I think the answer is: it depends on who my teen daughter is.
I think the vast majority of teen daughters cannot have a rewarding, non-exploitive romantic relationship with the vast majority of twenty-seven year-olds. And under such circumstances, I’d begin with reasoning and work my way up to Nixon vs. the Mekong Delta, with grounding, police prosecution, and other nuclear options.
However, I make room for the slight possibility that I might have a teen daughter that’s both mature enough to handle a relationship and intelligent enough to legitimately interact with a man that age, so that his interest in her was as an equal, more or less. I grant that life experiences would still be out of whack… but a 24-year-old post-grad student and a 26-year old high school grad who’s been working full time for eight years also have dramatically different life experiences, and I don’t believe anyone would suggest they shouldn’t date, assuming they were attracted to each other.
So – I very much doubt there’s a real-world situation in which I’d bless such a union… but I’m willing to allow for the possiblity.
I’ll tell you what she’s* not going to do. She’s not going to talk to you. She’s going to keep secrets that you don’t want her to keep. You know, all those taboo topics that parents wish their kids would talk to them about? Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll? That’s the trust I’m trying to build up & don’t want to undermine. So far so good.
And, in my experience, nothing convinces teens to move out faster than holding that over their heads. And that’s not necessarily what I want, either.
The only kids who talk to their parents about those things are the kids who are not involved with them. Kids, even ones who are generally good and smart,sometimes experiment with sex, drugs and alchohol. As most rational parents forbid their kids from doing these things, most rational kids will tend to hide them from their parents.
I’m not a parent, so I’m mostly talking out of my ass, but it seems to me that there is a difference between flying off the handle because you find a joint in your kids purse and calmly enforcing rules that have been clearly communicated. Your kid will be more likely to come to you if they get in trouble if they know that even though there will be consequences, they will be treated fairly as opposed to just getting screamed at and locked in their room.
It seems to me, the time to build that trust is before they get to the age when they start thinking about that kind of stuff.
And where does a 16 year old even meet a 27 year old anyway? That alone would be a red flag for me that my daughters is doing something she shouldn’t be doing like sneaking off to frat parties (and even then 27 is old) or getting into clubs with a fake ID.
I am the mother of a physically, fairly well-developed 11yr old girl. There are already grown men giving her second looks sometimes. Thank God, she’s still blissfully unaware of it and shy about her body.
I’ve already set down the rules on when she’ll be allowed to start dating and the allowable age range. There’s no fucking way in hell she’d be allowed to date a 27 yr old at the age of 16. And if she insisted on doing it, she’d promptly be sent to live way out in the boonies with her grandmother.
And any “man” who thought it would be a good idea to present himself to me and ask permission would be lucky if I were to restrain myself to swearing.
As there would be absolutely nothing I could do to forbid the relationship (for the reasons mentioned by WhyNot) I’d probably welcome him in the family, and give him the benefit of the doubt. I might even look on the bright side and consider a 27-year old is less likely to do teenage stupid stuff like reckless driving. Anyway, I would keep them both very close, so I would know what was going on.
But I* would *take my daughter to the doctor to get her fool-proof birth control. She is going to have sex with someone she is infatuated with anyway; my job is to make sure no unwanted pregnancy happens.
If I would notice that the older guy treated my daughter badly, I would voice my concerns to her, but I would not mention the age difference while doing so. Compare: “He bosses you around” versus “because he is older, he can manipulate you”.
It’s a daily thing. You have to constantly pick & choose your battles. What do you fold on? What are you absolutely resolute on? Neither kids nor parents come with manuals, so every day is a learning experience for both of us. This is especially true with the oldest.
At the dojo, at the charity events my organization hosts (and hence, my family attends), at church socials, by hanging out with her friends that have older siblings (and therefore, older siblings friends), by being around while I’m hanging out with my friends who have younger siblings…etc, etc.
There are plenty of, shall I say, innocent opportunities.
In the boonies, nobody can hear you scream. I’m just sayin’.
My daughter is turning 17 next week. She has zero boy fever so far, and none have come hounding around. I trust her to try to make good choices, and if and when she DOES go insane over some boy, I hope it is with a boy who is a good kind soul. They’re out there.
I will admit that it’s an odd moment when you’re on vacation and men walking by oogle your child. She’s a beautiful kid and has a bikini-ready body. Pretty much turned my brain and eye away from ever looking at some OTHER teenage girl again. They’re kids. Like my kid.
Interesting that the OP went from 15 to 17 by the end of the OP. 15, 17, not much difference unless the 15 year old dated quite a bit and has something of an seasoned awareness of boys by 17. However, nothing could prepare a 15 OR 17 year old for the dynamics of a 27 year old.
Then there’s the whole statutory rape aspect. 12 years is nothing when it’s 27 and 39. It’s everything when it’s 15 and 27. Building a good relationship with your daughter is excellent. I like to think I have a good one with mine, always room for improvement and advances. But she’s 17 not 25! She’s the maturity of, well, a 17 year old.
Well, when it comes to a 16 year old girl and a 27 year old man, that option is certainly on the table.
Yes…I too would casterate him.
I guess not having kids I don’t understand this mindset. Why do you think there is absolutely nothing you could do to forbid the relationship? I mean how do people discipline their kids these days?
What are people afraid of? They are going to lose their “Gilmore Girls” relationship with their daughter? Children need a parent, not another best friend.
He may survive that and testify against you. You have to go with the back of the head, in brand new clothes you immediately burn and a gun you drop in the most convenient river.
How often must I tell you you guys to run your revenge plans by me first?
I was that teen daughter. The 'rents put up a fight. I didn’t listen. It didn’t end well.
The 'rents could have handled things better, for sure: The relationship between me and my mother was terrible (she wasn’t very stable at the time, she is much better (and treated) now) and that totally put a spanner in the works.
As a soon-to-be-parent? There’s no way I’d allow it, no. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and boy would I share my story with my daughter. I was a wunderkind. I was supposedly waaaaaay advanced and mature at a young age (hell, I was in grad school!) – but even so, there are simply some bits of brain chemistry that don’t settle, biologically, until a certain age. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. And there are some “men” out there who, no matter how they try to portray themselves, are controlling assholes looking for younger prey.
The ‘17’ that I put at the end of the OP refers to a boy in her age group - some one a 15 year old girl might actually date who doesn’t have the stigma of “potentially creepy older guy” surrounding him.
Make any more sense? Or did I misunderstand what you were saying?
Because most of us have been 16yo girls and boys. There is no way, short of locking a kid up 24/7, to control their every move, and it’s a bad idea to try. Trying usually results in a kid who will do anything to get out from under your thumb, including running away to Vegas with a 30-yo meth dealer. Coming down too hard on a kid can destroy the relationship.
So as a parent, you try to walk this line between being a firm parental authority and letting your kid live her life, because by 16 she’s too old to control and is right on the edge of adulthood. You can talk, you can love her, you can have family standards and consequences for breaking them, but if she chooses to do something awful, there’s not a lot you can actually do to outright stop her from doing it. She’ll just sneak out or cut school and feel justified and righteous while she does it.
My girls are still little, and I’m all for parental authority, but everyone has to make their own choices too. “Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.”
Oh. I didn’t actually answer the question. I’d be very against it and would go the questioning/talk route. And I’d warn them both that sex = jailtime for him. But really–I’m hoping they’ll be sensible. At 18 I was asked out by a 25-yo and a 31-yo, and it wasn’t hard to see that they were both kind of immature. At 16 I would have thought both of them were creepily ancient.
A 27-year-old man has no reason to court a 17-year-old girl. It’s illegal, and could land the 27-year-old man in jail.
If it were my 17-year-old daughter, I would learn the man’s name and report him to the police if I learned that there were “extra curricular” activities going on between them. That’s rape of a minor, and the man should be in jail.
“Consent” doesn’t apply when the person consenting is a 17-year-old minor. It’s rape, pure and simple, folks. No exceptions.
Can’t beleive this is actually a thread. Is the OP possibly contemplating raping a 17-year-old girl? We don’t need to be contributing to his fantasies.
This is pretty much what I was thinking. As a father of a daughter your one job is to keep her off the pole. Letting her date someone 11 years her senior when she’s still a minor is akin to building her a practice pole in the garage. No good can come of it.
there is nothing “rational” about forbidding kids from having sex or alcohol, that is the pure irrational side of parenting. Sex and Drugs including booze should be discussed, how to enjoy these things without getting pregnant/dui/killing or hurting someone should be on the table. and if you think “My kid is different they would NEVER have sex/drink/smoke pot” you are delusional. I dont have a number and any statistic would be fairly meaningless but does anyone here thing that a significant number of people wait until 18 for sex? 21 for alcohol? never for drugs?
A friend of mine had a fourteen year old daughter bring home a twenty two year old man. The friend had a nice quiet talk with the adult and carefully explained that he expected him to behave in a respectable fashion towards his daughter, and slowly disengage himself from the relationship and disappear.
The guy was bright enough to get the subtle subtext of this conversation and was gone in about a week.
If you’d trouble to actually read the original post, you’d see that **Earthworm Jim **was inspired by a recent thread in which the subject was discussed, and that he wanted responses from parents to a purely hypothetical situation. He was clearly trying to discuss the idea in a calm and rational matter and to avoid a pile-on on the person who began the other thread.
Reading comprehension: it’s not just for breakfast any more.
