I may be mistaken, it has been … a while … but pretty sure if there are teens & both genders are included for an overnight gathering, that’s no longer called a sleepover, that’s a party. If these kids have been tight their whole lives, & you know their families, treat it like a church lock-in – at lights out, girls on 1 side & boys on the other. If they have only known each other a short time, it is best if the parents get to know them before any overnight parties are allowed. Parents need to be involved & stay current with who their kids are hanging out with.
A friend of mines daughter is sixteen now. She has a boyfriend and they spend every other weekend at with my friend and every other weekend at the boyfriends place. Thats perfectly normal here. I don’t think many people would worry about a sleepover when they are that old. 12 -14 I’d be more concerned.
Hmm, I don’t know that I would allow that at 16. Sex at 16 is illegal where I live, and there could be unfortunate legal consequences to either kid or the hosts if anyone chose to complain to the authorities later. But when my son was ~20 and his girlfriend visited for New Year’s Eve, I invited her to spend the night with us, rather than go home that late. I left it up to my son to pick a suitable place for her to stay, and I think they ended up in the same bedroom.
Oh, no. That’s not a good idea. Boyfriend/Girlfriend teen relationships are already fraught with sexual tension. They are asking for a teen pregnancy. I hope they are supervising like prison guards. Both families.
Maybe in some places; elsewhere, parents and schools actually teach their kids about birth control.
I always thought that sleepovers were an activity for younger kids. Sleepovers at 17? None of the guys I knew were into that, or at least it wouldn’t have been called a sleepover.
Do you want them to have sex in your house? Because that’s how you get them to have sex in your house.
If they are going to have sex, why not in your house, in a comfortable bed, in a safe place? My objection is due to the potential legal complications. But I think young adults who can legally have sex should be able to do that in a comfortable and safe environment. Your daughter’s safer against rape if her parents are within earshot. Birth control is pretty good these days.
Yep. You don’t really think it’s NOT encouraging sexual exploration. By providing the place and the wherewithal. Teens need to be taught birth control, of course. That doesn’t mean tell them to go upstairs and have at it. Birth control doesn’t always work. I have a soon to be 20yo that proves it.
I’m confused. Are we talking having their boyfriend/girlfriend sleepover? Because that’d be a NO!
Or are we talking about a sleepover party, with several people, being coed? I’d be open to that, but they’d be in the living room, not shut away downstairs or in a bedroom.
So, yes and no, it depends!
Well when I was a teenager I spent the night over at a girl’s house who also had some other female friends spend the night, we did indeed engage in some sexual activities. I’m a guy but had long hair as a teenager so when one of their Mom’s showed up early to pick one of them up I had to arrange the blankets so just my hair was showing otherwise the girl would have been busted. As an adult now, knowing the stuff I got away with, yeah it’s probably a bad idea.
I had them frequently in high school, and very frequently once my friends and I all got our licenses. You can only spend so much time at the mall. On a given Friday/Saturday night or anytime during summer break, we’d rent movies, watch pro wrestling, order pizza or pick up some McDonald’s, listen to music, play poker or board games, and simultaneously gossip and solve all the world’s problems. I had a group that I was pretty tight with, so 3 or 4 of us would always be sleeping over, I had a pretty big bedroom, other people’s houses, we’d use the living room.
I was referring to a mixed gender sleepover party, no one is boyfriend/girlfriend.
Goddamn Hindsight has ruined my kid’s life! 
It’s funny how little things change, I remember reading some articles about the difference in attitude between the US and the Netherlands (where I’m from) regarding teen relationships. A US scholar did research some research almost a decade ago: http://www.amyschalet.com/parents-teens-and-the-culture-of-sex/
I see a lot of the comments make the same arguments as the US parents back then. For what it’s worth, when I was growing up in the late nineties it seemed quite common that classmate that were a couple, to stay over at each others places (I myself never had anything resembling a real relationship in high school)… and in general I can’t say I’ve heard of many parents make a big deal about it, providing the couple had been together for a while.
O, and I literally can’t recall hearing about any student getting pregnant during my time in high school (which was 6 years).
Well, here in the south (US) teen pregnancy is a HUGE problem. I’ve never watched a graduation ceremony here that there weren’t a few pregnant girls and some with toddlers. So no, I wouldn’t be hosting a co-ed sleepover. We’ve had a big push in this county for sex ed and birth control availability, the numbers seem to have leveled off. We need it to decrease.
I think the Europeans have it right. Like polar bear said, they don’t make sex taboo & kids are educated properly about birth control. But in a country like the US, which was settled by Puritans, old habits are hard to break.
My kids are too old for sleepovers (19 and almost 17,) but it wouldn’t have bothered me.
With my oldest, she came out around 13. Not once did I think about her going to a same sex sleepover and worry about any possible sex happening. My wife and I taught both of them about protection, consent, and self respect.
In the case of my youngest, any gathering big enough to be considered a sleepover would have to be coed, considering the number of LGBTQ friends they have. There are several of their friends that are “paired up” and I probably would not let them invite both of them. While I’m no prude and I’m well aware my youngest and their boyfriend are intimate, I’m certainly not providing an opportunity for strangers’ kids. Too much responsibility for me.
It’s always interesting seeing different viewpoints. Sleepovers were huge with my friends and I at 17 and 18, I think the last one was my first Christmas break from college, I had 2 close friends that were a year behind me at school so they were seniors in high school and had endless questions about what college was like. As an expert freshman, I answered them.
My sleepovers were always mixed-gender, because all of the households involved were always mixed-gender. Some cuartos de fiestas* were officially single-sex, but I never saw one which had guardian dogs at the door barring opposite-sex guests, so…
So long as everybody behaves it’s fine, and so long as one of the people involved is an imbecile it doesn’t matter which other gender they are.
- These get different names in different parts of Spain. A place rented by a group of teens, often paid for in work (for my group of friends it was waiting tables at the owners’ bar, for a friend’s brother fixing the house they used), to use during the summer. You still do most of your eating and sleeping at home, but there will usually be some beds, sofas, and there may not be a kitchen but there will be a fridge as soon as the electricity works.