In this threadthe scenario is laid out where a smitten teenage girl is basically engaging in humiliating booty calls for a young man she is obsessed with, but who will not be seen with her socially. They are sexually active and this girl has just suffered a pregnancy scare.
The boy is in college and is more or less using the girl to service him sexually, the girls parents have several kids, and appear to have somewhat stressed lifestyle. Dropping a baby into this mix is going to be an enormous burden on everyone. The majority of the thread is of the opinion that it’s very much a MYOB situation. I, and a few others, would consider telling the parents, assuming we are socially connected, as the risk of baby being produced seems to be very high, and may possibly even be part of the girls game plan to cement her relationship to the boy.
While the privacy rights of teenagers are important I believe that in this specific circumstance they are trumped by the very high risk that a baby is going to be produced if this behavior continues.
To the MYOB contingent the rights of everyone except the teenagers (specifically the teenage girl) seem to be entirely secondary here. These teenagers are playing Russian Roulette with everyones lives, especially the parents of the girl as they will likely have to take on the majority of the burden in raising this child. The boy will have CS payments and a child he does not want at this point in his life.
But the opinion is mainly MYOB, talk to the girl, but under no circumstances involve the parents because they will be upset and this will traumatize the girl.
If the girl was going to support herself this would be fine, but that’s not the way this would play out in the real world. A baby is going to land with huge thud on every one’s doorstep at a very poor time in their lives to be taking this on. Everyone is cooing about how “it takes a village” but apparently the village does not include the girls parents.
Where is the ethical duty to the girls and boys parents to warn them of an impending hammer blow to their lives due to their kids incredibly risky and foolish behavior?
Sounds like the kind of girl that’s going to get knocked up, no matter by who. Even if college boy left the picture, she’d anchor herself to some other guy, because she sounds like a nut that has no life if she has no man. Might as well let college boy be the father rather than some anonymous guy she won’t be able to find when it’s time to ask for child support.
Maybe you should just talk to the fornicators and see if they’d like some birth control or talk to her about abortion, in case she does conceive. If it happens, maybe college boy would be able to talk her into an abortion pretty easy, since she lets him treat her the way she does. It doesn’t matter what the parents know, if they somehow keep her from college boy, she’ll find another boy and probably have sex with whoever she can out of spite.
I would tend to argue that teenagers don’t have any right to sexual privacy.
Meaning that any teenager in my house does not have the right to be behind closed doors with another teenager. Any teenager in my house does not have the right to look at porn on the internet, or hide a copy of Playboy under his bed, for that matter.
Not being an actual parent, I might choose to permit some porn, or ignore the copy of Playboy, but I don’t think it would be based on the idea of “right to sexual privacy”.
And I don’t see what the potential financial burden to the family has to do with any such imagined right.
This is the second time I’ve seen someone use that term here - is this a trend, to call people “fornicators?”
Okay, more on-topic - with privilege comes responsibility. She has the privilege to have sex with whomever she chooses, but she has the responsibility to look after the consequences, and if she does not do that, other people have the right to interfere with her privilege.
Wow, you’re pretty good at cold readings as a psychic. Amaaaazing! You really feel confident enough to determine this teenager is a nut and she’ll get knocked up by anyone no matter who because she needs a man? You’re able to detect all of that from what little info we’ve been given? Oookay!
I am a believer of MYOB in a lot of situations, but from what I can see this isn’t one of them. Teenagers are not quite cooked and this is an opportunity to learn a lesson before behaviors and opinions are cemented and become more permanent.
If the girl gets pregnant, the family will be shouldering the burden if she keeps the child. That’s a life changing thing that can be avoided. If you tell the parents and they don’t appreciate the info, so be it. They might get mad at you for a time but if they’re your friend they’ll get over it. If they do listen to you they can devote a bit more attention to the teenager and keep an eye on her and maybe prevent a pregnancy. No guarantee, but maybe.
Perhaps they can talk to her about having a enough respect for herself to not be with someone who treats her as if she’s something to be ashamed of. Allowing that type of thinking to go unchecked, that she’s not worthy of good treatment, is as dangerous as a pregnancy IMHO.
Part of the reason it’s a MYOB situation is the lack of options the parents would have if told. Unless they think their darling little angel isn’t a normal teenage girl, they probably already know she might have sex. They already know what could happen. They already know they could be grandparents, and they already know they could kick her out the door if she’s 18, or…do what if she’s not? Kick her out? Can’t. Force her to be on birth control? Can’t. Anything the girl can do proactively towards avoiding pregnancy is something she is 100 percent in control of. She’s already had a scare; her parents can’t scare her any more.
If people would actually read the thread, this girl’s *divorcing *parents don’t give a rat’s ass about her. There’s more to the whole situation than astro’s outlined.
I guess I assumed he’s talking about more than that particular situation and in the idea of sexual privacy for teenagers in general. If he simply meant that particular situation I would think he’d have put what he typed in the OP into that thread just like all of the other responses about that specific situation. A separate thread would be unnecessary.
Point taken. If they are divorced at the point she produces the baby that takes the stress level on the fractured family even higher, and with (presumed) separate households even fewer common resources to cope with the baby. I think this is even less an argument for MYOB vs letting them know what is potentially coming down the pike with their daughter.
This thread is more about the general notion of teenage sexual privacy when risky behavior is being maintained.
Except it’s not so simple as that: she can’t really take responsibility–not total responsibility–but she very easily may not realize that. I mean, it’s easy to say “I will sacrifice anything for my child, and I am not going to ask for help from anyone”, but that doesn’t mean you can do it. You can sacrifice everything, work as hard as you can possibly work, and still not be able to feed, clothe, shelter, and supervise your kid–especially if you are a teen without even a diploma. And what sort of monster would let their kid go hungry, or naked, or homeless, because they–the teen parent–were too “responsible” to ask for help? And what sort of monster would say to their child “Let my grandchild starve, be naked, live in a car. I didn’t choose your behavior”?
ETA: In other words, “As long as she is ready to take responsibility” is a non-starter. No high school student (unless they have a meaningful trust fund) is ready to take financial responsibility for a baby entirely on their own.
The thing is, if you don’t have a tenuous connection with “other people’s” teenagers you don’t realize how incredibly fragile a teenage girl’s trust is. You have to handle that shit with the sort of care generally reserved for nuclear cores and that last vial of smallpox. If you lose it, they won’t even listen to a word you say, ever again. I think that’s a major factor in any case involving that particular species.
I don’t understand – why isn’t the OP arguing this in the referenced thread? Why do your opinions about what’s being said in that thread need a whole 'nother thread?
In this thread I am addressing the general question of teenage sexual privacy in high risk situations and the relative ethical duties you have to all parties.
I think regardless of their age a person loses his or her right to sexual privacy the minute the results of his or her sexual activity have a potential to negatively impact someone else’'s life.
That’s all true, too - this is a very difficult topic. There has to be more a parent can do than just hope their kids don’t get pregnant and have babies before they are ready to take care of them, though (but I do realize that that happens all the time - I have a friend who has practically raised her grandson for exactly the reasons you said - if she didn’t do it, no one would have).
I would have a talk with the girl, but I wouldn’t say anything to the parents. If a teenager wants to have sex that badly, trying to stop her from seeing the guy might backfire. She might even try to get pregnant on purpose. My cousin did that at age 17, after her mom (my aunt) tried to make her stop seeing her loser boyfriend. She would cut class, and they’d smoke weed & mess around during school hours. She didn’t graduate from high school, ended up with a drug problem and multiple prison sentences, and has had three kids by the same guy–kids that my aunt is now raising. Sans child support, because he can’t/won’t hold down a job. And my aunt is disabled, bipolar, in her late 40s, and hasn’t been able to keep a job since her early 20s. She’s been a single mom since my cousin was a baby. So her situation seems to fit the hypothetical well.
Obviously not every teenaged girl is guaranteed to react the same way as my cousin did. And maybe my cousin would have gotten pregnant anyway, whether her mom attempted to intervene or not. But rebellion is a common enough issue that getting involved in your hypothetical situation has the potential to backfire. Either way you could be damned. My default position is to mind my own business.