That’s a disturbing story, fetus. Wow.
Still, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have the worst case scenario in mind when making rules for your children. But as I said, I can see my perspective change quite a bit when I actually have children.
Bravo! My parents didn’t consider it to be a foregone conclusion for me either, which was tremendously helpful in helping me stay away from sex.
I wish more parents thought they way you do.
I met my OH when I was 15, we were both on holiday, him with his mates (he was 19) and me with a friend and her very liberal parents.
He lived 100 miles away from me and for a while he came down to see me every weekend for a day. After 2 months my parents let him stay over, but in seperate rooms (I was 16 by this point) Then a couple of months after that I stayed at his house (with him on the sofa). We didnt have sex for about 6 months at which point he started to stay in with me at his house. His mum was fine about it and just stopped leaving the duvet on the sofa when she realised. He had to sleep in a seperate room at my parents house until I left home at 18, although that didnt stop us getting up to naughtiness.
Ironically, the only time we got caught at my parents house was on Xmas Eve 5 days before I was due to leave home. They didnt wake us but went bolistic in the morning!! I wouldnt have minded but we hadn’t actually done anything, we just slept together!! :rolleyes: And we were engaged!
I still feel a bit weird about sleeping together in the same house as my parents and I’m 28 now and we’ve been married for 9 years!
Q.N., the puritan remark wasn’t neccessarily directed at you. In fact, it was mostly from my personal experience with my future in-laws of a decade ago. When my fiance and I visited her parents we weren’t allowed to sleep in the same room because we weren’t married (though I’m sure my MIL knew we had been sleeping together for several months already). Her “puritan” stance had no logic behind it. We were both in our mid-twenties, self-supporting, and knew all about pregnancy risks and STDs. Her rules were based on traditions handed down to her from her parents. It was a rule because, well, because it was a rule I guess. Never figured that one out.
I’m glad you fleshed out your views from your first posts. I know where you’re coming from. Though I tend to disagree that statistics determine how well your hypothetical teens will be able to parent. I tend to think that my kids’ parenting skills will be based largely on how good a parent that I and my SO will be to them.
I’m glad you’re parents took the time to discuss not only sex but relationships with you and your siblings. I can only hope that you will do the same if/when you have kids of your own at that critical age.
I don’t expect my kid to come up to me and ask “Can I fuck my boyfriend/girlfriend in my room tonight?” Though if they ask if they can “sleep over” in the same bed, I’ll most likely say yes unless I have some good reason to think that they won’t be responsible with birth control. I leave it up to them if they want to explore their sexuality and to take it as far as is comfortable to them and their partner. I can only encourage and hope they’ll be safe about it. I will trust my kids to act within their own boundaries about sex rather than let someone talk them into something they’re not ready for. I want to be able to provide a safe place in my own house for my kids to explore their sexuality.
I just don’t want to give the impression to my kids that there are things that they need to hide from me. I’d also like to point out that forced sex is less likely to happen in the teen’s own house than in the back seat of a car or in a stranger’s house.
Oh, and DarkWriter. I know you answered your own question, but it brings up an interesting tidbit. The mother of the girl that sleeps over at our house with my son was one of the opposite sex friends that I was allowed to sleep with in the same bed at my house when I was a teen (and I at hers). So yeah, we have the same views on the subject, as well as my parents and her parents.
That isn’t what I said. Statistics don’t “determine” anything about how any given teen will act. They simply report facts about teens who have sex, who get pregnant, who try to raise children, etc.
While I’d like to think that I’d have better-than-average kids–because I’d like to think I’d be a better-than-average parent–I know that even better-than-average kids often just aren’t emotionally mature enough to make good choices.
I’d like to think my kids, if they were sexually active, would use birth control correctly and religiously. But, unfortunately, birth control is a thing that even really smart, really well-adjusted people mess up on. Same with disease prevention. Same with making good choices re: sexual partners. And even if they do everything right, no method or choice is 100% guaranteed foolproof.
I never felt the need to “hide” anything from my parents, and they raised me in just the way I described. In fact, I felt like I could talk to them about anything.
I also knew that when they disapproved of my decisions–sexual or otherwise–that it didn’t mean I couldn’t talk to them about said subject anymore.
True, but it does not follow that allowing your child to have consensual sex in her own home will prevent her from ever being forced to have sex elsewhere. Obviously, if daughter is asking to have boyfriend sleep over, she likely (though not necessarily) wants to have sex with him. I fail to see how saying “yes” to a sleepover your daughter wants is going to keep her from getting raped another time.
Well, I’m going to kind of take this back to where I was when I first started reading the thread (which is nowhere near where I am now, by the way.) The sex thing didn’t even occur to me before I opened the thread. Let me 'splain.
A friend of mine has a son whose best bud is a girl. When they were little kids, they slept over at one another’s houses and sort of grew up together as extended family - no problem there. Even after they hit the early teenage years, they were really not interested in one another in “that way” so no one really thought about the sleepover issue. Then, the boy got himself an actual girlfriend, and the girlfriend was very good friends with the best bud girl. The girls would have sleepovers all the time, and the female best bud still occasionally had sleepover at the boy’s house. Then, the boy asked his mom if the bestest bud, and the girlfriend, could spend the night. Now, he was still young enough that the sexual thing PROBABLY wasn’t an issue yet - or at least not a major one; he just wanted his two friends to sleep over.
Momma had to explain the difference between have a girl friend sleep over and having a GIRLFRIEND sleep over.
Incidentally:
I’d like to see some cite for that. I think the logic here is faulty - I was under the impression that MOST rape occurred at the hands of someone familiar to the victim.