<p>Your son is a human being, not a lust-crazed monkey, and he’s responsible for his choices. Stop trying to blame everything on this girl and her nefarious lady-parts and instead talk with your son about condoms and the ethical implications of what he’s doing.</p>
<p>I agree with poetgrl………………as the mother of a girl…………. I would want to know and be grateful the boy’s mom shared the info.</p>
<p>First thing I’d suggest: Ask your son if he and his girlfriend have discussed what will happen if she DOES get pregnant. Since there was a “scare” already, they should have. My own limited experience leads me to believe that the majority of college boys think in their heart of hearts that if the girl gets pregnant, she’ll have an abortion. An amazingly high percentage of girls from the type of background your S’s GF seems to come from assume that if they do get pregnant the boy will “do the right thing” and marry them. So, first question I’d ask your son is “When she did think she was pregnant, did you discuss what would happen if she was?” If he did not come right out and tell her then that there was no way on this earth he would marry her, he’s been deceitful and lead her to believe that he will.</p>
<p>Second, I don’t want to be too graphic, but it sounds as if your S may think that withdrawal works. It doesn’t. He doesn’t need to ejaculate to get her pregant. Make sure he understands that. There is a little semen that is excreted prior to the release of the rest, and it is sufficient to impregnate somone. Make sure he realizes that. </p>
<p>I don’t know on the telling her mom about it part. Reality is that in some families, if the parents find out, they will kick the girl out of their home. It’s not esactly unheard of. Neither is getting the “expletive deleted” beaten out of her. Unless I knew the family well enough to be positive that wouldn’t happen, I would say nothing to her mom. </p>
<p>If she has that child and keeps it, your son will be liable for child support for 18 or 21 years, depending on state law. This is one of the few debts that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.</p>
<p>“Although he has been warned about using protection, in life he seems to be the kind that only learns by making his own mistakes. Apparently a few months ago the girl thought she might be pregnant, but he reassured her that ‘pregnancy without penetration’ was very rare. The girl’s older sister had a baby a couple of years ago, and then married the father of the child. They are struggling financially and living in the mother’s house.”</p>
<p>I would not tell the mother, but I would be having a long talk with my son, and that talk would include information about birth control, the responsibilities of being a parent, and the ethical responsibilities involved in becoming sexually active.</p>
<p>I would make it very clear to my son that if the girl became pregnant with his child, by law, my son would not have any say in whether or not the girl aborted. If the girl decided to raise their child, I would expect my son to be an involved father who was supporting his child.</p>
<p>That means that I would no longer pay for an out of town college, and I would be expecting my son to be working some kind of job so that he could pay child support. </p>
<p>I would not be blaming the girl for this situation. There are plenty of young men with the self control and integrity to say no to sex in the kind of situation that the OP described.</p>
<p>I would be blaming my son for having bad judgment and for using a girl who seems to be very troubled and needy.</p>
<p>I would not tell the girl’s mother. The girl may claim she was raped. Depending on the law, statutory rape charges might be possible. Telling the girl’s mother could get my son into legal trouble.</p>
<p>There’s also a possibility that the girl’s mother has taught her that behavior. I know a mother who’s son was headed to a military academy. His girlfriend’s mother told him that he was welcome to spend the night with her daughter at their house. Fortunately – the young man was repelled, not attracted by that idea, told his mother, and ended the relationship. He didn’t want to be with a girl whose mother thought it was fine for her high school aged daughter to be having sex in their house.</p>
<p>Not only is the “pull out” method horribly unreliable, but it doesn’t protect against STDs. Talk with him before one of the “life mistakes” he has to live with is herpes or HIV.</p>
<p>If this were my kid, I would raise high holy h***. I would be telling the kid that he was being stupid, short-sighted, asking for trouble, and putting himself at lifelong health risk. I would ask if he would want to be treated the way he is treating this girl. </p>
<p>Then <em>I</em> would talk to the girl and ask what the h*** she is thinking, letting herself be treated like that… no self-respect? no desire to be truly loved before she has sex? no reliable birth control? no desire for a future?</p>
<p>Then I would shut up and let the chips fall where they may.</p>
<p>Apples do not fall far from the tree.</p>
<p>I thought this thread was going to be about if you knew someone in your kids’ class was sexually active would you tell the parents! Our son told me about a son of someone H works with who’s not using birth control but I’m not going near it. I told S to tell the kids to buy some condoms, pronto!</p>
<p>As a young woman who is a few years beyond college and who married her college sweetheart, I would be <em>horrified</em> if my now-mother-in-law had called up my parents to discuss what I’d been doing with her son. We were both over 18, it’s none of anybody’s business except theirs.</p>
<p>It was bad enough when my physician dad took me in for a medical procedure which required anaesthesia, and the nurse asked me what medications I was on, and I had to repeate “OVCON-35” about four times and ask what that was for before she realized that maybe she was making me uncomfortable. My dad, who knew that my now-husband and I had been dating for over six years and was worldly enough to know that the jig was up, was sitting behind the nurse the whole time, rolling his eyes and loudly mouthing “BCP! BCP!”.</p>
<p>Still. They’re adults. They have all the information. You can review the information with them and outline the possible ramifications of their risky behavior, but you can’t make the horses drink the water. Telling the mom isn’t going to do anything except mortify the girl, possibly cause serious damage to her relationship with her parents, and she’s still going to do whatever she wants to do… She’s made that choice.</p>
<p>They aren’t both adults, aibar. Her son is having sex with a girl who is senior in high school. I, too, married my highschool sweetheart. The girl should have protection, at the very least. As embarrassing as it might be to talk about? It’s a heck of lot less embarrassing than being a pregnant senior in high school.</p>
<p>OTOH, I think Jonri does make a good point, and if there is any chance the girl could get in that kind of trouble? Maybe not.</p>
<p>I find it more than a bit dysfunctional that you know so much about your son’s relationship…even if he’s ‘leaving things around’ it requires a heck of a lot more snooping to get all this deep insight about their dynamic. </p>
<p>You most likely do not know the reality of their relationship. You have some bits and pieces. And maybe you get some biased version from your son. But the limited information, combined with your overly positive bias of your son, and your outdated stereotypes and scripts about gender roles, and I just don’t trust you have objective reality here. </p>
<p>These are basically two adults. They both want sex. At least one of them writes about it. They have an intimate personal life with a lot more complexity and details and feelings of various kinds in both directions than you can not possibly know. </p>
<p>Its understandably that you would worry about whether you did an okay job as a parent so that your adult son will avoid important mistakes. And you can continue to try to advise him on his judgment and behavior with other people. But beyond that, it is not your business. You really shouldn’t be consulting with people in his life to protect him or those he comes in contact with. </p>
<p>As as aside, I would have no interest in knowing if my 18 year old (daughter or son, why should it matter which?), is having sex. I would hope that my years of advice have paid off and they are making pretty good decisions now. And I would be completely weirded out, if not offended, if someone came to tell me about it (especially someone who really doesn’t have all the facts and is obviously biased to see my kid as the one responsible).</p>
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<p>You might want to start with raising the standards for your son and for men in general. </p>
<p>As the mother, wife and daughter of men, I find the attitude that men are just weak fools at the mercy of sinful women to be insulting to both men and women. </p>
<p>I’m very thankful I was not raising by, did not marry or raise men who buy into that nonsense.</p>
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<p>Thank you for saying that so well. And thank you also for NSM and everyone else who is not buying into this men= morons bs.</p>
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<p>Okay, the new title of the thread should be My son is being a real idiot and I’m out of ideas for how to convince him! I just desperately don’t want him and his girlfriend to permanently affect their lives with a pregnancy! </p>
<p>Yes, I am making a lot of presumptions, based upon my knowledge and perception of the situation. Yes, he is generally very open with me and uses me as a sounding board. This is his first girlfriend and we have talked about a lot of things regarding relationships (with him asking questions) as the relationship has progressed. I stumbled upon some things as I was cleaning his room after he left for college. I asked several times for him to put things away, and when he didn’t, I wanted to be able to dust and vacuum. It really was innocent on my part. </p>
<p>I do not think that he is trying to take advantage of her. That’s not the kind of person he is at all. All along the way he has been so concerned about her feelings and about hurting her. </p>
<p>It comes down to this: I am opposed to them being sexually intimate for many reasons: pregnancy, stds, and lots of other reasons. In the past, my son, on two fairly important things, has not heeded my guidance/rules and has had some bad results. Really, it’s just normal teenage attitude (nothing bad is going to happen to me), but somehow I thought if I poured my heart and soul into raising my children, and gave them the benefit of my experience, they could avoid making mistakes of consequence that I had prepared them for. Clearly, he is his own person and he will make his own mistakes. I can only do what I can do. The rest is up to him.</p>
<p>He has done a lot of things right in his life. He is currently attending our state’s flagship U at no cost. This semester his academic scholarships will exceed all of the costs of attending the school. He is very grateful.</p>
<p>I do plan on sitting down with him and telling him again, even more explicitly, how to avoid or minimize the chance of pregnancy, stds, etc. He can take it to heart, or not, his choice.</p>
<p>I am learning to let go (he’s my first) in fits and starts. Not perfectly, not as smoothly as some of you would, but doing the best I can.</p>
<p>Thanks for your input.</p>
<p>“I am learning to let go…not as smoothly as some of you would.” etc…</p>
<p>Don’t be fooled by the advice givers. Most people are busy teaching what they need to learn.</p>
<p>It’s a good sign that your son has a close relationship with you…for the women in his life…</p>
<p>And you really don’t have to be “perfect” to be a good mother. In fact, if you were perfect, you’d be a horrible mother. ;)</p>
<p>I’m always a lot more skeptical of the people who aren’t worried about thier kids making a mistake. Sheesh. Just wait. </p>
<p>Good luck. I’m sure it will all be just fine.</p>
<p>Back in the day, I was very much at the conservative end of things when it comes to this topic. Still, I was no saint, and hardly anyone I knew was either. Now my peer group has grown up, and they seem to be forgetting what most of us did when we were young.</p>
<p>I know we all want to protect our kids from huge mistakes, and we should try to do so. However, we should not be surprised when what we say goes in one ear and out the other, just like it did for us.</p>
<p>So true, Spideygirl. I can’t help thinking that so much of the infertility that the baby boomers experienced was due to undiagnosed STD’s like chlamydia, PID, etc.</p>
<p>Momlove:</p>
<p>Your son should be praised for not wanting to cause hurt to his girlfriend. But he should also be encouraged to learn to say “No” to temptation. It is possible that the girl is the one who initiates sex, or maybe your son is trying to put some distance between himself and responsibility for sex, especially unprotected sex. But rationalizing will not make the fact that sex does happen, and it takes two for it to happen. Since he is in college and she is not, how do they get together? Can’t he avoid it? You make him sound like a nice young man with as much spine as a slug.</p>
<p>“I’m always a lot more skeptical of the people who aren’t worried about thier kids making a mistake. Sheesh. Just wait.”</p>
<p>Who isn’t worried? Hard to be a parent and not worry. Seems to go with the terrain. But there is a big big difference between my motherly feelings, and the actions I take as a parent. Just because I worry about things doesn’t mean I should leap into action and involve myself in my adult son’s life (and I do have one, the same age).</p>
<p>Well, that’s fantastic, Starbright, and I’m sure your son is a fine upstanding young man…seriously.</p>
<p>As is my daughter, who is frankly too busy to involve herself in this kind of thing…as far as I know, which is as far as she’s told me, which is as much as I want to know. </p>
<p>OTOH, given the new brain research and the fact that it has been unequivocally proven that kids, and they now know the impulse control areas of the brain are still growing in til about 25, I don’t consider a 17 year old girl an adult who is necessarily going to make great choices. And, yes, you have a son, maybe a daughter, as well. IDK. What I do know is that the consequences for unprotected sex are much higher for young women, both in terms of the risk of pregnancy and the risk of STDs, and I would really want to know if my senior in high school daughter was having unprotected sex. The consequences of not knowing something like that, dysfunctional or not, can be WAY to high. For example AIDS.</p>
<p>I highly doubt she’d be involved in something like that, though, just becuase it’s always been okay for her to come and talk to me about these kinds of things if she needed to.</p>
<p>Good luck. It’s a long way from 18 to 25.</p>