Purely hypothetical, brought on by Freejookey’s thread. So, say your 15/16 year old daughter invited a 27 year old man over for dinner to meet you. Assume that he’s gainfully employed and seems reasonably bright. What would you think / say / do?
Note I’m more interested in dealing with your kid than dealing with the hypothetical guy.
I’m torn on this. On the one hand, I know I could absolutely forbid her from seeing the hypothetical guy. But I’ve been trying to cultivate an adult relationship with my daughter, in which I advise, and rarely take on the authoritarian role. So if I jump in with the parental “You will do what I say” I’ll be undermining a lot of my hard work and lose a lot of the trust I’ve gained.
On the other hand, I could take the advisory role & tell her “I think it’s a bad idea” and let her make up her own mind. I suspect there’d be a fair amount of hand wringing from her friends and relatives (and my friends and relatives, along the lines of “Why the hell are you letting that creep hang around?!”) Of course, I’d have to do some of the standard 'Dad meets boyfriend" stuff, like take him to the gun range, have him help me oil my swords, invite him to the dojo for some karate lessons, etc.
My gut reaction is - if she feels strongly about it, she’ll try to get around any restrictions I place on her to see this guy. So I’d be better served by letting her make her own choice and keeping a watchful eye.
Maybe the real question is “How much more trouble can she get into with a 27 year old than with a 17 year old who has a drivers license?”
At 17 years old, I can think of few things that would have caused my daughter to move out faster than to try to tell her who she could and could not see. Were I to oppose such a friendship, and, assuming you’re basing this off the same sort of relationship as in the other thread, only friendship, with the possibility of a physical relationship off in the distant future, opposing it would have gained me absolutely nothing and possibly cost me a daughter.
I’m not a parent, but I’m wondering if there is an age limit. Like, if you don’t come out and say “27 year olds are off limits” is it weirder if the guy is in his forties? or older than the parents in question?
Speaking as a former teen daughter I will tell you this: first, nothing would have pissed me off more. Second, I really would have appreciated it. My parents took the “let her make her own mistakes” route with me. I have two failed marriages, my kids have different dads (the 2 ex-husbands), and I am just now getting back into college (they let me drop out to work in the real world and it wouldn’t have done any good to argue with me anyway) and getting my life on track.
Just once I wish someone would have said “you know, I don’t think you ought to do that…” At least I would have thought someone gave a shit about the colossal cluster fuck I was turning my life into.
My oldest daughter is only 8, so I haven’t gotten into teen issues yet. But I’d do everything I could to stop this. I cannot imagine the circumstances where I’d be OK with a 16 year old dating a 27 year old (regardless of genders), so when the 16 year old is still in my care, I’d consider it my responsibility to prevent it. I’m utterly certain my wife would agree with me.
I’d start by talking to my daughter, pointing out why this isn’t a good idea - lack of similar life experiences, thought process & goals of a 27 year old who’d be willing to date a 16 year old, etc. At this point, my goal would be to guide my daughter to the correct decision. I’d give her a while to think about it & hopefully give the guy the boot. If that didn’t work, then yes, I’d move up to a more active role - forbidding her from seeing him (I know, likely to backfire), getting law enforcement involved, making sure the family & friends of the guy know that he’s trying to date a 16 year old. I can’t honestly say that I’d draw the line at threatening or harming the guy though - if he can’t see what’s wrong with dating a 16 year old who’s parents are opposed to it, I’d worry he’s an actual, imminent, physical threat to my daughter.
I’d probably start off trying to engage her in a discussion where she would come to the conclusion herself that such a relationship is not desirable or healthy, but if she failed to see such reason, I’d have no qualms about laying down the law. I imagine I would tell my daughter that I did not approve, and would not allow it simply because I felt the age discrepancy too great, and she should be spending more time with people closer to her own age. Bottomline, it would be exceptionally unusual for a 27 year old to have enough in common with a 15/16 year old to want a close relationship - whether platonic or intimate.
Yes, it is important to cultivate an adult relationship with your kids, but IMO it does not reach its fruition until the kid actually is an adult. This is a case in which your experience and judgment is simply better than hers. And you do not have to stand by idly when she makes what you consider bad decisions that are not in her best interests.
I’d say I am required to support and look after her until she comes of age, and this is one aspect in which I choose to do so. If she insists upon continuing a relationship, she can request emancipation or move out whenever she is of age. And if I suspect intimacy, I will gladly pursue any possible prosecution of the guy.
This actually came up in my family, however it was my 18 yr old son dating a 33 yr old woman. I hated her - she was a user and only wanted him for money and sex. Of course he wanted the sex! I tried to talk to him, over and over, and never got through to him.
Long story short, he moved out (with my foot on his ass - for more transgressions than this) and lived with her for a while. She screwed him over royally, and he finally woke up.
I’d try to stop it, if I could. I know your scenario said that the older person was a good guy, but I believe age differences can make a huge problem in most cases.
I have to agree with Ethilrist. The surest way to drive her to dating someone would be to forbid her. (I’m speaking about my specific daughter, not a generic hypothetical one; some people respond to forbiddings, she takes them as dares.) Counsel, perhaps, but even that’s a very fine line to dance. It’s not because she’s 17, but because she’s a human being. When has what anyone ever said to you in the infatuation stage ever changed your mind about a boy/girlfriend? If you’re like most people, never. It may, however, change your mind about the speaker. I’d rather not alienate my daughter just at this crucial stage of development, when she’s really likely to need me more than she has since toddlerhood, although in a very different way.
I was that girl, although the age difference wasn’t so great. There really was nothing, positive or negative, my parents could have done short of locking one or both of us up. If they had forced me to choose, I would have left with him and literally not spoken to them again. My daughter’s too much like me; I won’t risk that with her.
I know the OP said he was more interested in dealing with the child, but if my daughter brought a 27-year-old guy home for dinner you’d better believe I’d be focusing on him. Asking him about his parents, how old they were, about events and pop culture icons from before my daughter was born, about his past schooling and jobs. And then I’d bring up my little sweetie’s first bra and upcoming junior prom, oh yes I would. And that coach at her school who was sent to jail after dating a player. At a particularly tense point in the evening I think I’d have to burst out with, ‘So tell me why, exactly, you’re interested in 16-year-old girls?’
I’ve never been a parent or a teenage daughter. But I have been a teenage boy and a 27 year old man. Looking back at both those times I honestly think that I was ‘better’ person at 27 than I was as a teenager - I wasn’t so crafty and desperate to get into some girl’s pants at any expense like I was as a teen. As an older guy I was more aware of the other (i.e., non-sexual) joys of a relationship. More into finding my soul-mate. I guess this is probably true for most guys. So if sexual issues are the main concern that people have with this scenario, then I wouldn’t be so worried.
On the other hand, what I would be worried about is why the hell is this 27 year old guy interested in my 15/16 year old daughter?? At 27 I was interested in my profession, politics, philosophy, basically things that even a smart teenager wouldn’t have any experience of. I would be worried that there is something possibly ‘wrong’ with this guy.
Sorry - now I see the “dealing with the kid” aspect is your concern. I have no experience there. Excuse me.
I could tell you that my parents would have taken the Dinsdale approach but go further in that if I broke their rules they would have promptly sent me to an all-girls boarding school in remote Scotland. However, I didn’t like to piss my parents off, as I have always been quite fond of them (even as a rebellious teenager) and secondly, I wasn’t interested in men 11 years older than me as a teenager because I was too busy doing high school related activities with children my age. And I totally had that “I am so above most teenage activities” attitude too. If I heard a teenager had something going on with a guy that old I’d assume she was a complete social outcast and was taking some solace in having a mature older boyfriend and alternate life outside of school.
I guess it’s a gigantic personality difference. While I had a bad teenage attitude, I simply could not imagine trying to make my parents so desperately unhappy or defy them on things like this. How does one go about losing a teenage daughter because they enforce discipline? My parents had a) money b) a house and c) cars. I had…none of those. Where was I planning on going? Maybe my sister and I were always cost-benefit analysis creatures.
I’d be concerned about the emotional maturity and stability of anyone a few years older than her that would want to “date” her. At least as a pure hypothetical.
As for reality, I’ll let you know if this comes up some time in the next few years - my daughter turns 13 in 2 weeks.
I am the parent of a 16 y.o. girl, and I would forbid it (and I’d take the same approach Al Bundy took to Kelly Bundy’s boyfriends in showing him the door). I don’t know the mechanics of how I would go about it, other than I’d likely be the more level-headed one, trying to quell the fires started by Mrs. D_Odds while simultaneously enforcing the end of any such relationship.
In Canada, as i understand things, legal age of consent is 14 - with a few exceptions (It’s wrong if someone is in a position of power - or something) so I couldn’t just use the law.
I’d probably sit down with her and try to be rational. I’d ask her to look at things objectively and ask herself if she’d really want to date a guy who was willing to date a high school girl. I’d like to think my daughter would be smart enough to answer that one.
She hits the drinking age (19) and I suppose I’d be fine with it. That’s a pretty important 2 or 3 years if you ask me…
Because it’s my house and my rules?
Seriously, WTF is wrong with everyone except Dinsdale and D_Odds? Wooo! My teenage daughter will get mad. So what? Teenage girls get mad at everything. What is she going to do? Run away with him? A call to the cops might squash that love affair right quick.
It seems to me that you can have a reasonable discussion about why she can’t date some 27 year old. But at the end of the day, it’s still illegal and she is still a 16 year old girl who depends on you for room and board.
Once she turns 18, she can date whoever she chooses.
When I was 13, I met a guy that was 20 and we hit it off like gangbusters. He was in the Marines and got stationed in Japan. We began as pen-pals while he was over there (after initially meeting at the Mall) and ended up with a life-long friendship. He never tried to hit on me, and while he did make a few comments occasionally about how he couldn’t believe he could fall for a girl as young as I was, there was never anything sexual between us. We are still friends, although he has admitted that he always “had a crush on” me.
That being said, as a mother of a 16 year old, I would not allow her to date someone that much her senior. We actually had to threaten to call the police on a 24 year old man 2 years ago because he didn’t understand that she was not interested in anything more than friendship and would not stop calling her and emailing her. She’s a smart kid, and knows that there’s usually only one thing on a guy’s mind. If she had been interested in more with that moron, she would have found herself under constant watch.
