Although she didn't have a huge formal education, she would easily have made a curriculum developer. List of criteria. List of outcomes. List of attributes to be a successful adult. Of course, not everyone might have agreed with her list: there are many men in my life who would have been very grateful if my mother had taught me to be seen and not heard. Thanks ma.

One of the things she was big on was sexual pleasure and its importance in relationships, both for yourself and your partner. Pornography was not something we even discussed. It's different with my own children because we live in porn land. And children in Australia start being exposed to porn from their very early teens, so I can't be wowserish about pornography.

It's too accessible, too varied, too funny to get me all worked up about the ease and sleaze of its availability. But I would never promote it as a tool for sex education in the same way I would never promote McDonald's as a tool for culinary education. Both cheap, both easy, both what we might describe as ''sometimes'' sources of nutrition, emotional or otherwise.

So the glee that greeted new Dutch research released two weeks ago in The Journal of Sexual Medicine concerned me. In the US, the empire of pornography, reporters seemed pleased that the research cleared porn of any wrongdoing.

The study surveyed 4600 Dutch men and women between 15 and 25 about their use of pornography, what kind of pornography they liked and the kind of sexual experiences they had.

Nearly double the number of men compared with women had seen pornography in the 12 months before the survey - so 88 per cent compared with 45 per cent. And here's the surprising detail - the research found that only a tiny percentage of those who chose risky or adventurous sex activities said that their choice of those activities was directly related to porn use.

The lead author of the survey, Gert Martin Hald, a clinical psychologist at the University of Copenhagen, said: ''Pornography is not as big and bad a wolf as we thought it was and maybe we should focus on other factors … it does explain a portion of sexual behaviour, but it is modest.''

Entire stories in US publications were devoted to porn stars talking about how they knew porn was OK. Of course, they would say that. In the same way that tobacco companies told us all that smoking was OK.

That was not actually a comparison between the use of porn and the use of tobacco - just a reminder that if someone has a financial interest in any business activity, they will usually defend it. That's called ''following the money''.

But here are some things you should know about porn and its use from an Australian perspective.

We are not Dutch. The geographical difference is huge - and that's not just about kilometres. Dutch children have had a fabulously thorough sex education; they have the lowest rates of teen pregnancies in the world; the lowest rate of sexually transmitted infections. Hell, those children were probably learning about the therapeutic use of butter when they were still in high school.

They have a culture where fathers talk to their sons about condom use - often, the hall table will have condoms on it. So hands up, you lot - which of you actually has condoms on your hall table? Which of you fathers has talked to your sons about condom use?

Anita Elias, the head of the Monash Medical Centre's sexual and relationship clinic and a sexual medical specialist, has worked in this area for nearly two decades. She says that Australian children start to access porn at the age of nine - and she sees more and more young people coming in for help with their sex lives who have an unrealistic view of what sex feels like. Is that a coincidence?

''There is an impression that you have to do it [have sex] all the time regardless of whatever else is going on in your life - the myriad factors which make you feel the way you do,'' she said.

She also thinks context and timing (age) of watching porn without the benefit of general sex education is a serious issue to consider.

''The risk is when people, especially young people, tend to not see porn as 'a movie' but as reality, confusing fiction with documentary,'' she says.

''I'm often saying to patients … 'but it's a movie, not real'.

''You wouldn't expect to do everything James Bond does, because, you know, he's a fictional character in a movie … not real.''

We've got enough fiction in our lives without conceding the one area in which we are still allowed to explore our own imagination for our own pleasure. Without giving it up to Hollywood.

Twitter @jennaprice or email

jenna_p@bigpond.net.au