#STRask - How Can I Explain Modesty to My Daughter?

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Questions about how to explain modesty to a nine-year-old in a way that won’t cause shame about her body, and when and how to tell a child about a previous marriage and divorce.   How can I explain modesty to my nine-year-old daughter without causing shame about her body? When and how should I tell my son about my previous marriage and divorce?

This is Stan to Reasons, hashtag STR-Ask podcast. Welcome to you. And, Greg, we have some more practical-type questions today. And the first one comes from Lori. My nine-year-old daughter has questions about modesty, specifically where God says that certain areas of the body should not be shown. She clearly wants to know why we discourage her from showing her midriff, etc. How to address without causing shame around our bodies since we were naked before the fall? Well, I have two daughters, and so I have to address this. And sometimes I get resistance because I don't think my daughters have a realistic grasp about how men think and respond sexually, okay?

And I'm not here necessarily speaking about fallen human beings. This is a characteristic of fallenness. I'm just saying this is the way men are. And for good or for ill, and certainly it is. affected by the fall, okay? But one simple thing for young people, especially women, to understand is that men are alerted to sexual things visually. They respond visually. And I'm trying to the best way to kind of characterize this without sounding gauche or something. When a a woman's body is presented to him in an attractive way, especially where flesh is exposed.

It naturally stimulates a sexual response in him of some sort, some people more than others. And this is why a young lady wants to be careful about how much of her body she exposes, because by exposing more of her body, it draws a young man's eyes to her and invites him, even though she's not extending an invitation, the circumstance invites the man to begin thinking about the young lady in a sexual way. It may not be like he's imagining sexual behaviors with her. He's just beginning to look on her as sexually appealing. Where it goes from there is part of his own choice, but that's what's being stimulated with his eyes.

Okay. And I'm not passing any value judgments on this. This is the way God made human beings, made men in particular. Women have their own things that turn them on, but that get them sexually focused, so to speak. But I think there has been a tendency, Amy, in the church, to make the woman's profile, if you will, let's just call it a sexual attractive profile, what appeals to her. to ennoble that and make it seem like the man's profile of response is somehow, you know, what's the right word, corrupt or bad or dirty or nasty or those nasty guys. Look at it. They're just doing what guys do. And like I said, I think this is the way that God has made men. And therefore, if we want to be careful to be helpful to others not to think of us as young ladies in a wrong kind of way or move in that direction, we want to be careful how we present ourselves to them.

And this is why I think midriff stuff and shorter skirts and tighter, anything that shows off an attractive female figure more. dramatically is going to result in a more dramatic response viscerally by a young man. It's just the facts of the matter, and therefore you want to be careful with that. Girls, characteristically, don't understand that teenager. They don't understand how that works because it's not the way they work. And the temptation, and I've got this from my daughters, too, the temptation is for them to think of that is somehow, you know, nasty or get your mind out of the gutter kind of thing. Well, wait a minute, that's not what's going on here. And what this ends up doing is disparaging a man's natural

sexual response. Now, he needs to manage that, but also on a consideration for them, we need to be aware that gals need to be aware that men are vulnerable to this. I'll give you a very good example, and I hope this doesn't sound coarse to someone, but you know for flash dance, there was a big, after that movie Flash Dance, we have this gal with the torn sweatshirt over her one shoulder. Okay, that became a real popular thing. And every once in a while you see that, this, that image became popular because guys liked it. And guys liked it because it was sexually enticing, because it, I'm just saying how it is, it looks like her, to clothing is being torn off her body, and it's half off, and guys are thinking, well, what's next?

Do the next move is to finish the job? It's just kind of an impulse thing, but that is the impulse that that thing creates. So I have my daughter has a thing off her shoulder. I said, honey, you put it right back up, not off your shoulder, because that does something to a guy. It's suggestive, and it's not because the guy's nasty. It's just because he's a guy. And the same thing with Mitrov and other things that excessively, and this is a judgment word, an assessment word, but excessively show off the virtues of a young lady's physical form.

Cleavage is also very distracting to men. So if there's a lot of cleavage that is being shown, that's where guy's eyes are going to go. And so therefore, when these kinds of things are present, the guy begins to think of the young lady, not as a young lady, but as a sexual object. That's where his mind is being driven. And virtue requires that he manage those things, but it's better if he hasn't sent there to begin with based on the way the young lady is dressed. Does that make sense? Yes, I hear we coming from. I have some ideas about how to address this with her because I think you gave a good description of why modesty is a good idea.

But I don't want her to, again, to gather from that that it's bad, like her body is bad. So I think maybe what you could start with is say what you want to do right now is a good thing. You want to be beautiful. Beauty is a really good thing, and a woman's body is beautiful. So if your goal is to be beautiful and to be attractive, then let's think about what real beauty is. And it's not just your body. In fact, Peter is pretty clear about what we're supposed to focus on when we are making ourselves beautiful. And he says, your adornment must not be merely external, braiding the hair and wearing gold jewelry or putting on dresses, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

For in this way in former times, the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves. So if you start with the idea that let's think about how we're going to be beautiful and what is the kind of beauty that matters and that will attract the kind of spouse that you want to attract and that will make you beautiful to everyone and maybe take your focus off of your body because your body isn't the most important thing here. your character is. So in terms of, so maybe that can help just by affirming the idea that your body is not always going to be beautiful. It's just not. So if you focus on that for your beauty, you're going to eventually be in despair. But then as far as covering up, I think maybe, I wonder if it might help to say, look, you know, if you have a good friend and you have an inside joke with them, that increases your intimacy with that friend. And I think in the same way, when our bodies are only shared with our spouse, that increases the intimacy with the spouse because it's something

that only you share. It's something special. It's not that it's bad. It's that it's special and it's supposed to be for one particular purpose, and it's for the purpose of joining with your spouse, of creating children and a family, and it has all of these great outcomes, but it's only for that one person. So we don't share it with everyone, because that's just not how it's meant to be shared. Now, none of this is to say that you have to wear a gunny sack or something like that. Right, right. So I think there's a reasonable, there's a reasonable, there's a reasonable, I guess, ground, yeah, where you can still show the beauty of your form without going over the line. And so maybe just helping her understand what beauty is why it's why

we save certain things for our spouse. And just, again, you can emphasize the fact that God created our bodies for a purpose and that we are beautiful. And that's not, I mean, it doesn't hurt just to say that. You're trying to find a way to say it. I think just saying it is very helpful. And then giving them a positive reason why you would be modest, which would be to save that intimacy for your spouse, then at least you're not just saying, don't do it. you're saying there's a positive reason for it, and then that's what we're looking forward to, and we're waiting for that. Plus, a lot of what I had to say had to do with protecting other people, other men,

young men, because I don't think most young women understand how male sexuality works. And so that's just to give insight, the more skin that's exposed, the more difficulty is expressed. I mean, this is why going to the beach, you know, nothing wrong with that. But, I mean, this creates liability for guys because so much there's a lot less left to the imagination, so to speak. Anyway, I don't want to go too deep into that, but just to make that point, be aware how men naturally respond. And by the way, well, I won't go any further than that. Men naturally respond that way that naturally respond. This isn't simply a matter of their fallenness.

It's just the unique characteristic of their sexuality, one of the unique characteristics. And you mentioned, Greg, it does affect the way men will treat you, and it will attract the wrong kind of men. So it's not just for their sake, but it's also for her sake, that, you know, as Christians, we are supposed to treat each other as brothers and sisters. And so keeping that in mind, I think you want to cultivate a brotherly, sisterly relationship with your fellow Christians and the people around you. And this is working towards that end, too. Okay, Greg, let's go to a question from, I am Spartacus. My wife and I have a 14-year-old son. I am divorced, no children from my previous marriage.

My son doesn't know this. Should we inform him, when, and how? Wow. This, I think, is, what's the right word, maybe dangerous set of circumstances? Only dangerous in the sense that the 14-year-old's father has been married before is an important piece of the family history that has been kept from. him. And for whatever reasons, and I'm not judging that. I'm just saying sooner or later he's going to find that out. And the question is, when he does, will he feel betrayed? Why wasn't I

told? What were the circumstances? Et cetera, et cetera. So this is his natural son, correct? He is married to his wife, and they have a boy. But he had a prior marriage. The boy doesn't know about, and there were no children there, so this is his only true son. Well, in a certain sense, that's more on the benign side, but nevertheless, it seems to me likely, not necessarily the case, but likely that when the young man finds out, he will feel something important has been kept from him, and he's not going to be sure why. So both of my daughters are adopted. Now, we made a decision, my wife and I, when we adopted our daughters, that there would never be a time when they discover that they were adopted. They would be raised with the understanding that they were adopted, so it wouldn't be something that was sprung upon them later in life.

By the way, you're adopted, huh? Kind of thing. And sometimes that's not a problem, and sometimes it's a huge problem. So in our case, we decided to arrange things so that was never the case. And in the circumstance here, it would probably, in my view, it probably would have been better for them to be communicating to the young boy as he's growing up that dad had been married before, and just so he knows that, so there will never be a time when he discovers that. It's all, it's not a family secret that gets discovered later.

Now, that opportunity is passed. At 14, I think maybe now is the time to talk to the boy about this. Mom and I wanted you to know about something in our family history, and it's not a big problem or anything like that, but it's something that we thought, now you're old enough to be able to understand. So you're going to cast it in that light. Now you're old enough to kind of make sense of it.

But your father was married before. It happened when I was this age and we lasted this amount of time. Then that didn't work for whatever reasons. I don't know if you want to go to detail or not. But just giving the basic history and saying, and then I met your mom and here we are or something like that. Just bring him up to date. But I think if you wait much longer, then the possibility of deeper hurt for not having been told is going to be greater.

I like the idea of saying now that you're old enough to understand, we're going to explain. I like that idea. I think this is a really good time to talk about the gospel because I think he's – he's – I think it might help. I don't know the exact reasons why he wasn't told. It might help to explain why so that he's not wondering why. It's, I think it's good to acknowledge that it's sad to be, I mean, it's okay to be sad about how things went. And the reason why we want this not to be the case is because God's creation is so good, his creation order of a man and a woman being. married for one lifetime, that is a good thing. And we're acknowledging that by being sad about this. And it's okay to feel bad about it because it didn't go the way it was supposed to. But this is why we're so grateful for the gospel. And we're so grateful for God's coming into a fallen world and saving us and paying for sin and suffering along with us. Because this is a

is a world where people are going to send against you and where you're going to send against others. And this is why the gospel is so important. And this might be the first time that you're experiencing something like that that requires you to trust in the gospel. And whether it's because he feels bad for his dad or he feels bad for himself or he's upset because he wasn't told or whatever it is, I think the gospel has to be central to this conversation, for sure. Or maybe worried that this would happen in this relationship, too. I don't know if that might come to mind. And maybe an opportunity to say, yeah, the grace of God was here for us now that we have this relationship that's good and permanent, however you want to characterize it.

But that might be a concern as well. So I would talk about the goodness of marriage and your commitment. meant to it and the idea that we are in a fallen world where people will sin against us. But that God has been faithful. God has been faithful to the family. God has been faithful to his dad and things are going to go wrong in this world. So this may be the first really difficult thing that he has gone through. And so to talk about, like, bigger picture of fallenness and the gospel, I think have to be really central to this. It may turn out to be somewhat of a non-issue, too. Different people respond in different ways. So, but I think that now is the

time to probably bring this skeleton out of the closet, as it were, and lay it all on the table, so there's no more secrets, or it can't be perceived as an inappropriate secret by your son. And that's why I like what you said about explaining, you know, we have waited for this reason, and now we're sharing it with you. So it's a tough situation. But thank you, Spartacus, and Lori, we appreciate hearing from you. Please send us your question on X with the hashtag STR Ask. We really look forward to hearing from you.

This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.