Then you’d just be discouraging sex in your own home. Congrats! They decided to do it in the car or public bathroom instead, without your knowledge, and without the safety net you could have provided if anything went wrong.
Contributing to the deliquence of a minor is broad law.
You should check the local statutory rape laws applicable to you. In many places, there’s an exception if both people are close in age and are both willing.
The main worry is how the other child’s parents would react were something to occur. Also, your co-parent if they not on board with your decision.
There’s something called “talking with your partner”.
I’ve definitely done the talk, “box of condoms under the bathroom, no questions asked, give them to your friends if needed” but that is vastly different than tossing a box of condoms at a minor and telling them to have fun.
Sounds very hypocritical. I mean, why are you disallowing it in your home when you already offer condoms “no questions asked”?
You need to understand that giving permission is not encouragement, and that withdrawing permission is not discouragement.
You may not want your kids to have sex, but if they understand the risks and still want to, the best thing you can offer is safety and privacy.
Trying to compare safe sex with alcohol consumption is wild. One is actively harmful to the human body (and even more so to a developing one), and the other is not. I’ll let you guess which one is which.
So you know it would occur regardless, but you also don’t want it happening behind closed doors. Given those constraints, the kitchen scene is only natural.
Discussions on safe sex, great. Discussions on privacy, cool, though you could have just offered the privacy they needed. Informing on the other party’s parents, oh boy; unless you actively know their parents to be knowledgeable and reasonable, you may have placed that teen in danger. They were lucky to not have been in any trouble.
Condoms are a safety net against STDs. Sexual safety extends beyond protecting against STDs, and you, as a parent, are responsible for that. If anything goes wrong (e.g. emotional discomfort after the act, physical discomfort, broken condom, etc.), you would want to be the first person your child approaches; this “I cannot know” mentality is actively harming that.
I am sorry to hear that. However, based on that and your previous statement about walking in on oral sex between (I presume) your then-underaged teen and their then-underaged partner, you were complicit in helping those juvenile criminals avoid legal persecution by not informing law enforcement.
To be clear, I’m just making light of your heavy focus on legality and liability.
You are making excuses to justify offering condoms while still disallowing sex. Water balloons? Come on now.
And before you quote me on “disallowing sex” and say that you’ve never said that, saying that you “cannot know” or else you “would intervene” is very clearly doing that.
The entirety of your arguments have been rooted in concerns about legality and liability. With that in mind, are you saying that if your state does have a Romeo and Juliet law, you’d be fine with offering a private and safe space for your children (I.E. their rooms) to have safe sex with anyone they want within the confines of that law?
Morality vs legality is an entirely different subject that I’m not going to delve in right now, but based on that statement, it shows which one you value more.
“I am being logical” is such an overdone excuse used to justify arguments. It’s also a highly reductive mindset to use in regards to your children.
Oh, I’m not ignoring it. It’s just that being free to choose my own “liability risk” does not automatically exempt me from giving my own opinion on how you are dealing with this issue.
Or you can get another kitchen scene. Right in front of your salad.
Fun!