Parenting Amid Pop Culture

Taylor Swift, Trans Ideology, and Tubthumping

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I’m sure every era has its challenges for parents, but as a 30-something mom with three little girls in 2024, I suspect we’re in one of the weirdest.

Drug abuse is destructive, but human beings have always struggled with addictions. Bigotry is evil, but sexism and racism have been a recurrent blight. Promiscuity is dangerous, but parents have been warning their kids against it for millennia. How am I supposed to explain to my 8-year-old that some people think their gendered souls were born into the wrong body, and now they want to chop their privates off? It’s like we’re parenting in an oversexed Orwellian novel.

But if I don’t teach my children about these issues, someone else will. Just so, if I don’t teach them about drugs, racism, or sexism, I’m leaving them vulnerable to foreign influences. Someone else will tell them about sexuality, and that someone might not have their best interests at heart.

Talking to your kids about sex in the 90’s was comparatively simpler. Our parents had no idea how easy they had it. Of course, my parents never even had “the talk” with me. I looked up sex in the World Book Encyclopedia.

My 11-year-old daughter has begun dipping her toes into the pool of pop music. Back in my middle-school years, this meant Britney Spears, The Spice Girls, NSYNC, and Chumbawamba. Today the trending names include Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Meghan Trainer, and Katy Perry.

Not much has changed, really. Lots of sex, nasally vocals, and repetitive melodies that get stuck in your head for days.

After Taylor Swift released her latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, some Christian influencers called on parents to boycott her music. After all, 7 of the 16 songs are marked E for Explicit. But as an ex-teenager who listened to Marilyn Manson exactly because my parents told me not to, I didn’t think a boycott would have the desired effect.

What’s our ultimate goal here, as parents? To keep our kids in a bubble? To insulate them from issues they’re going to encounter anyway at school, online, or next door?

I want to equip my kids to navigate a world full of false promises, pitfalls, and dishonest people. I could shelter them from all these things (or at least try to). I could forbid every provocative song without explaining why. But my kids are nerds like me. They have voracious minds and want to learn and understand this crazy world around them. I looked things up in World Book. My kids “search it up” on Google.

So, rather than ban Taylor Swift, I’ve been using her music as an opportunity to have conversations. I’ve told my kids, “What you listen to, read, and watch, will affect how you think and feel about yourself and other people. You need to understand that music teaches you things, and you need to choose what lessons are helpful and what lessons are hurtful.”

And of course, being a child abuse survivor myself, we’ve had talks about psychological abuse and manipulation.

“There are people in this world who want to manipulate you and confuse you. They want you to take drugs. They want you to be sexually active. They want you to have all the same problems they do, because if you share their problems, they think it will make them feel cool, clever, or better about themselves. That’s not what I want for you because I love you.”

Subsequently, we’ve been having conversations like, “This song is fun and encouraging, so we like it, but that song is about inappropriate things, and we don’t want to fill our minds with that, so we skip it.”

Essentially, we’re practicing Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

During the last week of school as we were sitting in the car-rider line, Taylor Swift’s voice sang through the speakers:

“In the middle of the night,
in my dreams,
you should see the things we do,
baby.”

I hit pause and asked the girls, “What do you think Taylor is talking about?”

My oldest blushed and said, “Um, I think it’s not appropriate.”

My middle child, who I’m fairly certain had no idea what we were talking about, said, “I think it’s not erpropriate too.”

My youngest quipped, “I don’t know. Maybe she’s dreaming about having a picnic.”

Everyone laughed and the conversation continued.

I said, “Do you think this song helps you think about good things?”

Oldest: “No.”

Middle: “No.”

Youngest: “I want to have a picnic at midnight! What’s wrong with that?”

More laughter.

I asked, “Why do you think Taylor Swift wants you to think about these things?”

Oldest: “Because she thinks it’s cool.”

Middle: “Because she thinks it’s cool.”

Youngest: “Or maybe she’s dreaming about farting!”

And then the conversation devolved into hilarity.

We’ve had similar conversations about kids at school or in the neighborhood. Recently, one of my girls said she knew a little boy who identifies as homosexual. So I asked her, “Why do you think he thinks that about himself?”

She replied, “Probably because someone told him he was gay.”

It was an interesting insight.

I replied, “Maybe so. He seems very young to be thinking about that sort of thing. We should always be kind to people who seem different. If you hear kids being mean or making fun of him by calling him ‘gay,’ I want you to tell a grown up, because that’s bullying.”

She asked, “What if a grown up told him that?”

“That can happen,” I said. “There are grown ups who want children to think about themselves in sexual ways. That is not healthy and those grown ups are not safe. You’re too young to be kissing or holding hands. You’re too young to be dating or having a boyfriend. You can’t even drive a car. You’re too young to do a lot of grown-up things. Maybe someday you’ll get married, or maybe you won’t, and that’s OK too. You’ll make grown-up choices when you’re a grown up. For now, you’re a kid and you should be focused on kid things.”

But the most interesting and daunting conversations have been around Trans Ideology and theology. My children have asked me, “I heard about someone who said they were born with the wrong soul. They were a girl soul in a boy body. That can’t happen, right?”

To which I replied, “No, baby. God made you exactly how you’re supposed to be. Sometimes, people get confused because they’re unwell. Other times, they’re confused and don’t know who they’re supposed to be because very bad and sad things have happened to them. And some people just like to be confusing. But your soul is a soul. You are female because you have a female body. Boys are male because they have male bodies. People do get sick or hurt in this world, but God doesn’t accidentally put the wrong souls in wrong bodies.”

Which lead to a conversation about Gnosticism. Naturally. Because what parent doesn’t want to have a conversation with their 8-year-old about warmed over second century heresies?

I explained as simply as I could, “Some people think you are only your soul and you’re just wearing your body like clothing. Some think that our bodies are yucky or disposable but your soul is good and the real you. But God made your body and your soul, and they belong together. Your body and your soul are both good, and they’re both you, one whole person. Someday, in Heaven, God will make us perfect. We will have no more sin, or sorrow, or sickness. Our bodies will never break or die and people won’t be confused anymore. Jesus came to save the whole you, because he created all of you - body and soul - and he loves you.”

Parenting is hard. I don’t always have the right answers. I have to oversimplify a lot of issues because I’m explaining them to young children. Sometimes I make mistakes and have to go back and correct or clarify what I’ve told them. But in the words of Chumbawamba, “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.”

Photo: Taylor Swift, courtesy of her Facebook page.