I was conversing with my friend Ceridwen a week or so ago, about a number of things. One of the major topics of discussion was her daughter, who, at age fourteen, is right on the cusp of morphing from girl to woman. The boys are beginning to notice her, and she is beginning to notice them noticing her. Ceri wonders how best to handle the situation. As the father of a daughter just a few years younger, it's a topic I ponder also, as one that I'll need to address soon.

There is a tension is our culture, based primarily, I think, on our dependence on technology. As the level of sophistication increases, so does the time required for the education (at least with our current piss-poor schooling) needed to make a person an economically indepedent citizen.

Studies in history and anthropology show that people, even is pre-industrial societies (the examples I recall were from colonial New England and the late Roman Republic) rarely marry before they become economically self-sufficient. So, physical sexual maturity, and erotic longings, can begin a decade or more before the age at which a person can responsibly marry. According to the dominant ethical system currently in place here in the U.S., that is the only socially approved circumstance for sexual activity.

This is perhaps the classic case of cultural mores being on a direct collision course with our evolutionary genetics. It is certain that throughout most of our time as a species, during which we were hunter-gatherers, humans began to form families and reproduce as soon as their bodies allowed it. Furthermore, while we cannot of course directly observe our ancestors, observations of our closest relatives, the primates, show that sexual play sometimes starts well before that.

Finally, our current culture showers post-pubescent teens with images of nudity and sexual behavior, further directing their attention to the internal fires stoked by the hormones in their blood.

As an aside, it should be noted that it actually is arguable that kids today witness any more sexual behavior than many of our predecessors did. Throughout much of history, the type of privacy we take for granted was impossible, so many kids grew up seeing parents and other relatives having sex. In Rome, it was not uncommon to see prostitutes performing their services openly in the streets.

So, we end up with a society in which kids (by "kids" I mean post-pubescent teens, not sexually immature children) are raring to go, in a culture that prohibits them from sexual behavior, sometimes, to use the example of some of the more idiotic, err, conservative, religious faiths, even behavior as harmless as masturbation.

This is Not Good.

We have one crazy, mixed-up society when it comes to the topic of sex. Dog Have Mercy on anyone with the temerity to point this out.

Judith Levine has written a book on the damage we inflict on our children by attempting to enforce a moratorium on sexual behavior during this gap between sexual maturity and economic self-sufficiency, entitled Harmful To Minors: The Perils Of Protecting Children From Sex. It's a heavily footnoted, scholarly work, full of citations to real world studies. She makes reasonable arguments as to the harm that we do to kids by treating consensual sex, or even normal youthful experimentation, as a Bad Thing.

As might be expected, the Religious Right has pilloried her, with such guiding lights as Dr. Laura going so far as to accuse her of being a pedophile. The faith-based sects have never been receptive to those that bolster their arguments with fact. Just ask Gallileo.

For an interesting look on Levine's personal experience as a young girl, read this.

But back to my intercourse (oral) with Ceridwen. I opined that it was my experience that kids with a hankerin' to get laid were going to get laid, no matter what manner of draconian restictions on their travels or activities were laid upon them. Requiring a kid to be home by eleven does not prevent them from doing the Deed of Darkness at ten fifteen. Hell, given the nature of teenage boys, it doesn't prevent them from starting at ten fifty-eight. :-) So long as the car is parked close to the house.

So, I advised, it might be the wisest course to accept the preordained, bring it out into the open, and attempt to negotiate some reasonable rules about it. Discuss safe and responsible sex, methods of birth control, and tell her daughter that she has absolute privacy in her own room when her friends visit.

She replied that to do that, to allow her daughter to do whatever in her home, would sound too much like condoning behavior she'd rather her not engage in.

That's reasonable objection, and at the time, I left it alone pending further reflection. I will ask all of you reading this to recall what you were doing from the ages of fourteen to sixteen, and ask can you really expect your own kids to be any different. The answer, in case you're wondering, is no. My girlfriends, best buddies, their paramours, and I were all sneaking out the bedroom window in the middle of the night for illicit trysts. Same as it ever was. Lust springs eternal in the human heart

The truth of the matter is that she would be condoning that behavior. But, given the fact that her daughter decides she's going to Do It, and nobody can realistically stop her, short of chaining her to the living room couch with an armed guard until she reaches whatever age you think is appropriate for her to engage in such behavior, would it be better for her to do these things in the safe environment of the home, or, out in the street somewhere, where she can't call for help, say, in the instance of some boyfriend pushing a bit too hard and too fast, or when her decision to do that is muddled by oh, a few screwdrivers?

Were she my child, I'd do my best to make sure she knew that to have erotic impulses was normal and healthy, and should she decide she wanted to have sex, then that was OK. I'd try my best to make sure that it was her decision to do so, and not due to a need to feel accepted, or because she thought she "had to" to keep a boyfriend. I'd educate her about condoms, STD's, and birth control, along with the alternatives to babymakin' vaginal intercourse - masturbation, oral sex, and so on, just in case she wasn't ready to go All The Way.

Then I'd probably sit on the front porch cleaning my shotgun and picking my teeth with a Bowie knife every time that a boy came to pick her up for the first time, and make damn sure that he knew the rules, too.

"You have car or any other type of problems, she has a cellphone, and I expect y'all to use it. Home at midnight means midnight, y'all wanna hang around together after that, that's fine, but you do it in her bedroom. You can stay as long as you and your parents like. I expect you to drive like you were lashed to the front bumper. Yes means yes, but no means no, and if you demonstrate that you don't understand what that word means, you'll be lucky to make it to the hospital, much less out of it. Fair enough?"

Sounds pretty fair to me.

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