agonyaunt | The Ethicist: My Daughter Is Having Sex With Her Best Friend. Must I Tell Her Mom?

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The Ethicist: My Daughter Is Having Sex With Her Best Friend. Must I Tell Her Mom?

My daughter is in a newly romantic relationship with her best friend, who is also female. Both are in their midteens. My daughter recently confided in me that they have had sex. She insists, however, that I am not allowed to tell the friend’s mother, because the mother wouldn’t let them have sleepovers or hang out as much. My ex-husband is the one who hosts the sleepovers, and he looks the other way when they are in the bedroom, reasoning that (or so my daughter tells me), “It’s OK because there are no penises involved.” I am not as close with the friend’s mother as my ex-husband is, but we are friendly. Am I obligated to tell this woman the truth about the nature of our daughters’ friendship? Are my ex-husband’s actions egregious? Name Withheld

Your ex-husband’s attitude has a couple of points in its favor. Forbidding physical intimacy under his roof is unlikely to stop it from happening. And it’s surely better to have a daughter who feels that she can tell you both what she’s doing. If the two girls are having a sexual relationship, you don’t want it conducted furtively. It’s best when there’s a parent in the picture who can help pick up the emotional pieces if things fall apart. Even when unwanted pregnancy isn’t a concern, physical intimacy can entail other forms of vulnerability.

But the story quickly gets complicated. I mentioned picking up the pieces: Intense adolescent relationships can blow up badly, in all kinds of ways. If that were to happen, her girlfriend’s mother would most likely find out and feel that you had wronged her. That’s reasonable enough. Letting a child stay with others involves trust. And keeping the sexual relationship from her would be a betrayal of that trust.

Unlike you and your ex-husband, she would be completely unprepared if anything went wrong. A further complication: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that one-fifth of girls have had sex by the time they’re 15, many states in the country lack a “close-in-age exemption” to their statutes against sex with minors. Depending on where you live, a sexually active relationship between two minors may be a felony. (There could be scenarios where even condoning it creates legal exposure.)

Whatever the statutory situation, parents rightly think they should have a central place in shaping the context of their offsprings’ sexual development. The girlfriend’s mother is entitled to know what’s going on.

Unfortunately, a tangle of ties is in play here. You don’t want to damage your relationship with your daughter (this is someone who trusted you with a confidence), with your ex-husband (parents who share custody need as much cordiality as they can manage) or with the girlfriend’s mother. You and your ex-husband will have to tread carefully around the fact that you’ve already betrayed the trust that allowed her daughter to sleep over at his house.

The right place to begin, I think, is to have a conversation with your daughter and your ex-husband, explaining why the mother has to be told of the girls’ sexual relationship. This conversation isn’t going to be easy. Your daughter will feel you’re sabotaging her love affair. Your husband will think you’re getting him in trouble with his friend, the other mother. And you’ll have to consult with the girlfriend too. You don’t need her consent, but she’s entitled to fair notice; she might want to be the one to do the telling. These are all tough things to have to deal with.

It doesn’t sound as if the other mom will absolutely forbid her daughter to see yours, even if she stops the sleepovers — as she has a right to do until her daughter reaches legal independence. Still, in talking to the mother, you might want to point out that you parents aren’t really in a position to stop the two girls from having a sexual relationship and that your ex-husband’s permissive attitude may be a reasonable one.

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I'm puzzled that Appiah doesn't address what seems to be the biggest question here: Is the (girl)friend's mother homophobic? If LW's daughter's girlfriend would face negative consequences from her parents because this is a same-sex relationship, then LW absolutely should not tell.

Exactly! This is the reason the rule of thumb about outing people exists and this answer completely breezes by it as if there's no possibility whatsoever that the other parent could have any considerations besides her right to dictate whether her kid is sexually active! For that matter, "it doesn't sound as if the mom will absolutely forbid her daughter to see yours" already seems to realize that that's a possibility and again ignore it, like it would be acceptable but regrettably necessary to snitch on a child if you did think it would likely result in them being "forbidden to see" your kid anymore!

It really mystified me because Appiah himself is gay, and grew up gay in Ghana – so he's definitely not someone who's unaware of this sort of thing.

Yeah, the no-sleepovers bit is something I would imagine is likely the case for any teen couple. but that she wouldn't let them "hang out as much" is worrying.

Also, idk, might be worth talking to the daughter about sex & serious relationships and so on... to kind of counter the ex-husband's somewhat dismissive view (I get that he probably means, no one's getting pregnant but... idk, why not just say that? It sets up some concerns... and makes me think they don't have good sex ed).

Argh yes, I don't want to write to an advice columnist, but this egregious omission can literally be a case of life and death.

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Having been an abused child whose parents would haev made me pay in blood for any teenage romance and more than twice over for a queer one, and now being in loco parentis to two teenagers, this question is one of my nightmares. At least I absolutely wouldn't have to make the ultimate decisions in my case.

The omission really mystifies me because Appiah himself is gay, and grew up gay in Ghana – so he's definitely not someone who's unaware of the potential for disaster.

Now that I think about it, my guess is that the letter was cut down for publication and originally included the context that LW's daughter's girlfriend is already out to her parents, so the question is only about disclosing the relationship, not outing the girl. That's the only reason I can think of that Appiah would ignore that.

I still think we should demand to know that. Maybe he needs the leverage to make his publishers let him include the discussion of that aspect.

*makes a note*

Seriously, this NEEDS to be clarified, for everyone’s safety.

(I wouldn’t break my child’s confidence, particularly since the mother is not the one hosting the sleepovers or the closer friend to the girlfriend’s mother.)

Yeah, safety is the most important thing here, and absent any indication the girlfriend's mom isn't homophobic I think it's necessary to assume that she is homophobic and proceed accordingly.

Because the outcomes of outing a queer teen to their homophobic parent are so much worse than the outcomes of concealing information from a teen's nonhomophobic parent.

Any adult friendships and ~~~sacred~~ trusts~ at stake here are inarguably less important than the girlfriend's safety.

Wow! Okay wow! No! The only time it would be okay to tell a parent about their child's consensual sexual activity would be if that child asked you to help them have that conversation with that parent. Full stop.

In this case the kid in question didn't even confide in letter writer! Nope Nope Nope Nope!

The fact that this relationship is f/f inflects on that, as everyone notes, but right there at the gate it is not complicated! You can be there for the teenager who confided in you, you can try and support them and make sure they have the resources to be safe, but you do not disclose without their consent. Ever. That in itself could be extremely dangerous to them.

And apart from the danger, a teenager is a person, and people get control over their intimate history, their confidences, their movements and their bodies. Full stop.

I sort of think that if the LW is really bothered, she might try (once, gently) to discuss with the girlfriend and encourage her to tell.
But no parent is entitled to know about their children consensual, age-approriate relationships. It's up to the parent to build the kind of relationship with the child where the child will tell.

Yeah! Identifying with the other parent and thinking 'I would want to know' is understandable, but you [generic, general] can't give that to them. Like you said, it's something only the parent can build.

(In this case on my third/fourth reread I started to think the GF's mother is kind of a red herring - it sounds to me like the actual problem is that LW is mad at their ex for not telling them. Because if LW has an "obligation" to tell GF's mother, than Ex was obligated to tell LW and that makes his actions "egregious". Which is a weird word to use in these circumstances, but if the LW is upset/distressed/awkward about the conversation with Daughter, and is turning that discomfort into a sense of being betrayed by Ex, then it makes more sense.)

As long as everything's going well, I agree with you.

But if my kid gets diagnosed with an STI that can be deadly if not treated, or if my kid becomes pregnant and decides to carry to term and possibly keep the baby, then if the kid who's their sex partner doesn't want to tell their parents about the situation, that's where I start weighing the danger to the other kid of informing their parents vs. the danger of not informing them. (Which might still come down on the side of "support but don't disclose" depending on their family situation, but also might be taken out of my hands by the local public health authorities or the court system.)

Most of the possible consequences of sex have alternative actions to support them besides telling the other kid's parents. Someone gets an STI? Take them to a clinic. Helping them get treated is going to be a lot more effective than telling their parents. And most teens who are about to be parents are going to bite the bullet and tell their parents but could use a supportive adult in the room/waiting in the car while they do--or else they have really good reasons not to want to tell them.

Now that I've looked up the laws for my state, yeah, if the kid is 13+ they can get tested for STIs and treated for the really dangerous ones without parental consent, so I can offer to take them to the clinic or help them out with testing costs and respect their desire to keep their parents out of it. (If other kid says "no thanks, I don't want you to take me to the clinic", though, and my kid later says "yeah, they didn't get tested"...well, if we're talking HIV or syphillis and my kid gave the public health folks the names of their sex partners, the public health folks are hopefully trained for dealing with this situation, and I'm definitely not.)

Yeah! And in advance of an inciting incident, you could encourage testing and safer sex literacy, consent talks, emotional safety communication, planning for what happens if someone gets an STI or gets pregnant (because sometimes things happen and are easier to deal with if there's already a plan)...lots of stuff that makes the scarier stuff less likely (or at least less scary) if we focus on building and maintaining trust and treat these hypothetical teens with respect for their autonomy.

Wow! Okay wow! No! The only time it would be okay to tell a parent about their child's consensual sexual activity would be if that child asked you to help them have that conversation with that parent. Full stop.

In this case the kid in question didn't even confide in letter writer! Nope Nope Nope Nope!

So much this. I can't believe the advice given: "parents rightly think they should have a central place in shaping the context of their offsprings’ sexual development. The girlfriend’s mother is entitled to know what’s going on." "you’ll have to consult with the girlfriend too. You don’t need her consent, but she’s entitled to fair notice; she might want to be the one to do the telling." WHAT??

Yeah, I was distracted by the Missing Part and forgot to FLAIL FURIOUSLY about that part. It's not like it's the GIRLFRIEND's LIFE or anything.

Exactly!

As a parent, I do have a central place in shaping my kid's sexual development -- and that place is teaching them the facts about sex, the potential consequences (both bad and good), what I consider to be moral and ethical behavior, and what the law says they can do, as well as being available when they need advice or help.

What they do with what I teach them -- that's ultimately out of my hands.

I'm considering a flowchart for advice columnists which would include, immediately after the answer, an extensive "And how could your advice go horribly wrong?" tree.

As the parent of teenagers, I'd open a conversation with my child asking her why she thought it was reasonable to lie to her partner's mother.

If the mother's a phobe, that's one thing. If not? Both kids are lying to her and they need to do some hard thinking about why they've decided that's acceptable.

In my view, children, and certainly teenagers, are allowed to have secrets from their parents.

Is there any point at which I've said otherwise?

But part of keeping secrets is that doing so can damage your relationships with other people. It's not like this isn't going to come out at some point. These are teenagers.

Lying to a family member or to a family member of your romantic partner is a shit behavior. It's rarely justifiable. This may be an exceptional case, but if this were my child, I'd be asking that she consider very carefully whether this is actually that exceptional case, or whether she's letting her genitals do the thinking without thinking about the consequences, both for herself and her partner.

Edited 2022-03-23 12:48 (UTC)

You call it "lying". I see nothing in the original question that suggests they are doing that, only that they don't want to tell the GF's mother (and they might have good reason for that). I think teenagers have a right to privacy, including keeping their sex life private.

All parents can do is to make sure their children are educated on sex matters and that they know how to prevent pregnancy and STIs, etc.

It is great if children trust their parents enough to share this info of their own accord, but they shouldn't be required to.

To me, it's akin to a school taking it upon themselves to out a gay pupil to their parents. No, no, no.

I feel pretty comfortable saying that lying is wrong.

Since you've continued to put words in my mouth rather than read what I've actually said, I'm disengaging. I'm sorry that your fears lead you to relate to strangers like this.

Excuse me?? I only said that I didn't think they were lying, and that children have a right to privacy. "My fears"? Talking about putting words in someone's mouth.

I thought this community was intended to engage in conversation/discussion with other members about the topics posted. I am sorry if I have misunderstood.

Good day to you.

Lying to a family member or to a family member of your romantic partner is a shit behavior. It's rarely justifiable.

If a teenager does not trust their parents with information about their sexuality and sexual health, that is because the parents have set precedent after precedent over the last N-teen years demonstrating that they cannot be trusted with such information.

If LW's daughter's girlfriend could trust her mom to not [legitimate concerns] upon hearing, "I have a girlfriend and we are having sex," she would have told her already. Just as LW's daughter told her "I have a girlfriend and we are having sex."

If a parent cannot be trusted with information about their child's sexuality and sexual health, that is an extremely good reason to put that parent on an information diet. And for the parents of the child's partner to protect them where their own parents fail to do so.

And all that is leaving aside the extremely myopic take you have on lying in general ("I feel pretty comfortable saying that lying is wrong.").

I feel pretty comfortable saying that the reasons any individual may choose to conceal or bend the factual account of a state of being or event, ongoing or concluded, is complicated.

Whatever the statutory situation, parents rightly think they should have a central place in shaping the context of their offsprings’ sexual development.

That "central place in shaping the context of their offsprings' sexual development" is earned, not included by default with the "congrats you combined gametes with another human!" starter pack.

The girlfriend’s mother is entitled to know what’s going on.

No, she isn't. She is especially not entitled to know what's going on if it would make her feel entitled to abuse her daughter.

And you’ll have to consult with the girlfriend [about narcing her out to her mom] too. You don’t need her consent, but she’s entitled to fair notice; she might want to be the one to do the telling. These are all tough things to have to deal with.

YES YOU FUCKING DO NEED HER CONSENT TO TELL HER MOTHER. OH MY ENTIRE FUCKING GOD, WHAT THE FUCK, WHAT THE ENTIRE FUCK.

Those were exactly the quotations that irked me, too!

Now that I have slightly calmed down I would also, in the shoes of LW's ex, take the following steps (Adapted from friends who are also parents of teens, and whose teens trust them with information about their sexuality and sexual health):

If you are going to be having sex in my house, we are all taking a field trip down to meet the Queer Youths Health Educator (chicago resource). The "punishment" aspect of this parent-daughter-daughter's girlfriend field trip is that it is going to be awkward and uncomfortable as hell for all of us.
If you are going to be having sex in my house, you will both be having regular screenings for STIs, especially if either of them is involved in team/contact sports.
Dental dams (and condoms because why the fuck not) are in the now in the teen's bathroom next to the menstrual supplies and spare toilet roll; please stick a post-it to the outside of the box when they have disappeared and they will magically reappear. Please also do not flush them down the toilet.

Edited (just closing a parens apologies for the second email notification) 2022-03-23 17:53 (UTC)

*takes some notes*

Tell me more about the team sports logic? I don't think I follow.

I run my workplaces peer sex education program and sometimes we have a lot of fun, or very sweet interactions when teens' parents come along. It doesn't have to be a punishment.

Contact sports is the #1 nonsexual way to spread HPV (which ideally everyone should be vaccinated for but some parents don't like the idea of their kids being receiving it because [asinine purity and antivax reasons here].

It also provides everyone the polite fiction that no one would ever be intimate with more than one person if that fiction is necessary to get over the regular sti screening hump. Which not everyone needs.

Do you have a source for that? HPV is weird and people have theorized some nonsexual routes of transmission for genital infections for ages but the sources I'm looking at suggest the strains of HPV that are spread by contact sports are common skin warts, not genital infections. And anyway, most jurisdictions' routine STI testing for teens don't test for HPV unless someone has symptoms/warts.

Politely, I'm down with my first cold in 3 years right now and I'm not going to go digging through pubmed to pull papers for you right now.

You're just going to have to trust that I fact-checked before I posted on this one.

Sorry you're not feeling well!

One of my friends had an extremely nasty breakup, before which there was a lot of fighting about risky behavior and STDs and testing, and my friend had a lot of bitter recriminations about the fact that sex with barriers was being treated as inherently riskier than high contact sports with a regular risk of blood being drawn (martial arts in this case).

Interesting. Was the theory there that the martial art had a significant risk of STI exposure? Or other risks? I don't know anything about the martial art in question obvs but assume it would have a higher risk of like, a wrist fracture, while sex with barriers would have a higher (and by higher I mean low but not nonexistent) risk of transmitting chlamydia.

Blood exposure. So HIV and hepatitis.

I mean. The only estimate I've come across for risk of HIV transmission via contact sports* with high risk of bleeding is 1 in 43 million, and even that has caveats attached because it's based partially on risk of transmission with needle stick injuries in health care settings, because sports transmissions are too rare to have any data on.

*except boxing apparently, the sources are all like, 'contact sports (except boxing) have only a theoretical risk of HIV exposure and no confirmed transmissions have been documented' but then DO NOT ELABORATE and I have not gone down that rabbit hold yet. I think it might be that "street fight" transmissions have been documented?

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The Ethicist: My Daughter Is Having Sex With Her Best Friend. Must I Tell Her Mom?

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