<p>I see what you mean about the group thing evolving into more, JHS…makes sense because a kid can get to know someone pretty well that way. Dating prearranged? I take it you mean thinking of in advance, like picking up the phone and saying “Want to see a movie?”…not very formal, but the intention is to get to know someone better, casually, through CONVERSATION not necessarily sexually.</p>
<p>Yeah, a committed relationship for some, but not for others. I was cheering for the girl in Real Women Have Curves who “loses her virginity” with great forethought just because she is eighteen, a high school graduate and can. She never expects to see the boy again, although he makes noises about continuing the relationship. She says, “You’ll go to school and meet some skinny girl” – see the title of the movie. At that point her future is pressing clothes in her sister’s clothing factory. Then Carmen gets a full scholarship to Columbia, has the guts to leave her co-dependent, narcissistic mother, and looks round and gorgeous on at Times Square. (She also goes on to star as Ugly Betty, but that’s a different story.)</p>
<p>No remorse. Sex? A minor fact of her life. Being told she is beautiful in the nude by a boy she likes? Priceless. So is controlling her own destiny and experiencing pleasure.</p>
<p>If you haven’t seen this movie I really recommend it. I show it to Women’s Studies classes, and it makes the point that in this family the father and grandfather encourage her (as does the older sister) but the mother tries to hold her back. I think it often happens that way.</p>
<p>Then Carmen gets a full scholarship to Columbia, has the guts to leave her co-dependent, narcissistic mother, and looks round and gorgeous on at Times Square. (She also goes on to star as Ugly Betty, but that’s a different story.)</p>
<p>America was also in the Sisterhood of the traveling pants- which my daughter and her 3 best friends adopted as their mantra.
They were a very tight group for three years, until one of them started to become interested in “boys!” and it caused a rift with another girl who didn’t understand why .
But yes I agree it is a great movie.</p>
<p>“how do you get from meeting somebody and being in a committed relationship without DATING and getting to know them?”</p>
<p>I went to a small high school with about 70 students per class, and almost half the kids had started school together as 4-year-olds. We all knew each other WELL. There was a lot of sketchy behavior among my classmates, but sex with near-strangers wasn’t on the list. We had the opposite problem; every romantic option seemed like incest. (My own involvement topped out at the unrequited-crush level, for which I am currently grateful.)</p>
<p>07DAD, thank you for your reply. I agree that we should educate our youngsters about sex. However, while I believe we should educate teens about sex, I don’t think there is a need for them to have it. I understand that teens have a biological urge to have sex, which can be chalked up as an evolutionary instinct. This is only natural because their bodies are telling them to reproduce. Teens in this day and age have no business reproducing - not specifically sex…actually getting pregnant (IMHO…other cultures may disagree). As I mentioned, teens mostly have sex for the wrong reasons. As for those who have sex because they are in a “deep, committed relationship” (this seems to be an acceptable reason for most)…I don’t believe they are in one. How can a teen be in such a relationship…teens don’t even know what love is at that age. I worked during college with a clinical psychologist during specializing in adolescence and this is an issue that came up often.</p>
<p>Well stated, Lockz. Of course the decision is up to our kids: they have the freedom to do what they want as soon as they can drive.</p>
<p>My daughter used to tell me how some of her soccer teammates (ages 16, 17, 18) would brag about having casual, almost anonymous sex. It was like if they had sex with an athlete at their school, they became cooler. I wondered at the time what the girls were really getting. . . was the perceived increase in status worth the risks they took? Was this something truly pleasurable for them? It made me sad.</p>
<p>She is now 23. Over Thanksgiving she told me she would NEVER go out and get drunk and sleep with someone she had just met. But her roommate does this often (prompting worried mom here to wonder what kind of men are being brought back to DD’s apartment).</p>
<p>I don’t know; I’m just concerned about girls/women being exploited or perhaps more accurately, letting themselves be exploited.</p>
<p>SuNa - you are absolutely right when you say the decision is up to the kids. Parents cannot be with their kids at all times, so it is important that they make sure their kids have faith in themselves to make the decisions that are right for them. I think it is also a parent’s responsibility to make sure that teens are well-informed about the ramifications of having sex - not only about pregnancy and disease, but the emotional issues as well.</p>
<p>I wanted to add a few things in light of the turn this discussion has taken.</p>
<p>First of all, because of a late birthday, my daughter will still be only 17 when she goes to college, in fact for pretty much the whole first semester. So as to “consent”, she will legally not be “an adult”. But she will encounter male adults.</p>
<p>Secondly, about some of the posts that I think equate sex with female empowerment, sort of taking the bull by the horns.</p>
<p>My daughter’s best friend used to say that she’d wait until marriage, would not use drugs or alcohol. These two were closer than sisters. Her friend moved across the country in the 7th grade, but they maintained their bond. She’d come up here to visit in the summer to see her mother and we even took her camping. But things changed a couple of years ago. Let me tell you why I have found my child sobbing…</p>
<p>Since living with her father, with a very absent mother, some things have happened to my daughter’s best friend. First she got a boyfriend. That’s normal. They were together for a couple of years, she “loved” him, and they stopped short of sex. Then she met some kids and began to drink with them. She decided that she was going to break up with him, but since she liked drinking, she decided to have sex with him first. Her logic was that she’d rather lose her virginity with someone that she was in a relationship with because she really thought that she might one day wake up drunk and find that she’d done it. So she had sex with this boyfriend of two years and dumped him. He pined for awhile. She moved on to some heavy drinking which resulted in seizures, you can find pictures of her on myspace with bongs and vodka bottles taken with her “new friends” in her bedroom. One kid’s mother paid for a hotel for the kids to party in, and the mother got loaded and started beating up the kids. Of course the kids couldn’t tell what happened. They pile into cars without seatbelts, drunk. They steal. My daughter got a call that her friend made out with another girlfriend for a bunch of boys.</p>
<p>My daughter feels as if her friend died. Maybe she did. If my parents told me that I would have to start paying for the plane trip across the county if I want to see my mother after my 18th birthday, I’d probably be that way too.</p>
<p>Sex does not seem the primary issue here. It could be a key issue, if unprotected. But the rest, the drinking, no seatbelts, general mayhem and violence, are life threatening. So sad for both your daughter and her friend. I feel for your D, witnessing all this from afar. A point is demonstrated here, regarding peer group influence, and how influencial and important that is in the teen years. Things can be vary from great to awful depending on peer group, just class to class in one HS, much less with a cross country move. The other is what sounds a divorce issue, with lack of attention to the details of parenting. Unfortunately something I’ve witnessed a little too often. The picture you paint is heartbreaking. But sex is just a piece of the entire picture, and there is nothing here to me showing empowerment in any sense. I hope she is using birth control.</p>
<p>These posts seem to reflect many embedded attitudes about sex. Some of us think sex is dangerous. Others of us don’t. Some of us link sexual behavior with acting out and it becomes a form of acting out; others don’t.</p>
<p>Yes, we can find sad stories about young women having sex and hurting themselves in many ways.</p>
<p>We can also find many stories of young women having sex and having very constructive lives.</p>
<p>We often see what we look for.</p>
<p>During my adolescence my parents were a very destructive force. Having relationships, some sexual, some friends, with young men did empower me to move away from my parents’ abuse. </p>
<p>My life has really been a footnote to that, a process of building a constructive life. I am stable, married, employed and mortgage paying, a responsible member of society in every way. I doubt if that would be the case if I had stayed in the destructive family unit my family created.</p>
<p>We really can’t generalize from anecdotes. Yes, not from my either. Just one perspective.</p>
<p>My D’s boyfriend’s parents thought she was leading him astray because she thought he should take the junior semester in Germany he was longing to do, go to law school as he wanted and not feel pressured to return to VT. She was painted as a jezebel; this was independent of sex, drugs, alcohol. She was just too “bourgeois” for their taste.</p>
<p>Well, the kids did break up and BF did return to VT without going to Germany or law school. Good thing he dodged those bullets.</p>
<p>I wasn’t worry about what was going to happen. If D wanted to live in VT in a subsistence hippie way, more power to her. If she wants a high power urban lifestyle, more power to her. If she wants to refrain from sexual activity or engage in sexual activity, more power to her. She’s a level headed girl, and although sad (and I know girls like this, many actually) the above story is, it has nothing to do with my D.</p>
<p>BTW: My S was 17 when he went to school too. I wasn’t concerned.</p>
<p>Whatapainthisis - your daughter’s friend is obviously crying out for attention. She’s looking for help, and unfortunately, none of the adults in her life seem capable of giving her the help she needs. Sex is not the issue and neither is drinking/drugs - she wants to know that she is loved and cared for. The sex and drugs are just being used to draw attention to herself. I feel very sorry for that young lady.</p>
<p>mythmom, your D sounds like she will be fine. It’s great that you trust her to make her own decisions - I’m the same way with my D (although my D is only 15, I think she has a lot of common sense and I trust her to do what is right for her). As far as the sex thing goes - my D is only 15, and I do think that is young. OTOH, she has had the same boyfriend for quite awhile, so I do worry about it a little, just because 15 is so young (and the BF is 17).</p>
<p>I heard on talkradio yesterday that the DA is thinking of bringing charges up on the Spear’s girl’s BF as she’s 16 and he’s 19.</p>
<p>arent they in miss?</p>
<p>
[Age</a> of Consent - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,730218,00.html]Age”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,730218,00.html)</p>
<p>In NYS the above would not be statutory rape, nor do I think it should be. The age of consent is 17, but the law does not apply if the teenagers are three or less years a part, unless the girl is under 14. I think this is fair. I don’t think boys should be held responsible for what their consenting girl friends do. Bad message about both. That she isn’t able to think for herself and that he needs to protect her. Greater age difference? Okay. Adult? Certainly. But 16 and 19? Not in my book. YMMV.</p>
<p>As for early marriage, I have so many conflicting thoughts such as, if a girl can conceive and does shouldn’t she be allowed to marry if it is a happy event for all concerned? </p>
<p>Our modern society is so complex that many of our kids won’t be self-supporting until past twenty-five (I’m thinking of the law school and med school my kids want to attend). Should they not be allowed to marry or to have sex until then? How could we stop them?</p>
<p>Will and Ariel Durant who together wrote The History of Philosophy met when he was her teacher and she was 14. He was 28. Her parents allowed them to marry. Now, he would lose his job. (She was a student!) But as a young girl I wanted to be her. A smart, caring, fascinating 28 who was in love with me? That would have been my dream at 14. My D would say ew!!! She is almost 21 and a three year difference is her limit. I have dated people ten years younger (one actually) 34 and 24, not a cradle robber, and thirteen years older (one), 32 and 45, and both felt perfectly comfortable and appropriate. Current H is my age, exactly.</p>
<p>It depends on the kid. My D’s BF and BF’s brother both like her and want to go out with her. BF is one month older than her and BF’s brother is 2 years older(19). She said the brother is too old(haha), let him find someone his own age. So for kids at this age, there is a huge difference between one month and 2 years.</p>
<p>Not that Bob Seger is a deep philosopher, but there is some truth to his observation about kids (both the boy and the girl) “working on their night moves.” “I was using her and she was using me and neither one cared.”</p>
<p>As mythmom mentioned, some women strive for advanced degrees and professional careers. And I went to a college prepatory level public HS back in the 1960s and my S (HS class of 2007) went to a private prep HS. I guess I’ve mostly experienced well-educated, seemingly self-confident females. In the 60s and now, these females seemed perfectly capable of saying “no” or “yes.”</p>
<p>Are there really a lot of female walking victims in the making out there?</p>
<p>99cents - it really does depend on the kid. My D’s BF is 2 years older than she is, and they are fine together. I think as teenagers, girls tend to be more mature than boys, so the two-year difference doesn’t seem to matter. My main concern is that I know the BF is planning to go away to college in the fall and I don’t want D’s heart to be broken. This is her first real relationship, and while she knows he will be leaving, I don’t know if she understands how she may feel when it actually happens. </p>
<p>BTW, I think your daughter may be unusual in thinking a 2-year age difference is too big. Most girls I know of, seem to prefer dating slightly older boys. At my D’s age (she’s 15), there is the advantage that the 17-year old boys can drive which make them much more independent. They no longer have to rely on the parents to drive them on dates which makes dating much less awkward…lol.</p>
<p>My suspicion is that the BF is cuter than the BFs’ brother. If it was the other way around, I’m sure age would not have been a problem.:)</p>
<p>ewww, I would be creeped out if my BF Bro was hitting on me…that in itself would be reason enough to go no where near him</p>
<p>What kind of guy goes after his Brothers GF? a scummy one, that’s who</p>
<p>99cents and cgm, you both make good points…lol. cgm, it is possible that both brothers met 99cents’ D at the same time, and that the older brother didn’t deliberately set out to go after his little brother’s GF though.</p>