"Suggest waiting but promise support if she doesn't" is the approach we took with my current wife's daughter, who was 15 when I came into their lives. She was / is a spitfire and was clearly going to do what she wanted to do, and also a risk-taker. I do not see how any other approach would have worked better.

She has been sexually active since at least her freshman year in college and I suspect sexually experimenting well before that. Her mother has never been a prude about it but made clear the pitfalls, etc.

By contrast my now-25 year old stepson is still a virgin (very handsome young man of terrific character, but introverted and OCD). He's an example of two very different outcomes from the same exact parenting approach, as well as an illustration that personality differences will produce different results no matter the level of parental competence in his area. The daughter is a woman of the world, the son we are going to have to hand-guide through the online dating process when he comes home from college. He wants it, but is terrified of it and what he sees as the "what ifs". I sometimes wonder if he wouldn't be better off in the long run flying solo but defer to his mother's intuitions here. I never know how to predict if someone "needs some sense f_cked into them" or if some sex would just mess with their heads. It has done both to me. In truth, it could go either way for any one person. Too many variables.

My own children are older and I guided them (if you can call it that) through puberty more with the "hope for the best" approach as sexual topics never arose organically. I did make sure they knew the basic facts of life and was not uncomfortable conveying that info. My late son had heartbreak from his first relationship from which he never recovered to have other relationships. My daughter has been pretty conventionally serially monogamous. She ended up in the nursing profession and so knows how to conduct herself safely. She's 39 now and happily the mother of four.

All in all, reading over this, I think I'm more confirmed that nature trumps nurture every time. Parents should "do no harm" but not think too highly of their actual, practical ability to meaningfully influence outcomes. Give your children the tools they need, but it's still up to them to use them wisely.

Sex is an ongoing discussion at our house and started early. As well as birth control, consent, safe sex, resources, responsibilities, we talk about the emotional part of sex and how to know if you are ready for a sexual relationship. They are only 14 so I don't know how it will pan out, but I feel like a proactive approach will best prepare them when that time comes...

All a parent can do is provide guidance, support and try to give direction. Parents are rarely successful in stopping a teen from doing what a teen is going to do - be that sex, drugs or whatever else teens love to do! Better to maintain trust, try to make it as safe as possible and be there for them when it all falls apart.

I don't know anything about the case but it would be hard to see your 14yo with an 18yo.

I agree with Nicole's comments below regardign sliding age of consent. Younger kids are experimenting and laws need to adjust to this while still protecting the very young from those who are older.

I'm all for a sliding age of consent, beginning at 14 where the other party is no more than 2 years older, and then this restriction removed at age 18. This accepts the reality that kids are experimenting much earlier than they used to (realistically, some are starting around 12, but I'd be uncomfortable legitimising it for younger than 14) and that they need support rather than criminalisation. At the same time, it offers protection for 16 and 17 year olds from much older, predatory types.

An 18 year old with a 14 year old? Yup, that's predatory in my book. This should remain illegal, and the 18 year old subject to prosecution. But given that it's going to happen, yes, birth control would be preferable to risking pregnancy.

While we're here, the pornography laws need bringing into line with the age of consent. While it's understandable that nobody should get into commercial pornography work until they're 18+, this ridiculous situation where they can have sex perfectly legally at 16, but fall foul of the law for swapping naked selfies, needs to change.

I taught sexuality courses (among other things) and a lot of my daughter's friends came to me for information and advice because their parents either wouldn't talk to them or were incredibly judgmental. Although my daughter new all of the biological information by the time she was, I would guess, 12, I did ask her to wait. When she asked me why, I told her that while she was physically ready, I didn't think she was emotionally ready. Very few women marry their first lover if they start at 14 or 15, and the ending of a sexual relationship can be heartbreaking. I asked her to talk to me when she felt emotionally ready -- and she did. Now she's a 31 year old doctor giving advice to her teenage patients.

All I know about the case is what I can bring up on a google search. From what I have read, there was at the very least psychosis on the daughter's side along with narcotics from the boyfriend. Some reports state there was abuse within the family dynamics. With all of that, I can not even fathom an opinion.

In a perfect world you would start sex education long before it is needed and provide the means to get contraception when needed. This case does not appear to be a perfect world scenario.

No Vote! I would had put the 18 year old bf in jail because the other alternative would had put me in jail. Just being the honest son of a bitch I am and my two daughters knew I was because I am. No 18 will live to be 19 and tell the tale. ME At 18 I would had not considered any relation of any kind with a 14 and it was the era of FREE LOVE!

The only position I feel that is reasonable for me to take is arming kids with as much factual information as possible. Informing them of realistic probable outcomes, and unintended consequences. They are going to make their own choices, whether good or bad. They're like people that way.

I have no children so maybe I shouldn't even be weighing in on this, but I will anyway. People are going to have sex whether the rest of us like it or not. The best thing is to tell them they should wait, but if they're not going to, here's how they can protect themselves. I had a girlfriend once whose mom gave birth to her when she was 16, and that girl was 16 when she had her first as well. "Abstinence only" does NOT work.

Actually, the first answer is better than the two middle ones, but why choose a arbitrary start age? There are many kids who don't wait even until their teen years to become sexually active in some way. Why wait? Make it age appropriate as much as possible, don't threaten and don't lie. These defeat the purpose.

I think it not up to us it’s mother’s nature I rather my 14 years daughter to have safe sex which’s nature than smoking or drinking or even eating junk food.

Thinking more about it, when you have lost control and the "camel already has his nose in the tent," your only choice is option one, even if you manage to drive off the 18 year old your 14 year old is not likely to give up sex. That's life. I've not heard of many that said, "I'm not going to do that again."

I find this Norwegian government sponsored instructional video for 8th graders an example of how to handle sex ed. I wish I had had this growing up. Follow this link:
[cosmopolitan.com]

The same thing responsible for making 'teen sex' a negative has also made sex an interest therein a negative from the very earliest developmental stages. It is also responsible for a great deal of human misery at all ages, but especially among young adults.

I call it society; society as an 80% product of dominating androcentric theologies with almost all of what's left-over determined by laws supporting healthy domestic industry and national interest over personal mental and emotional health.

Nature doesn't recognize either legality or alleged validity of human laws and bureaucracies. She makes her own rules and we violate them routinely at our own peril.

Until recent history, so-called teen pregnancy wasn't the exception but the rule, and so was marriage. An industrial revolution, notions of 'higher education fo all' and coincident lengthening of the already dubious term called 'childhood' has been a real crazy-maker.

Joan of Arc and Alexander the Great were busily making history at times in their life that are today officially and legally defined as childhood. Many of this nation's founders were in their teens and slightly beyond them in 1776. Depriving young adults of instinctive, naturally driven behaviors for as long as five years legally and longer socially is cruel and pathogenic.

The interests of 'society', to include Patriarchal theological fanaticism, do not trump the dictates of Nature. One way of the other she will win out. We are in decline and Nature is patient. She in fact, has all the time in the world.

I would like to see the morning after pill be more popular than the everyday birth control pill.
It should be able to be purchased like asprin because it will cure a headache quicker than anything else if you need it to. Iowa just passed a law that you can't get an abortion after 6 weeks when you can detect a heartbeat. The only answer I see to get around this is the morning after pill. Why make it so difficult for people, not every sexual encounter that results in pregnancy is a wanted child.

My daughter and son eighties children were more in the real world about this subject than I was and we had so much AIDS advertising on television it was scary times They would look at me and say despiringly if I bourght it up 'Oh Mum! We know everything, calm down, we have these lessons at school! and they proved themselves right