Care and Feeding: Bisexual Teenagers and Sleepovers

[cereta]

Link.

Dear Care and Feeding,

What are parents of bisexual teens supposed to do about sleepovers? For my heterosexual kid, the rule is “no opposite-sex sleepovers,” and if I had a gay child, the rule would be “no same-sex sleepovers.” It seems very unfair to prohibit my bisexual teen from having sleepovers just because they happen to be attracted to both genders, but it also doesn’t seem fair that my other teens have to abide by these “no sleepovers with people whom you might want to have sex with” rules while the bisexual teen doesn’t. Help!

—Proud Parent of Bi Teen

Dear PPoBT,

I want to first affirm your desire to support your child’s identity and your desire to be equitable in how household rules are created and enforced. Alas, equity is often elusive in a world that will present challenges to your bisexual teen that their siblings simply won’t have to face. This may be the rare occasion that this particular child experiences what seems like an advantage on the basis of their sexual orientation, but ultimately, it’s simply a heightened expectation of responsible behavior and honesty.

Sleepovers for kids and teens are typically same-gendered. I wouldn’t recommend denying this experience to a bisexual or gay young person just because they are known to be attracted to members of their own gender. These gatherings are typically more about bonding over gossip, games, junk food, and Netflix than they are about getting physical. And anyway, hetero kids and queer/bi ones that haven’t come out to their families are also quite capable of engaging in sexual activity with peers of their own gender when the door is closed and the adults have gone to bed for the evening. (Gender non-conforming kids also deserve sleepover invites, by the way.)

The most reasonable thing to do would be to either hold all of your kids to the single-gendered sleepover rule or allow them all to attend multi-gendered sleepovers. As it is (understandably) important to you that they aren’t engaging in sexual activity during these festivities, they should only be able to sleep over in homes when you are clear that the adults present are capable of and invested in preventing any fooling around. Also, you may also want to prohibit them from attending sleepovers where their boyfriend or girlfriend is present.

There is a lot of other stuff to be fearful of when teens are under close quarters with potentially limited supervision—drug use, drinking, bullying, listening to really shitty music, etc.—and as is the case with messing around, they find opportunities to do these things during the schoolday, when you drop them off at the YMCA on Saturdays for “basketball,” and whenever they aren’t being closely watched. The only way to truly ensure that a sleepover is sex-free is to have them at your own house and watch those little horndogs like a hawk.

Ultimately, if you are letting teens go to sleepovers, there’s a risk that they’ll do some shit you don’t like while they’re there. But there’s a good chance your kids would prefer not to risk humiliation by getting it on while someone’s parents are home anyway. Talk to your not-so-little ones and explain to them what your expectations are for when they spend the night out—and make sure they are clear on how to practice safe sex regardless of the gender of their partners, and that they won’t allow an STD to remain dormant out of fear of disappointing you for breaking a sleepover rule.

Comments

[cereta]

Sort of curious about people's response to this one. I'm the mother of a gay teenager, and, well...let's just say if you've ever wondered what sort of parent would not only leave their teenager alone at home with the teenager's significant other, but deliberately stay out a while...*waves.* And yeah, a lot of it is about trying to be sex-positive. OTOH, I'm not even going to pretend that we'd be doing that is said SO were a cisgendered boy. We'd probably still let them visit (they live elsewhere; they do sleep in the guest room, but still), but I doubt spouse (and oh, all right: me, too) would be nearly as sanguine about potential nookie as we are.

[matsushima]

I don't know how to emphasize that I'm asking this out of genuine curiosity and 0% judgement without just saying, "I'm asking this out of genuine curiosity and 0% judgement," so that's what I'll do: why not a cisgender boy? the possibility of pregnancy? general doubts about the trustworthiness of cisgender teenage boys? some other reason?

[cereta]

Honestly? Mostly the possibility of pregnancy, yeah. A significantly smaller but non-zero concern about other things that mostly involve any cisgender boy almost certainly being a fair bit bigger than my teenager, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't mostly pregnancy. Is that rational? Probably not. But three of my four siblings had, shall we say, surprise offspring, so I'm a liiiiiittle over-cautious about it.

[matsushima]

I think that makes sense. This is one of those things we can try to be reasonable and rational about but, in the end, it does provoke pretty strong feelings. (I'm not a parent but I am a school librarian and I spend a lot of time arguing with people about what teenagers should or should not know about their bodies and sexualities.)

[cereta]

I mean, I do my very best to be sex-positive; I even keep a couple of doses of Plan B around with the idea that I will regularly check to see if they're gone, and if they are, I will replace them, no questions asked (the teenager's friends think it's swell of me to keep it for them, which is basically what I'm doing at this point). But I'd be lying if I said it isn't easier to be sex-positive when I know that sex isn't going to make me a grandmother too soon.

[matsushima]

It sounds like LW is really trying to be open-minded, supportive, and understanding of their kids - and that's great! I think Care and Feeding is correct but should've emphasized the "safer sex practices" and "Please don't be afraid to come talk to me if you have STI symptoms (or other sex questions and concerns)" because, honestly, most teens are going to get it on at some point and the best way LW and other parents can protect them is to be open and unjudgmental about those choices, emphasizing safety and consent.

Re: the bisexual teenager, I think LW can ask, "Is So-and-so a friend or a girlfriend/boyfriend?" when making decisions about who sleeps over and where.

[likeaduck]

This answer states the facts that are relevant here (sleepovers aren't magically more dangerous for sexy behaviour than every other time your teens are unsupervised; teens doing sexy behaviour is not actually the end of the world; teens of all genders and sexualities deserve to partake in socialisation; talking to teens about sex and setting up supports for good decisionmaking and harm reduction around sex is potentially more helpful than trying to supervise them out of doing it) but I don't get the impression that the advice giver actually believes those facts, and the advice doesn't fully follow the logic of them.

[green_grrl]

Yeah, those very salient points are really buried in the answer. I wish they had been as blatantly stated as you put them.

[ashbet]

I think it’s unreasonable to effectively punish a bisexual teenager for potentially being attracted to people of any gender by denying them sleepovers.

I think that the way to handle it is to just maintain open communication and talk about your expectations and make sure that safer sex discussions/etc. are ongoing.

(And plenty of teenagers manage to get pregnant without sleepovers, I did!)

[gingicat]

I was the one kid who never went on a sexy sleepover, clearly. I thought they were entirely fictional.

[mrissa]

I am an alloparent to a bisexual young adult and a pansexual teenager! This has come up in my actual very recent life! It's more work to put in the time and energy such that the young people know that the adults in their family have their backs and want them to be in an environment where they can make safe happy choices about sex--that is, more work than "I remember broad gender-based social prohibitions and will enforce them" but oh gosh is it worth it.

[magid]

I have to admit, I'm surprised how important sleepovers for teenagers seem to be; I guess I didn't have any after elementary school.

[julian]

I had a few with Church (Unitarian-Universalist) in the high school years, but most of the kid-and-parent initiated ones were elementary and middle school, yeah.

[melannen]

I had a few in middle school but yeah by high school - well, we had "sleepovers" that were "this party doesn't have a curfew, bring your sleeping bag" but there was definitely no expectation that they would be same-gender (also no expectation that there would be sex, drugs, or alcohol though for the record, it was mostly "watch anime until we pass out" tbh.)

I think increasingly "sleepover" is being used to mean "any situation in which people spend the night at other people's house" whereas when I was a kid/teen it more meant a very specific kind of party.

[julian]

Maybe I was just.a late bloomer, but I was more into the socializing aspects of a sleepover, and not the sleeping with people parts. (Am bisexual, thus this is relevant.)

I guess I'm a fan of, "Tell them facts about sex ed, have reasonable rules and so on, and don't be over vigilant."

[dissectionist]

The only way to truly ensure that a sleepover is sex-free is to have them at your own house and watch those little horndogs like a hawk.

LOL, good luck with that, unless you literally plan on sitting awake in the corner the whole night.

As a parent to AYAs (adolescents / young adults), man, just do your best to teach them safer sex, make sure they have everything they need for it, and then cross your fingers. It’s safer for them to be at home than it is trying to have sex in a car at a park or something that could get them in trouble legally. Do you want your kids to risk getting in trouble as sex pests? If they want to have sex, they’re going to do it either way, so either you can force it to be more unsafe or you create a situation where as many of the risks as possible are managed.

[melannen]

I am curious how LW thinks it would work for a gay kid. One gay boy each allowed at each all-heterosexual-girls party? (Does she really think that throwing him among a bunch of heterosexual girls is less likely to result in sex stuff happening?) And I guess a lesbian daughter could only go to all-heterosexual-boys overnights, which definitely wouldn't end poorly?

(I suspect LW is mostly thinking in terms of "one friend staying over", in which case the answer, LW, is: bisexual kids aren't actually attracted to *everybody*; "no sleepovers with romantic partners or people we don't know and trust" is a perfectly valid rule that can be applied to everybody.)

[katiedid717]

My brother is 15 months younger than one of my sisters and they were in the same friends group in high school - as a result, they ended up having quite a few coed overnight parties in high school (New Year's Eve being a frequent one). Now, this was also back in the time of landlines instead of cell phones, and it was always known that both of my parents would be home. We had two large rooms that the kids would usually crash in for the night, and because of the layout of our house, our parents would have been woken up if there was any activity back-and-forth to the off-limit bedrooms (not to mention that two of the three "kids" rooms were occupied anyway by me and our two youngest sisters). The friend group was usually pretty well behaved, especially because of the level of trust from all parents involved - it wasn't worth the risk to not be allowed to gather together as a group anymore.

Now, this was obviously different from a one-on-one sleepover. But it was still kind of funny because us older three would typically have friends stay over on the same night anyway and end up hanging out together to watch movies, play games, etc, so it probably wouldn't have really made a huge difference.

[conuly]

How about "no sleepovers with less than three guests"? Or, alternatively, "let's have a mature and ongoing conversation about sex, consent, and protection"