I agree with this. A parent can be realistic and realize that his or her teenage child is likely having sex, but you don’t actively support it. Would you buy them a bottle of whiskey or a dime bag because they are going to do it anyways?
A game of hide the salami, where the participants are educated in prevention is difficult to compare with encouraging booze and drugs.
When I found out that a friend let her then teenage son and girlfriend spend the night in his bedroom, I nearly fainted. My friend’s rationale was that it was safer and more comfortable than the back seat of her son’s car.
My friend has never struck me as being a permissive sort, but there you go.
Asked in perfect seriousness: why not?
My parents were pretty actively supportive, as you seem to be defining it, when it came to sex. Both didn’t just “realize” that I would eventually be having sex; they recognized that it was a good thing, provided it was done responsibly and intelligently and with emotional maturity. AND, because they didn’t sound like irrational lunatics on the subject, I was much more inclined to listen to the things they had to say about responsibility and intelligence and emotional maturity than I would have been if they didn’t “actively support” it.
End result: had my first sex at 21 years of age, to the women who I later married and to whom I have been married since. Couldn’t be happier. Tell me the downside.
This is a poor analogy. It would be illegal for my 18-year-old child to consume alcohol or pot, and seriously illegal for me to provide it. That introduces a bunch of complications and while I won’t encourage my voting adult children to avoid sex, I will encourage them to avoid breaking the law (and certainly to avoid implicating others in lawbreaking!).
I think I would be more uncomfortable with it if they just went to the nearby city with the sole purpose of getting a hotel room for the weekend, rather than they travelled out of town for an event, and stayed in a hotel together while they were there.
Either way, if they are old enough and responsible enough to travel out of town for the weekend, then sharing a hotel room is not a big deal.
Minimum age 25? And I thought my minimum age restrictions were over by the time I was 21! (FYI, I’m that age now, turning 22 on the 25th. Coincidentally, it’s on the same weekday as my birthday (in 1994), Sunday.)
At any rate, if you haven’t told your kids about sex yet, tell him already before he gets to it. And tell him that abstinence is not sex education- in my high school (Lyons Township, specifically my sophomore year in South Campus at Willow Springs), they preached that, and that’s the wrong way of learning.
The potential sex situation I wouldn’t be as worried about as the traveling out of town alone, unsupervised. But really by 17 it’s not that scary for me. My daughter traveled alone by bus across two states at 17. It would surely depend on the teen.
**Would You Let Your Teenager Go To A Hotel With Their Partner Overnight? **
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE BIG HUGE CAN FULLA NOPE
Well not for nothing, they did go to a couple of museums and attractions. So B tells me.