“As long as they are not harming the child…”
Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Sally’s gonna have sex, and in the absence of birth control, she’s likely to get knocked up. Wlll that harm her? It sure will. She’s not ready to be a mother, or deal with the decision to give a baby up for adoption, or any of that. Leaving ‘well enough’ alone has a pretty substantial chance of making a mess of this girl’s life. And that’s why the OP intervened.
A young woman who is not mature enough to get condoms on her own and must resort to sneaking out of her house to have sex is mature enough to have a baby?
Condoms are not sinful.
Did you miss the part where the child felt she could not talk to her grandparents about sex, did not learn about sex from them, and was sneaking out for sex specifically to avoid them finding out?
This is a child who is on the brink of getting seriously hurt over this issue, as a direct result of her grandparents attitude about sex.
You did just the right thing. And telling him about Sally’s previous experiences only justifies your actions, (which don’t need justification) and doesn’t help Sally at all. She should choose whether or not to tell them the whole story.
BTW, the grandfather and some of the responses here clearly shows some of the reasons we have so many teenage pregnancies. There seems to be willful blindness about the part that she was sexually active before you gave out the condoms. Better she get pregnant of an STD rather than facing reality.
No buckets of condoms in my house (both my girls were on the pill long before it became necessary) but I’m proud to say that one kid bought them in carload lots as part of an effort to distribute them widely at her very large college (official activity.) Clearly she didn’t go to Oral Roberts.
If mother and grandmother both had kids at 16, they set the tone by their actions, alright. By refusing to talk about it they are actually trying to get her to repeat their mistakes. At 16 it is evident that whatever they did to discourage her from being active didn’t work. Not allowing her protection is harm.
I don’t know where the OP is, but I suspect that in many regions of the country the school guidance councilor (assuming there is one after budget cutbacks) would never recommend birth control. More likely she would tell Sally to stop (futilely) or tell the grandparents. Maybe not, but if I were Sally I wouldn’t bet on it.
Well I don’t think “teens will have sex and there’s nothing you can do about” is a decent argument at all; it’s a copout. Many teens will, but many won’t; plenty of kids do not become sexually active until college or later. So I don’t think you have to start from the assumption that they’re going to do it.
That said, I think the OP handled it just about as well as she could have. I wouldn’t have narc’ed on Sally to grandpa; but I would have defended myself afterward by pointing out that she was having sex before my daughter gave her condoms. Would he rather be a great-grandfather?
I agree with all of this. Just two things I want to add:
(1) These are guardians who just found out that their teenage grand-daughter was behaving in a way they don’t approve of. They’re bound to be irate, they’re eager to place blame, and of course they’d rather blame you than their precious grand-daughter. I wouldn’t take any accusations thrown too seriously right now.
(2) Allow me to present a perspective not often represented on the Straight Dope. The maxim these days is that teens are going to have sex, and it’s useless trying to stop it so you’d might as well make sure they do it safely.
I was raised in a family who taught me to abstain from sex until marriage, and attended a private school which also preached abstinence in place of safe sex. While I did not remain a virgin until marriage, I do credit this upbringing and education for inspiring me to wait until I was 19 to lose my virginity, and also for being less sexually promiscuous than most of my peers.
Now this girl was already having sex before you even provided her with the condoms, so I’m not trying to pretend that these situations are equivalent, nor am I even suggesting that you did the wrong thing. Like I said, I agree with everything billfish678 said, I think you did more good than bad in the situation and I am not criticizing you.
However, I also know that if some parent had done that for me, my own abstinence-only parents would have been FURIOUS. Why? Because right is right, wrong is wrong, and as far as they were concerned, a teenager having sex was flat-out wrong. If someone is doing something wrong, you don’t help them to do that wrong thing as safely as possible. You punish them for doing something wrong, and if you are not responsible for punishing them, you alert the person who is. These people are trying to teach their grand-daughter right from wrong, and in their eyes, you interfered with that teaching process.
But it is not an assumption - it is putting a contingency plan into place. I have earthquake water in the garage and a tool to shut off the gas chained to the gas meter. That doesn’t mean I’m assuming there will be an earthquake, I just want to be prepared if there is one. The assumption of the anti- preparedness set is that telling kids how not to get diseases or pregnant somehow encourages them to have sex, but as the data just given shows it isn’t true. It is as foolish as me thinking that getting ready for an earthquake encourages one to happen. And for many kids, sex drive beats seismology any day.
As an aside, as a former teenager and father to one right now…
I wasn’t aware that teens needed ANY encouragement to have sex.
Imperfect analogy. Sex is a conscious choice, an earthquake is a force of nature.
Sure I read it, but that’s not unusual. That sounds pretty much like every kid in history. What kid wants to talk to their parents about sex?
So what the grandparents think she’s too young to date at 16. She seems old enough to me, but I’m not raising her. I’m sure it’s stressful on the grandparents raising a 16-year-old, more so than it would be for the parents. I’m sure they’re doing the best they can. They’re not evil, they’re not abusing her. Yes, it’s a little strict to say she can’t date, but it’s not the end of the world. Eighteen is just a couple of years away.
I think the OP should have stressed how important it was to discuss this matter with her grandparents, no matter if it was uncomfortable. Kids are notorious for telling one-sided versions of the truth–you don’t really know what they said to her about dating this boy. Plus, the outcome is that she is now concocting lies involving the OP’s daughter in order to have sex. Who is going to council this girl about being mature enough to have sex? The OP or the grandparents?
That teaching process was an epic fail. By blaming the OP, gramps doesn’t have to face his shortcomings as a parent.
I think you behaved in a way that was understandable given the tough “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dilemma you were faced with. However, looking at the situation as a detached bystander I think you probably stepped over a line by providing a girl with condoms and not telling her guardians, or at least giving them a heads up that their child was secretly hanging out with a boy they forbid her to see. Did it occur to you that perhaps there was a reason her grandparents forbade her to see this boy? Perhaps beyond the reasons that Sally was giving you? When it comes to this sort of thing a 16-year-old girl is likely giving you just one side of the story, probably something along the lines of “Oh yeah, my controlling, puritanical grandparents hate sex and the idea of me dating. That’s why they forbade me to see Romeo. I could never talk to them about it, they’d throw me out of the house.” How many 16 year olds do you think there are who ARE comfortable talking with their guardians about them being sexually active? Hell, I’m 30 years old and I’m certainly not comfortable talking with my parents about it.
Obviously I don’t think you’re an evil sex-peddler for giving a young girl advice and resources to keep her from possibly fucking up her life. But I think Sally’s guardian likely wouldn’t be pissed off at you if before giving your daughter the condoms, you dropped them a line and let them know that you have an inkling that their daughter may be trying to see some boy that you don’t think they approve of.
Why are you telling me that? Do the words “in their eyes” not make it clear that I am explaining what I presume the grandparents are thinking? Did I endorse their approach? Did I agree with their analysis of what is right and what is wrong?
In fact, to quote my own post verbatim, I said “These are guardians who just found out that their teenage grand-daughter was behaving in a way they don’t approve of. They’re bound to be irate, they’re eager to place blame, and of course they’d rather blame you than their precious grand-daughter. I wouldn’t take any accusations thrown too seriously right now.”
So I’m not sure why you feel the need to argue with me about how effective or ineffective the teaching process was.
If every kid in history does stuff like this, it’s even more reason to have an open dialogue about sex rather than shutting down any talk of it. The grandparents didn’t talk to her about sex, didn’t teach her about sex, they just said “don’t do it.”
She was already concocting elaborate schemes to sex up her forbidden boyfriend, and nobody but the OP (and kids at school) appeared to council her about anything.
This is the crux of the problem with abstinence sex education, it shuts down the discussion, prevents kids from learning about sex safety, and they learn from bad sources, and engage in unsafe practices. Kids don’t actually need to know anything except “don’t”. When they do anyway, and you know a lot of them will, they don’t have the tools to do it right.
As others have said, the kid was already engaging in the dangerous behavior. For the record and in front of Og and the Straight Dope, if my daughter is firing a gun and doing it stupidly and too afraid to tell me about it, yes, please show her how to do it safely. You’re not overstepping, you’re being part of that village it takes to raise a child. Her safety is about one thousand times more important than my ego as a parent.
I actually do this at the First Aid shack! Along with sunscreen and aloe gel and drinking water and saline enemas. “Your choice, I’m here all day either way,” I tell passersby… 
This, actually, is very true. It’s also irrelevant. THIS girl was having sex. No “will-she-won’t-she” needed. She will. She’s been, for a whole fiscal quarter, before the OP provided her with a way to do it more safely.
A teenaged girl’s libido is also a force of nature.
Encouraging teens to have sex has to be one of the easiest jobs in the world.
Do you ever feel redundant?
Do you ever just “phone it in?”
Did anyone even notice that you took a vacation?
Sally called earlier very tearful and overwhelmed. Her boyfriend’s mother has pulled him out of school and they are both forbidden contact with one another. (This is a very small private Christian school by the way that does teach abstinence and not much else per Sally). She is talking of running away, suicide, and dropping out of school. Of course I called the grandfather back this afternoon and explained the conversation and how I am worried. I also offered the name of the counselor that my daughter is seeing that is doing a world of good for her anxiety issues. He responded coldly that she is being “overly dramatic” that she is “fine and wouldn’t hurt herself” and “a few weeks without seeing this boy will force her to forget about him” Sally will be unable to leave the house without one of them supervising indefinitely. He also strongly suggested I mind my own business and since Sally does not have permission to use the phone, I should hang up on her should she call.
My heart is literally breaking for this girl.
You must never have been a teenager.
There is research on how sex overwhelms our rational mind - but a glimpse of the headlines from the past, oh, 2000 years, shows you that quite nicely.
Does Anthony and Cleopatra mean anything to you? How about Appalachian Trail? And those were adults, not 16-year-olds.
“Oh, everything will be fine so long as the kid doesn’t get horny.” Great plan there.