Yahoo Lifestyle 17 Kids Of Sex Workers Confessed What Their Lives Were Reallyyyy Like, And It's A Lot To Handle
Reddit user u/ameen__shaikh asked the community, "Children of sex workers, how did you find out your mom or dad was a sex worker?"
Children of sex workers confessed what their experiences were really like with their parents growing up. They ranged from pretty mellow to very baffling, but overall, extremely eye-opening.
Here are some of their stories:
Note: Some submissions were pulled from this Reddit thread by user u/Cicallis.
Note: Some stories include topics of physical abuse, child abuse, and drug addiction. Please proceed with caution.
1."My mom worked as a massage therapist with 'extras' from when I was about 10 years old until about 20 years old. She worked out of our house in the middle of 'stereotypical suburbia.' My room shared a wall with the massage room, and I would hear very obvious sex sounds sometimes. When I would bring it up with her that I heard loud moans, she always claimed that some guys were just very loud while she worked over a knot. Sure, mom: that's why you were just as loud, too. My mom and dad are happily married and were never super subtle that they liked hooking up with other people. They did try to shelter my sister and me from everything, but they weren't very good at it. We started figuring things were hinky when we hit about 12. It was 'officially' confirmed when I was 19 when my friend found her backpage ad."
2."Not my mom, but a high school buddy's mom was a stripper and did some porn. I felt bad for him because his mom was really focused on herself and always wanted attention from his male friends. We went to his house one time, and she was literally sitting on one of his friend's laps just dominating the conversation. 'I'm pretty. Am I pretty? Do you want to fuck me? I have a great body — people pay to see it!' It was bananas. He ended up getting involved with drugs and died right after graduation. It was really shitty — he deserved better."
3."My mom was a stripper trying to raise four kids. She would work nights, and I would see 'strange' outfits and shoes in her closet and her 'work bag.' Everything smelled strongly of cigarettes. I watched the movie Independence Day where Will Smith's wife was an exotic dancer, and I somehow figured out what that was. One morning my mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table together eating breakfast. I was in fourth grade, and I asked her what her job was. She looked at me funny and I continued by asking her if she was a stripper. She asked my why I thought that, and I explained everything I listed above."
"She then confirmed my suspicions and thought my dad (her ex-husband) spilled the beans to me. I assured her that was not the case, and she asked me never to tell my three brothers. I never did.
She eventually got out of this line of work and is now successful elsewhere. I’m proud of her, and although I used to resent her for some of her choices, I understand now she did what she could to do to take care of her kids."
4."Prostitution is legal where I live as long as it's in a brothel. So, at the particular brothel my mother worked at, it happened to be a really big house. I'm talking 14 bedrooms. So, all business was handled out the back of the house. The front of the house was used as a place for all the kids of single parents to hang out and be taken care of while our moms were working. We didn't have a lot of money, so I enjoyed being at the brothel more than being at home because there was always food and toys. Everybody was kinda like a family. We spent Christmas there and everything."
5."My mom wasn't a stripper/sex worker with a heart of gold. She was just an awful person who made bad choices. I can say she was an addict with a lot of her own personal demons, but there were plenty of people in my family who offered to raise me, and she refused to let anyone else 'have' me. I was a 'possession' to bring in more money, a pet to keep her company, and when we both grew older and I started getting more attention, I was a rival and an enemy. There were always random people around, and my childhood was spent in the dressing rooms of strip clubs, biker clubhouses, and drug dens."
"Every day she had a series of times that she could do the right thing — feed me, take care of me, love me, and give me up, but she didn't do any of them. She used to delight in telling me that she brought me into this world and would be the one to take me out. She was convinced and told me every day that I would take care of her for the rest of her life. I was already taking care of finances, shopping, cooking, bringing her back from her overdoses, and generally keeping her alive.
I eventually ended up in foster care at 14 and never looked back. I have zero sympathy now. My childhood was a never-ending series of horrors, and the only way I survived was by luck, god, and the fact that there were never high points.
Now, I am an unflappable, married mom of five. I am successful and give my kids a good life. I rarely tell anyone what I went through, but most people I share any portion of my life with are of the opinion I should track down my mother, forgive her, and let her meet her grandkids.
I really can't give her a bit of forgiveness or love. About 10 years ago, I contacted the police department in her town to check on her. They found a bunch of dead workers from a serial killer (I had a moment of weakness and thought, as her only child, I should at least bury her). The dispatcher heard my story and said I should stay away, as she had just gotten out of prison for stalking.
My foster mom is my mom, and she has been there for every important part of my life. I am not sure my bio mom ever had any joy in her own life, and she certainly never gave me any."
6."Not my mother, but a classmate of mine. When I was in eighth grade, the guys used to pass around porn on VHS tapes. They thought they were James Bond-level stealthy using VHS tapes instead of the internet. Well, a new kid moved to town and threw a house party — everyone was having a good time until his mother walked in the room. Every single dude was losing his mind, and every single girl was beyond confused as to why. Two of her scenes made it onto those VHS tapes and they all recognized her. Shockingly they kept it quiet for a while until one dude told his girlfriend who told the girl dating the new kid and it blew up. The new kid and his younger sister were removed from school and sent to another private school the next state over."
7."My mom was a sex worker for about five years, starting when I was around 11 years old. I had a typical upbringing — a decent home, a good school, and nice clothes. I realize now that it was more because of my aunt and father that I had a good childhood — not my mom. I didn’t know what her job was. She lied and told me she worked as a telemarketer. No clients ever came to the house, but she would leave for work for 18-20 hours a day and leave me home. I skipped a lot of school because I could. She would be gone super early in the morning and wouldn't be home until very late at night, and I was an only child...I kinda just did what I wanted."
"She worked in a brothel and did calls, too. I found a 500-box of condoms in her room when I was 13 years old, and in the midst of a typical teenage fight, I asked her about them. She came clean on what she did.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it, and then I became deeply ashamed of her and what she did. Now, as an adult, I realize my mother is a deeply damaged woman (both before and after her sex work)."
8."My grandmother was a high-end escort with some big names under her belt. I was told my grandfather was dead my entire life, and when I was in late high school, I found a random recent obituary for him. My mom told me that he was abusive and manipulative. The words the obituary used though were 'deacon of his church' and 'respected in the community.' Apparently my grandmother was working by waiting tables in the '60s and someone rich came in and she served him. He ripped a hundred dollar bill in half, gave her one half, and told her if she wanted the other half she'd meet him at his hotel room to 'earn it.'"
"She laughed and pocketed the note. My grandfather took her money at the end of every shift and saw the ripped bill and asked her about it. A hundred dollars was a lot of money back then. He yelled at her and said he'd have done it for her if he had that chance, and forced her to go do it. That was the start of it all."
9."Sex work is actual work and in high demand. The scorn people have for sex work is amazing, considering how many people engage sex workers. Here in Canada they’ve been left out of government assistance, even though they’re not working or being forced to keep working despite the risk. I grew up in a low-income area, and a friend's mother was a sex worker who operated out of her house. It was something regularly talked about by other neighborhood moms who weren’t nice to her. My friend would come to my house often, and my parents would always feed her and take her with us if we were going to the museum, to see movies, or something else. As you can imagine, she basically couldn’t be in the house sometimes, or sometimes her mom wouldn’t be able to get her on time. My mom would get kind of frustrated because she would be at our house sometimes for eight hours. We were never allowed to go to her house and my mom refused to go there."
"Once, my friend made fun of our house (we owned a house, but it didn’t have nice things in it). Her mom rented but had a lot of expensive stuff like designer clothing and electronics. So, I didn’t invite her over anymore.
Her mom was murdered in a drive-by shooting on my block. Both her kids saw her die. It was believed to be accidental (they were apparently trying to shoot the guy she was with). The kids went to live with their grandma.
I haven’t thought about any of this until today — I hope she is well."
10."My mom had a giant plastic bin in her closet that she told me to stay away from and never go in. Well, one day when she wasn’t home, I decided to go through the bin and found a camcorder with little DVDs. On those discs were family memories mixed with sex tapes of her and other girls and guys. There was also a ton on pictures in the box of her in the strip club with other girls naked doing 'crazy' shit. I think I was around eight at the time, so I was exposed to this pretty young. All my school friends eventually found out about it (some of my mom's customers were parents of kids I went to school with), but no one ever made fun of me for it. I owned up to the fact that my mom was a sex worker, and I got a lot of attention from boys in school because my mom was a 'MILF.'"
11."My ex-boyfriend's mom was a stripper. He was super well-adjusted and was never ashamed of her work. She was a single mom who got pregnant young (16, I think?), and he understood that she did her best to take care of him. He always had a roof over his head and food in his belly and got decent grades in school. He says his mom would be home when he got home from school to make sure he ate, helped him with his homework, and tucked him into bed, and she would leave for her shift once he was asleep. She would be home in the morning to wake him up for school and then sleep once he was gone."
"When I first met him, I thought that maybe he might have some misogynistic views on women, but he didn't. If anything, he respected the struggle and never blamed his mom or shamed her for what she did because he knew that she was doing this all for him.
Don't get me wrong — their relationship wasn't always perfect. She did struggle with alcoholism for a while, but again, he never 'blamed' her. He understood.
He eventually convinced her to quit sex work so she could get out of that environment and get a different job that paid a bit less, and he then got a job to help out. With his help, she was able to get sober and stop being a sex worker."
12."My mother confirmed it when I was an adult. I suspected for a long time, but knew she did what she did in part to care for us. So, I was not bothered. She hadn't spoken to me about it, so I never questioned her. When I was an adult she told my brother and he reacted badly — so badly that he called me and spat it out to me expecting me to be angry, too. But I wasn't. I talked to him a little and then it was dropped — my mom had a ton of problems, addictions, and struggles. We grew up in and out of shelters but we never starved, she made sure we had a place to sleep, and generally food to eat. I grew up strong and resourceful and pulled myself into the middle class. My mom has yet to meet her grandchild, as she hasn't found a way to visit in the almost seven years she's been alive. I have hope, though."
13."My mother has a 'typical' mail-order bride story. She started working as a child — my dad was good to her at the start, but his gambling addiction took over and he forced her back into it. My younger half-siblings came after all that, so they never witnessed it themselves. She had a lot of issues not stemming from sex work itself, but conditions that led her there. It just kinda clicked for me randomly one day as a teen. I never did question the rotating boyfriends my mom had in my life (despite being married to my dad the whole time) and the big wads of cash. You get used to it if it's the only thing you know."
"My siblings found out as teens through me — they wanted me to explain why my mom became so anti-sex."
14."My dad straight-up told me he was a 'gigolo' in Denver in the '80s. He had moved out there to get away from an abusive home life when he turned 18, and found that that was the best way to make ends meet."
15."My mother was a sex worker when I was a kid — my parents needed extra money to pay the bills, so she started working in the industry. She would bring me with her to her clients' places sometimes. I can still hear her moaning while sitting on the couch in the living room. She hated it — she was 'disgusted' with herself. The men treated her badly — they pulled her hair, smacked her, and called her names. I once said the word 'puta' (which means 'prostitute' in Spanish), and she told me never to say that word again. I asked why, and she said it was because it's a very bad word. I was six years old. I hadn't put all these things together yet. Like many things in my childhood, these are things my parents are deeply ashamed about and will never talk about (for various reasons of shame, guilt, and criminality)."
16."My best friend's mom used to do exotic dancing before he or his siblings were born. She, like many people in Hollywood, found it hard getting a break and stripped to pay her bills. This moved onto other things, and eventually she started dating one of the regulars. They fell in love, got married, and moved into the wilderness living a pretty modest and spartan lifestyle. I think they were married for a few years before they decided it wasn’t going to work out, and had an amicable divorce splitting their assets. The caveat being that the guy she was married to was absolutely loaded (an heir to a corporate empire — kinda rich, and just decided to live simply despite his wealth)."
"She ended up getting a few million out of it, met my friend's dad not much later on, and had a family. As I recall she was pretty open about it with my friend when we got older. To say the least he was pretty shocked, but empathized with what she had to go through and never belittled her for it."
17.And finally, "My aunt drunkenly told me that my mom was a stripper one night and not a FedEx driver as she had told me. She traveled a lot (apparently she was a hot commodity) and would tell me that she was staying with her friend when she had to work because she lived closer to work. As a child I had no reason to not believe my mom. I was 14 when my aunt told me after my mom had just quit and got a job as a secretary. I wasn't upset by it — I was actually kind of proud that she was a traveling stripper and she brought in a lot of 'customers.' My mom was LIVID my aunt told me, though."
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453(4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.
If your parent is a sex worker, what's your experience been like? Let us know in the comments below (or in this Google Form if you want to remain anonymous).
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