Would You Let Your Teen Sleep With Their Boyfriend or Girlfriend in Your Home?

Kelly Rossiter Contributor
From http://parentables.howstuffworks.com/

Photo credit: Lambert/Getty Images

The summer my son was nineteen, he said quite casually, that he and his girlfriend would like to sleep together at the cottage, if that was okay with us. I think my husband was a bit surprised, maybe even shocked, but I said yes without any hesitation. When a friend of mine, whose son was also nineteen found out about it, she said she would never let her son sleep with his girlfriend in her house. I replied that Hugh was old enough to drive a car, to drink legally (in Canada), to leave home, and to die for his country, he should be allowed to have sex. She said "But he should have it in the back of a car, like everybody else!"

He was still a teenager, but as far as I was concerned, he was an adult and it was his own business. So what would my cut-off age be? I'm not really sure, but I remember the summer he left to be a camp counsellor at the age of 16 I suggested he take condoms with him. No need, he said, the camp keeps a big jar of them in the staff lounge. Of course, he was going to be out of my sight for two entire months, and it seemed prudent of me to raise the issue with him, rather than pretend he wouldn't have sex, but would I have let him sleep with a girlfriend then? Maybe not. At fourteen, absolutely not, but then he went to a boy's school, so opportunities with girls did not abound, and it was something I didn't actually have to face. Would I have thought differently about this issue if I were talking about my daughter, rather than my son?

There is a new book entitled Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex by Amy Schalet, who interviewed 130 Dutch and American parents as well as teenagers between the ages of fifteen and seventeen on their attitudes regarding teens and sex in the home. Dutch parents, as it turns out, are much more permissive than their American counterparts. Nine out of ten Dutch parents had allowed or would consider allowing teen sleepovers when the kids reached the age of sixteen or seventeen while nine out of ten American parents say they would not allow it. Researchers say that Dutch teenagers are less likely to have unwanted pregnancies and far more likely to use contraceptives than American teens. They also report fewer STDs in Dutch teenagers than American. Not only that, Dutch kids apparently are less deceptive with their parents, meaning if American kids are having sex, they are more likely to be lying about it to mom and dad.

Ultimately, of course, parents will do what they are most comfortable with, and that may mean never allowing their teenaged children sleep with girlfriends or boyfriends. It's an interesting topic, especially given how sexualized so much of North American culture has become on one hand, and how conservative it has become on the other.

How do you feel about this? Would you let your teenager have a sleepover?

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Drive-In ‘Sex-Boxes’ May Spread To Zurich

By David Chalk
From http://www.nileguide.com/

Zurich’s new police chief has received “thousands of complaints” from residents about the city’s thriving red light district. So he’s planning a police trip to Germany to check out a possible solution: ’sex-boxen’, or drive-in boxes where prostitutes can do their thing in relative privacy and safety. The boxes were first used in Holland, and Cologne became the first German city to implement them in 2002, after which they spread to other German cities like Essen.

Jessica Francis of the Swiss daily Blick (translated from German) stresses that the Zurich policemen who are going on this German study trip “do not go for pleasure,” instead they just want to study if something similar can be implemented in their city. In Cologne, the city fenced in an area about the size of a football field, provided a gate and privacy screen, and outlawed filming and photography. After the first three years, they declared the sex-boxen a success, with little violence perpetrated against prostitutes and improved health among sex workers.

Still, it’s hard to picture Richard Gere and Julia Roberts falling in love in one of these:

In an interesting twist, the Zurich police department’s spokesman is really named Reto Casanova. “We can’t get rid of prostitution,” Casanova says, “so have to learn how to control it.”

So far the police department doesn’t have a site in mind for Zurich’s version of the boxes, but they are preparing a report for the city council on their findings.

Germany's New AIDS Ad — Starring Hitler

By Tristana Moore / Berlin

Germany's latest AIDS-awareness commercial evokes some strong emotions: shock, disgust, nausea. And that's exactly the point. The controversial ad, which was released online on Sept. 3 and starts running on German TV on Wednesday, Sept. 9, shows a couple having steamy sex in a dimly lit room with menacing music playing in the background. The viewer sees only the back of the man's head until the very end, when the camera pans to his face — to reveal that he's Adolf Hitler. Then the slogan flashes across the screen: "AIDS is a mass murderer."

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It's a strong message, but HIV/AIDS organizations in Germany are arguing over whether it's the right one. Rainbow, the AIDS-awareness group spearheading the campaign — which also includes newspaper ads and posters featuring the images of other dictators, like Stalin and Saddam Hussein — says it deliberately wants to provoke people, especially young Germans, into using condoms to help prevent the spread of HIV. "We want to give this terrible virus a face," Jan Schwertner, spokesman for Rainbow, tells TIME. "AIDS is a forgotten issue in Germany. It's been swept under the carpet. This shock campaign is necessary to get people thinking again." (See pictures of Hitler's rise to power.)

But the use of Hitler's image — always a highly sensitive topic in Germany — has angered mainstream HIV/AIDS organizations, which say the ad stigmatizes HIV sufferers. On Tuesday, Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe, an umbrella group for HIV counseling centers and Germany's biggest AIDS organization, called the video "disgusting" and demanded an immediate end to the campaign. "The video ridicules all victims of the Nazi regime, and it equates HIV-positive people with mass murderers," says spokeswoman Carolin Vierneisel. "The advertising campaign just relies on provoking anxiety among people. That's the wrong approach. Successful HIV prevention is based on factual information about the risks of HIV transmission and encourages people to use condoms." (Read "The Battle in Uganda Over Female Condoms.")

Germans need the encouragement — the facts about HIV rates in the country are alarming. According to Rainbow's research, eight people become infected with HIV in Germany every day. Across the country, 60,000 people are living with HIV. To help explain the advertisement's shock tactics, the campaign's website states, "Over the past number of years, public interest in AIDS has massively declined. The number of victims, however, has not. As of now, over 28 million people worldwide have died. And every day another 5,000 fatalities are added to that number. This makes AIDS one of the largest mass murderers of all time."

The ads will be shown in German cinemas and broadcast on TV starting on Wednesday, aiming for maximum impact. The agency that created the commercials, Hamburg-based Das Comitee, has robustly defended the campaign, pointing out that the video has already had thousands of viewings since last Thursday, when it was posted on video-sharing sites like YouTube. "We need to warn young people about the dangers of AIDS and the risks of unprotected sex," says creative director Hans Weishäupl. "AIDS is the mass murderer of the 21st century, and we have to show people how awful it is." He adds that he's received a lot of positive feedback on the commercials from young people and their parents. (See pictures of Kristallnacht.)

Weishäupl agrees that his agency's methods are controversial but insists that the end justifies the means. "It's the message that counts, and of course it was provocative to use the picture of Hitler," he says. "But how would you visualize a terrible virus?"

See TIME's Hitler covers.