‘Porn Is So Easy For Kids To Get To’: How Jada Pinkett Smith Is Tackling Taboos And Re-Writing The Parenting Rule Book

‘Every child is different,’ says Jada Pinkett Smith, as she sits across from me in Facebook's glorious London office, ’I remember taking Jaden and Willow to an orphanage. Willow might've been about 4 so Jaden had to be about 6 or 7 - and their reactions were very different.

‘Jaden was deeply affected and Willow was just kind of like "oh, this is life",’ she continues, ‘your kids have different sensitivities so I think you have to really know your child to know when it's time to introduce something [serious]. But kids are far more resilient than we think, and they’re exposed to so much through the internet.’

Jada wouldn’t call herself a parenting expert. When she gives advice, she will tell you she’s ‘just offering what she’s learned.’ Except, when you consider that her progeny are Willow and Jaden Smith, you can’t help but think of her as the child-whisperer.

At age seven, Willow made her acting debut in I Am Legend. Age 10, she had already starred in five different roles and became the youngest artist signed to Jay-Z’s label Roc Nation releasing her debut single ‘Whip My Hair’.

Jaden was even younger. Starring in an uncredited role at just six years old, he was introduced to an acting world he would immediately thrive in. Roles in The Pursuit of Happyness, The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Karate Kid would earn him six awards by the age of 12. In the same year, he featured in Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never and became a 5x certified platinum artist.

And yet, despite their monumental success and child stardom, Willow and Jaden, now 18 and 21, appear to be remarkably grounded and emotionally intelligent. Since 2009, they have been youth ambassadors for Project Zambi – a charity that aims to help Zambian children orphaned because of the AIDS epidemic – and in 2017, they sold clothes to aid hurricane relief projects in Puerto Rico.

Earlier this year, Jaden announced his eco-friendly company JUST Water was helping solve Flint’s water crisis by deploying mobile water treatment systems in collaboration with a local church. And if you listen to Willow speak on Facebook’s Red Table Talk – a show she hosts alongside her mother and grandmother Adrienne – and you will be astounded by the pearls of wisdom she comes out with.

As child stars, it could have all gone so differently – something Jada well knows. So how did she raise two such socially conscious and emotionally intelligent children in an environment of whirlwind fame with endless resources at their fingertips?

‘The one thing I did with them is that I did not pretend that when they turned 16, for example, that 16-year-old things weren’t going to be happening,’ she tells me, ‘I knew what I was doing at 16 and I communicated with them based on what I was going through at certain times in my life.’

It was most difficult for her, she reveals, when she first saw how Willow was exposed to extreme porn online from an early age. In fact, in one Red Table Talk episode, Willow reminisces on the porn she was first witness to on social media platform Tumblr – where gifs of women being choked sit alongside memes about BDSM for anyone to stumble across.

‘Porn is so easy for kids to get to,’ Jada says, ‘even at that age Willow was like "mum, get over it", I was like "get over it? Really? This right here is pretty extreme”. But in her mind, it wasn’t even extreme because she saw it all the time, and that's deep to me.

‘So then you have to have a conversation about porn,’ she continues, ‘asking them “what are you seeing?”, “how does it make you feel?”, “when was the first time you saw it?”. Now, we have to have this conversation, at 11, when I probably should've had it at 8.’

Having difficult conversations is one thing Jada thrives at. Watch her Red Table Talk and you will see topics raised from domestic abuse, addiction and white privilege. As well as will hearing Willow talk about her experiences with porn and polyamory, Adrienne confront her fears about white women adopting black children and guests like Jordyn Woods discussing her painful clash with the Kardashian/Jenner’s earlier this year.

The premise - to share the authentic experiences and feelings of three women from different generations in one family - makes for highly entertaining and illuminating TV. But for Jada breaking and discussing taboos with her family is a fundamental part of how she parents.

‘Will and I have had these kind of difficult conversations with our kids from day one,’ she says, ‘which is very different to the relationship my mum and I had, so even in that it's interesting to see how she and I related versus how Willow and I relate.’

Of course, part of what makes the show so entertaining is the fact that it's so far from most of our norms. So rarely do we sit down with our children to talk about sex, our grandmothers about polyamory or our mothers about the first time we watched porn. But why? According to Jada, it’s all about fear.

‘People think If I talk to my girl about sex that means she’s going to go out and start having sex and she's going to get pregnant,’ she says, ‘Well if you don't talk to her about it, she’s going to go out, have sex and get pregnant. So would you like to talk to her about it, get her educated and get her prepared? Because she's going to have sex one day just like you did, because that’s how she got here.'

Essentially, regardless of your fears or your assumptions about how your child may react, figuring out a way to talk to them and ‘answer questions as honestly as is age appropriate’ is vital.

‘You don't want to be like "hey! People are out here dying every day!”’, she laughs, ‘but you definitely have to figure out how to talk about things that are happening in the world in an age appropriate manner.’

But even in the face of such straight talking, Jada still feels like she has a lot to learn. ‘This table has been so healing for me and my whole journey,’ she says, ‘deepening that lack of fear [about tackling taboos] and being more of what I am. I've got a long way to go but this is definitely been a beautiful step for me in that journey.’

Hopefully, we will only see that journey continue as Red Table Talk enters season three in September. With hilarious – and eye-opening - stories like hers to tell, we’ll definitely be tuning in to watch it.

New episodes of Red Table Talk, hosted by Jada Pinkett-Smith will be available this September on Facebook Watch.

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