Dreaded Co-ed Sleepover

Parent Cafe
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<p>mini: I agree.</p>

<p>I think sex can do emotional damage at any age, especially when love is involved. Actually, I think safe sex is a lot safer than love. However, we keep doing it, loving and getting hurt. Emotional damage can be inflicted on the young with or without sex. </p>

<p>I trust my kids, especially my D. She won the leadership award in fifth grade (hadn’t been given for years), and she would not tolerate kids hooking up in her house. As for couples, why would they choose the opportunity to have sex when they’re with all their friends?</p>

<p>No one answered Emeraldkity’s point about gay kids, but I think it’s a good one. With so many kids gay or bi these days if we’re really that worried about sex, we’d have to prohibit all sleep overs or grill kids about sexual proclivities, obviously absurd.</p>

<p>Avoiding teenage sex is just not a high priority for me. People thought I was crazy when I let my 16 year old daughter visit her 19 year old boyfriend at college. She had good reasons for wanting to go. He was (and is I assume, but we no longer know him) a very responsible person. I knew she’d be safe. I didn’t ask her if “anything happened”, figuring this was personal. She volunteered that it hadn’t because she wasn’t ready. She had no reason to lie. If she did, so what? She’s twenty now and thinks “hooking up” is gross. (She’s definitely more conservative than I am.)</p>

<p>My S was disgusted when I suggested he take condoms to his summer music camp at almost 17. I wasn’t encouraging, condoning. I just agree with JHS that the message of safety is most important.</p>

<p>D explained that it’s gross for a parent to provide (in her mind) and that she was sure he could get them himself if he needed them. I doubt he did, but then again, don’t know. Don’t care.</p>

<p>Bay: I agree that no one should be criticized for different practices, mores. And I suspect some differences in viewpoint have to do with our own experiences. </p>

<p>I didn’t find teenagers anything like the media description. The kids we knew were more focused on getting into the college of their choice than origastic practices.</p>

<p>Friends were friends. I really believe sex was beside the point. Others may think I’m naive. I really do believe I know my kids.</p>

<p>Sometimes the boys are the laggards. I agree with mini, about this. Particularly in this generation.</p>

102

<p>^That is an EXCELLENT point.</p>

<p>The movies that depict high school (Mean Girls, Teenage Drama Queen…pretty much any Lindsay Lohan flick XD) WAYYYYY over-dramatize things. No high school that I’ve ever heard of is like that, and parents need to realize that. </p>

<p>Do we have drama? Absolutely. But I can’t remember there ever being a school-wide fight because of a “burn book” or something of the like. Don’t listen to the movies, folks.</p>

103

<p>I wasn’t critisizing not having the coed sleepovers, I mean who cares, but one reason given was lack of sleep, well, that is just what parents deal wtih, lack of sleep until they aren’t under our roof anymore</p>

<p>to me, other reasons are valid for someone to not want to host a co-ed sleepover, but the not getting any sleep shouldn’t be one of them</p>

104

<p>

I’m not sure if this was referring to me, but JHS very well could have been with the “near teen” comment (I’m 18, fyi). Anyway, just for the record, here are my general thoughts on the many rather unrelated topics brought up thus far: </p>

<p>1) I don’t think teenagers try to have sex as often as possible </p>

<p>2) I do think that teenagers have sex, as Mini’s stats very obviously state</p>

<p>3) I think that many sexually active teenagers have parents who believe they aren’t</p>

<p>4) I think that sexual activity comes with a large emotional tole, which can strike teens and young-teens especially hard, and I think that most teenagers (high school aged and younger) are better off waiting</p>

<p>5) I don’t think that sex for this age group–high school seniors–is the end of the world (though whether you want to risk it happening in your house is a separate issue)</p>

<p>6) I think that inclined teenagers could and would have sex during a co-ed sleepover that is not closely controlled–let’s just recall for a second that I am in this age group, and I can name off a number of students who had sex in similar situations to this while in high school, were academically minded, didn’t get into large amounts of trouble–if any, and now go to top-10 and top-20 schools (Harvard, Hopkins, Chicago, etc.)</p>

<p>7) I think it’s the parents’ decision whether or not they feel comfortable with co-ed sleepovers in general and whether they actually want to host one, which is a different issue</p>

105

<p>

I don’t think “so many” are gay these days; it’s just that more are out of the closet. I also think it’s side-stepping the issue a bit, as only 1-3 in a group of 30 kids will be gay (statistically speaking). Unless you think rape is an issue, I don’t think it’s as big a deal as a bunch of guys and girls sleeping in the same room/floor/house.</p>

<p>As another near-teen, I agree with most of corranged’s points. As an addition to her point #2, I’ll add the anecdote that I have rarely been as shocked as when the principal announced that the upstairs lockers had been removed because people were having sex behind them. I was pretty naive. :rolleyes:</p>

<p>I’m curious- for those of you who wouldn’t agree to host a co-ed sleepover, would you let your S/D go to one?</p>

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<p>Warblersrule, on the gay issue, you forget that friend groups don’t go by statistics. It’s like saying a group of friends will have the statistical “right” numbers of students of each race in the group, which is generally not the case. If there is one gay kid in the group, there are likely more, and since many parents are talking about theater kids, the number of GLBT students is likely higher than in the general population.</p>

107

<p>

No, it’s not. There is a great deal of research available regarding gender differences and mating patterns. Just because current value systems prefer a homogeneous view of human sexuality – that males and females have the same needs and strategies for meeting those needs – doesn’t make it so. Human biology doesn’t evolve that quickly.</p>

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<p>I don’t have much time now, and this was the first article I found. But what I don’t understand is why more women aren’t objecting to casual sex for young females? What’s in it for the girls? I find it hard to believe that the 15 - 20 year old boys they are with are really capable of making sure the experience is equally enjoyable. Why isn’t this a feminist issue?<br>
<a href=“http://home.utah.edu/~u0525361/Offprint-final.pdf[/url]”>http://home.utah.edu/~u0525361/Offprint-final.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

108

<p>cgm, I answered your question in my post when I said this:</p>

<p>“If you can’t pass the sniff test, your mom is coming to get you right now.”</p>

<p>If the mom refused, I would probably take a visibly drunk teenager to the hospital. Best believe lawyers know about covering their butts.</p>

109

<p>corranged, yes I was lumping you into my straw man. Both the “near teen” and the “not exactly” included you. With some guilt, of course, because I knew that wasn’t really your position. (It’s not really anyone’s position, as far as I can tell, just something to accuse other people of thinking.)</p>

<p>I appreciate your perspective, honesty, and judiciousness. I just have a little emotional problem dealing with two things you’ve said: (1) The part about enjoying risk. That’s upsetting. (2) The part about you being 18. Yeah, in dog-years. Someone should get your parents to write a how-to manual on raising really wise girls. I suspect, however, that fairies or wolf-gods had to be involved, too; humans don’t usually get such amazing results. </p>

<p>sjmom: Of course it’s a feminist issue. However, there aren’t that many 15-year-old feminists running around. And not too many teenage girls want to listen to their mothers tell them that the emotional constriction of the boys they know is a feminist issue.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, the gender-role cliches don’t describe my kids much at all. My daughter is of the “love is just a four-letter word” persuasion, and has been since she was 10. My son is a red-blooded straight boy, but his strength of character and general morality around sex is about 50 times what mine was at his age.</p>

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<p>Some of the research cited above was from the seventies; that’s centuries ago in gender research.</p>

<p>In addition, for the most part, women have been raising their children alone. This was routine in foraging and most gatherer-hunter societies. It is only since the advent of agriculture that the “nuclear family” has been around; in fact, it is only since the advent of agriculture that paternity has been a concept.</p>

<p>Not coincidentally, the period of agriculture, which made children an economic assent and heralded knowledge of paternity, also saw the beginning of gender roles and prohibitions on female sexuality. </p>

<p>Since we are (or already have) evolving away from agricultural societies, and children are no longer an economic asset, prohibitions on female sexuality are also waning.</p>

<p>Our assumptions, which are revealed in most research, date from value systems that are not universal geographically, culturally or historically.</p>

<p>Just as an aside, think of the numbers of men who now live with other men’s children through divorce-blended families. This would be unthinkable in strongly agricultural societies.</p>

111

<p>warblersrule wrote:</p>

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<p>Since this applies to me, I will answer: “no.” While I trust my Ds, I don’t think “trust” has anything to do with whether they will have sex, unless I ask for their promise not to engage in it. Regarding sex, I don’t expect them to behave any differently from the average teenager (whom, we’ve already been told will likely have sex by 15-17). So, there is a reasonable chance that they could have sex at a co-ed sleepover, whether by choice or due to peer pressure. I’d prefer they did not have sex while a guest in someone’s home and not while others are present, because to me it is a private matter and as I said I live in a community that is quite gossipy.</p>

112

<p>Bay,</p>

<p>Please don’t take offense to this because it’s not meant to cause offense. But to me that read that you really don’t trust your daughters. If you trust them, you should trust their judgement to not have sex in a public place.</p>

<p>Of course, it’s always possible that we just have different views of trust. I know my mom allowed me to go to a co-ed sleepover at my friend Chantel’s house, as long as we didn’t leave the house (her parents were not there). Nothing happened because none of us wanted to violate the trust of our parents.</p>

<p>But like I said, maybe we just have different ideas of trust.</p>

113

<p>warblersrule wrote:</p>

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<p>Both my D and my S have gone to co-ed sleepovers and called me to get them or driven themselves home when they were sleepy. They just like sleeping in their own beds and waking up at noon I guess.</p>

114

<p>mythmom, do you think that human biology has changed since the 70’s? You might try googling “gender differences mating” to see that psychologists have been studying the biological basis for human sexuality for quite some time. Today’s cultural norms are not aligned with biology as far as human sexuality is concerned. Here is another link: <a href=“http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/HomePage/Group/BussLAB/pdffiles/Human%20Mating%20Strategies.pdf[/url]”>http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/HomePage/Group/BussLAB/pdffiles/Human%20Mating%20Strategies.pdf&lt;/a&gt;

</p>

115

<p>My oldest attended private schools-
Things are different there- more hippiish if a school that attracts the Gates and Bezos kids could be called " hippie"</p>

<p>But lots of overnights- adults were adults- not sorted by sex for chaperone purposes and cabins were not divided by sex- either for kids or adults. My husband attended all of the longer overnights, but I remember when she was I think in 1st grade , the first field trip of the year was at an ( in city) park, with cabins. It was a traditional thing the whole school did every year- but it was a new school for her, and she was a little hesitant about me leaving, but I wasn’t prepared to stay. I didn’t have a sleeping bag and I had class the next day. One of the boys told me I could sleep with his dad :o, but I told him " that was OK, I wasn’t going to stay all night"
Not that I wanted his dad to feel slighted, but my husband would be lonely if I wasn’t home.</p>

<p>So that was grade school.
In middle school they have a backpacking trip in … November, on the Olympic Penusula, which is rainy in best of times.
It is planned by kids and teachers interfere very minimally. Teachers actually camp away from the students and bring their own food- it was a LOTF ( lord of the flies) sort of thing.
Ds tent- collapsed or flooded or something and she and her tent mates had to squeeze in with a “boys” tent.
In the spirit of cooperation of course.
That didn’t even make the shocking radar- that was reserved for someone finding or bringing some fuel and when they were having trouble keeping the fire going, dumping it on the already lit fire.
No one was hurt, and I have no idea how big the fire was, but it seems dumb from my perspective.</p>

<p>The way I compare kids I know now, with how I and my friends were in high school, is like were different cultures.</p>

<p>We were very sexualized, the pill was available and legal, abortion was legal, disease wasn’t rampant and sex made us feel adult. IMO- and it was pretty much fun and it didn’t give you a hangover ;)</p>

<p>Kids I know now, are interested in so many things- that romantic entanglements just are not something they really want to deal with right now- they don’t have time.</p>

<p>I also agree that sleepovers, are probably not the place sex is occuring unless it is same sex experimentation, which occurs if I remember right in grade school or a little after.
BUt middle of the day, going home for lunch or for “study” after school- has more opportunity</p>

116

<p>sjmom:</p>

<p>The studies you cite surveyed adult men and women from the 70’s, 80’s, whatever. Those adults, and especially the responses they give to surveys, are strongly influenced by all the societal conditioning has taken place upon them. This does NOT mean that the men and women were wired differently in the first place.</p>

<p>To put it another way, if you did the same survey in, say, Iran, you would find even larger differences between men and women’s preferences. Most women would say they wanted no more than one sexual partner, or would even refuse to answer that question. That does NOT mean the women in Iran come WIRED differently than the women in the US. Just means that Iranian society has conditioned its women even more than American society.</p>

<p>You need a very different kind of study to find out whether boys and girls (and for that matter, gays and heteros) are wired differently.</p>

117

<p>I don’t think human biology has changed, but the interpretations of it definitely have.</p>

<p>Preconceptions are part of the game when evaluating social science research. </p>

<p>This is even true of ethnological studies relating to animals.</p>

<p>Researchers see things through their own lenses, and these lenses have changed.</p>

<p>And biology is not the origin of many social behaviors. My post indicates that the ideas expressed have only been thought true of humans for roughly 10,000 years. Before this, it is believed, the sexuality in terms of desire and commitment of women and men was not different. This was one of the things Margaret Mead started looking at in THE COMING OF AGE IN A SAMOA in which she looked at a pre-agricultural society.</p>

<p>As vicariousparent points out, the social bias is even stronger for self-reported anecdotal evidence.</p>

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<p>JHS, I don’t think it’s an attraction to risk in general but an attraction to the risk of getting “caught.” It’s adventurous more than stupid, which is great when the consequences of “risky” sex could include HIV and pregnancy. I don’t think this is anything new, though, so while I don’t see why it would be a big plus, I also don’t see how it would be very worrying. Anyway, that’s only one possible reason why people would feel OK having sex at a sleepover. Another reason is probably straightforward disrespect and lack of empathy for others’ feelings and discomforts. (I’ve never had sex at a sleepover, and I generally don’t have much respect for those who have.)</p>

<p>Thanks for the compliments. As to my parents: my father is brutally honest–all the time, extraordinarily argumentative–all the time, quick to anger, devoted to learning (if not the most naturally gifted), proud, and funny. My mother is pretty much the opposite. Maybe it’s the balance? :slight_smile: </p>

<p>EK4, maybe this is a difference by area. I went to school in the Northeast, and I know people who had sex on school camping trips and other overnight field trips. It was kept pretty quiet, but it wasn’t unusual.</p>

119

<p>mythmom you are looking at anthropological info. I am looking at psychological research, which tends to be closer to biology than anthropology. </p>

<p>vicariousparent, I can only suggest that you actually read the literature. There is a ton of research on gender differences in a variety of areas, including mating behaviors. I’m not going to keep posting exerpts – not all behavior is culturally based.</p>

<p>By the way, my first degree was in psychology, and the tendency during the late 70’s was definitely nurture over nature. But the advances in neuroscience support a more biological understanding of the differences between males and females.</p>

120

<p>It’s still all junk science, whether in the U.S. or Iran, where men have traditionally treated women as chattel.</p>

<p>Mead also studied patriarchal societies, even in Samoa. There have been studies of matrilineal societies in Kerala, where (until recently) a woman “married” an uncle, but lived in a compound with the doors to their rooms facing out, so they could couple with as many different men as they pleased (with “fatherhood” imputed to the uncle who lived inside.)</p>