I’m just curious. If both parties are underage and living at home and going to school, and for whatever reason, one or both sets of parents don’t approve of the relationship, how much power do they have to end it? I mean, they can disapprove, they can forbid, curtail, ground, supervise, harangue, separate. They can put up all kinds of physical roadblocks, but in the end, can they really cause one or both parties to say “We’re not a couple any more”? Even if they don’t see each other, or communicate in any way, are they really broken up?
The Montagues and Capulets put a permanent stop to a certain romance between their offspring. Probably regretted doing so.
Both sets of parents can agree to move to different remote cities, and not tell the kids where the other family went…
I’m assuming that breaking them up is really important.
Not really feasible in the internet age. Also smartphones.
A high school friend of mine was infamous for being caught in his girlifriend’s bedroom sans pants. According to him, emotions were (quite explicably) running high between mother and daughter when his gf loudly proclaimed “There’s nothing you can do about it.” Mom stopped, looked thoughtful, and said “Oh, really?” She was gone the next day, shipped to live with a relative in another state.
Young love being what it is, they vowed to overcome the distance and stay together. Young love being what it is, he was seeing someone else within a month.
16/17 years old.
My folks tried. Her mom tried.
Didn’t work. We eventually broke up, but not because of them.
35 years later, we’re still friends.
With enough effort yes, it’s is possible. However, most families are not going to ship their teenagers to places where communication with the outside world is extremely limited.
Not parents exactly, but the attempt didn’t work for Tolkien’s, legal guardian, even without the added difficulty of the internet age.
I think the OP is asking a more philosophical question: if a couple of teens are physically apart with no communication, but haven’t voluntarily “broken up”, are they still “going out” as long as they are true in their hearts? If one mentally but the other doesn’t, are they like an angsty “Schrodinger’s cat”, broke up and not broke up at the same time until the word gets through?
I have no idea when it would matter, of course, unless there were a third angsty teen in the picture, wondering if putting the moves on one of the others counting as “hitting on someone in a relationship”.
In this day and age, I think it comes down to “What is on Facebook?”
Yes, that is what I’m asking. I’m specifically thinking of a high-school friend, whose irate father declared, complete with banging his fist on the table, that “If your parents tell you you can’t be in a relationship, then that relationship is :::BAM::: NULL AND VOID!” And what she told me was “They can stop me from seeing him, but they can’t ‘null and void’ our feelings.”
Can they? No. Should they? No.
Though it’s certainly possible to phyically restrain your children temporarily until they’re old enough to escape and never talk to you again, if your ego can’t handle your kids growing up.
…signed the Capulets and Montagues.
I’ll bet the Queen regrets having broken up Charles and Camilla. Yes, they can try, but it won’t work. My SIL’s parents called my mother to try to prevent the marriage between their daughter and my brother (over religion). They married anyway.
Easiest way is for the parents to start suddenly approving of the kid’s choice, and pointing out 1) to a daughter, how much like her father the kid is or 2) vice versa for the son.
Agree. Invite him over, lots. Invite him to dinner. Invite him camping. Invite him to work on the project you just invented that urgently needs doing. Have him over and in her face all the time, and one of three things is likely to happen: she’ll realize he’s a douchebag, he’ll realize that this relationship is a lot more work than he’s willing to put it right now, or you’ll realize maybe he’s got some good qualities you didn’t notice before. In any event, the busier you keep him, the less time he’s going to spend sans pants in her bedroom.
Is there still a chance that he is a douchebag with no redeeming qualities and he’s willing to work his butt off for access to her butt? Well, yeah. But those are the annoying relationships which tend to last for years, and you’d end up with him as a son-in-law anyhow. At least you can have an annoying son-in-law and a freshly painted woodshed.
That’s being namby-pamby about it. Go for the killshot and say they’re “nice.” It’s relationship poison, and 100% fatal. Even if he’s a meth-addicted biker who beats her, he’ll one day slip and do something considerate and BAM! - he’s outta there. There are so few nice guys because nobody will sleep with them.
Yes. Yes they can.
It happened to me about 10 years back, in the smartphone era, and she was 22, living at home, with me 28, living on my own and making serious bank.
Sooner or later, if parents have enough control over the principal’s living/money/everyday emotional situation, they can and will make it such that the emotional gain of being in the relationship (even as magnified through the teen lens) does not outweigh the deleterious effects of living in a home that is hostile.
[sub]…man, typing that nine years ago would have sent me straight drinkin.’ [/sub]
Miss Manners suggested telling a daughter, “Well dear, I’m sure he must have qualities that I can’t see.”
Not quite the same thing, but: I used to teach at a high school in which there were two girls who were cousins and best friends. Then their parents began to feud over an inheritance (having a will doesn’t guarantee there won’t be fighting afterwards) and both sets of parents forbid their daughters to speak again. Since they went to the same high school, the parents separately visited the principal, insisting that he have the teachers monitor the girls to be sure they never spoke to each other. The principle said that sure he’d do that. :rolleyes: Of course, nobody bothered them.
You could take Stalin’s approach and send her to Siberia.
I realize this is completely unhelpful, but I hope it’s entertaining, at least.
The phrase “parents breaking up teenagers” makes me think of parents separating teens into component parts, with heads in one bin, arms in another, etc. Or maybe parents are reducing their teenagers into their constituent elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, angstium, impulsivium, etc.