It is an often-quoted fear of many young people that their mothers would somehow find their porn stash. For a group of Britons, that fear not only came true but was multiplied to the nth degree.

British mothers Emma, Anita, Sarah, Sarah Louise and Jane are on a mission – as documented by Channel 4’s three-part documentary “Mums Make Porn” – to make a kinder, gentler porn for their kids.

“Parents often have no idea what their kids are exposed to, but these five ordinary moms of teens are about to find out,” said the narration within the first few minutes of the show. The premise of the show is that for most of the mothers, they are porn neophytes. “Most of these mums have no idea what hardcore porn looks like—until now,” the narration continued.

“I think it might be the cum bit,” Sarah Louise said, while shown violently vomiting in the bushes outside a porn set. “Bodily — Bodily fl—,” she stated, between vomiting sessions. “Bodily fluids.”

While the idea of mothers crafting a “friendly” porn may seem weird on initial examination – especially considering all but one has no real porn-viewing experience – it follows the current trend of deep questioning of the morality and risk in modern day porn. With new porn producers fighting to win views in this new economy of internet porn, many have resorted to niches that emphasize sexual fantasies that may seem “extreme” or “violent” such as rough sex, BDSM, rape scenarios and taboo subjects danced around via fauxcest or different forms of cosplay.

With most web filters ineffective in adequately blocking sexual content from curious young people who are not their target or intended audience, there is a growing global concern that an effective barrier simply doesn’t exist. Early exposure is thought, by some, to create negative perceptions about women, intimacy and relationships – particularly in teenaged boys.

“Pornography can only develop in a society that is viciously male-supremacist, one in which rape and prostitution are not only well-established but systematically practiced and ideologically endorsed,” feminist Andrea Dworkin is quoted as writing by bloggiest Jonah Mix, who makes the argument that porn itself is sexual violence. “Feminists are often asked whether pornography causes rape. The fact is that rape and prostitution caused and continue to cause pornography. Politically, culturally, socially, sexually, and economically, rape and prostitution generated pornography; and pornography depends for its continued existence on the rape and prostitution of women.”

Enter “Mums Make Porn.”

The documentary is being aired in the background of the UK planning to institute a nationwide age block on internet pornography. The block itself was approved in 2016 but delayed by technical difficulties in implementing it. The block will require commercial websites that presents pornographic material to demonstrate that they have taken significant steps to prove the age of its viewers, such as verifying passport or driver’s license data or by buying an access pass in person.

Despite this, there is fear that the new requirements will not be enough to keep kids away from internet porn. Like government-imposed movie ratings, the effort may be an exercise in perfect intent and imperfect applicability. The UK is the world’s second largest consumer of porn, followed by the United States.

While the show shamelessly creates a spectacle of a mother’s disgust of her children’s sexuality and sexual fantasizing, it does open the debate on the acceptability of porn. “The show seems very concerned (in only the most abstract, uninformed sense) with the exploitation and objectification of those women porn performers on that laptop screen sitting amid the scones and jam, but what about the exploitation and objectification of these women-slash-moms on the television screen?” Jezebel writer Tracy Clark-Flory asked, questioning the nature of porn criticism. “Have they not been reduced to one-dimensional symbols?”

“None of this is to negate the entirely valid question of what educational teen-friendly pornographic content might look like,” Clark-Foley continued. “But it is to suggest that this show, and these women, are not the ones to answer it.”

This statement from Eliza Bathory sums up what may actually be going on:

I'm so sick of ppl like Rashida Jones and MUMS doing porn getting a platform to talk about sex work as if they know anything about it or their little stunt counts as real sex work. They're praised as feminists for "ethically" shitting all over REAL sexworkers. I hate em!

— Eliza Bathory (@ElizaBathory666) March 21, 2019

Image of your mum via mentatdgt from Pexels.