How Do I Teach My Sons?

An interesting conversation at the lunch table at work today. Three women co-workers and I were (again) bemoaning the fact that clothes just are not being made for women who want to be modest, are no longer teenagers, and have given birth at some point. Then the conversation evolved into the difficulty those of us with teenage girls have finding decent clothes for them to wear. For those who genuinely desire to dress modestly, it is discouraging. Low-rise jeans; midriff-baring, skin-tight t-shirts; bikinis; and shorts that are way too short are the Christian mother and teen girl's nightmare--if they want to be modest.

Our conversation then turned to our speculations about the mothers and daughters who don't seem to be at all concerned about modesty, especially among those claiming to be Christian. We observed that often mothers themselves don't dress modestly, so it only follows that their daughters wouldn't.

I've always been surprised at the excuses Christian parents, especially, make for allowing their daughters to dress provocatively. When confronted, some seem surprised, as though much is being made of nothing. One mother actually told me that the immodest bikini her thirteen-year-old daughter was wearing made her feel more grown-up since she hadn't been as quick to develop physically as her friends.

But today, as we were finishing lunch, a married couple (parents of two teenage boys) joined our table and added their own concerns. The father asked a disturbing, but thoughtful, question: How do I teach my sons to show respect for these girls when they dress so immodestly?

That's a good question, and I do appreciate that there are men out there asking it (especially since I'm the mother of an almost-sixteen-year-old girl). In Designed by God, author Regina Franklin writes about the issues of modesty, beauty, and self-image for young women. She reminds them, "Our value is not determined by what we wear, but what we wear communicates what we think our value is." If we're wearing immodest clothing, she says, we're sending the message that our bodies aren't worth protecting and aren't very valuable. And this is the difficulty for my friend who is trying to teach his sons to respect young women who are not being taught to respect their own bodies and the godly principles that have been set in place for how they should be dressing.

Perhaps mothers need to take more seriously the young men who are receiving the message their daughters are being allowed to send. Franklin quotes from Every Young Man's Battle by Arterburn, et al., where a young man explains the challenge he faces: "Our eyes give us men the means to sin broadly and at will . . . We have a visual ignition switch when it comes to viewing the female anatomy. Women seldom understand this because they aren't sexually stimulated in the same way . . . Because women can't relate, they have little mercy on us and rarely choose to dress modestly."

So as summer approaches with the tendency to wear fewer clothes, perhaps the best lesson we can teach our children is respect--for God's Word, which teaches us to be modest; for our own bodies, which are the temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20); and for our brothers and sisters in Christ, so that we don't tempt them to sin. Ladies, especially, let's not make it such a difficult task for dads to teach their sons how to treat your daughters in a Christ-honoring way.

And I do recommend Regina Franklin's Designed by God (Discovery House Publishers) to moms and daughters as excellent pre-summer reading.