. Otherwise commercials, TV shows, movies, and magazines (not to mention preachers) will do it for you, and they're all trying to sell something.
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