Ecouraging Teen Sex vs. Accepting It

I am a teacher at our local joint vocational school and teach evening school for adults preparing them for the GED test, and consequently I usually have my mornings free. Twice a week I meet a group of female friends for coffee at our local Paneras ( God I love the cinnamon crunch bagels.) My friends pretty much know my views on raising children and it can often times lead to interesting discussions.

Several weeks ago we were talking about teenage sex and the question came up as to how do we as parents balance encouraging our kids to have sex or just accepting it. I don’t think any parent would encourage their teen to engage in sexual activity, but does providing birth control, or providing your teen and their partner privacy encourage sexual activity?

As a group it was agreed that providing birth control to young girls that are having or close to having sex is an intelligent parenting decision. Although two of my friends did worry that providing contraception could be seen as condoning or encouraging sexual activity, it was agreed that it was better than the alternative of unprotected sex. Where the discussion got interesting was when we began to discuss whether or not we allow our children and their partners the privacy to engage in sexual activity.

Of the 5 women there, 3 firmly stated that even if they did know their children were having sex, they would tighten the leash and supervise them as closely as possible to severely limit the opportunities for sex. They were pretty much of the opinion that even though kids have sex, it is the parent’s responsibility to limit the opportunities as much as humanly possible. They felt that anything less than that would be seen as encouraging young premarital sex. It was interesting because these 3 women all felt that they would provide birth control if needed to children as young as 13 but all felt that they would attempt to limit any opportunity for sex even for their older teens until they were out of the house and had no control over them.

The other two women, myself being one of them, felt that emotional maturity was an overriding factor and we did feel that anyone under 13 (an arbitrary age we chose) did not have the maturity to engage in a physical relationship. And we also said that there are 15 and 16 yr olds that don’t have the necessary maturity. Our minority opinion was primarily based on maturity level and the seriousness of the relationship the child was in. As we took the minority view, my friend and I both felt that teenagers involved in a serious relationship should be allowed to have some privacy with their partner, where they could feel free to have intimate time together. The other 3 women felt that this would be encouraging our children to have sex, however we believed that we were not encouraging it but only accepting it and hoping our children would learn to have sexually healthy attitudes as they grew into adulthood. With my 2 daughters, 17 and 15 who are both in committed relationships, I allow them privacy and do allow occasional sleepovers with their partners, and yes same room and same bed. Is this encouraging my daughters to have sex? I don’t think so, they have already made that decision on their own. I feel it is accepting the fact that they are in physical relationships and dealing with it in a practical safe and healthy manner.