THis is a tricky area, folks. I have to put my hand up as being odd one out here. But not for lack of trying to be a dinosaur.
However - there are only so many nights you can spend, lying sleeping across the threshhold of your daughter's room. Chastity belts are considered child abuse.
Our problem is greatly compounded by living too far away for friends to just drop in for an evening visit. As a result, relationships were pursued long-distance with occasional weekend/vacation visits. With easy child & BF1, I had to trust to BF1's grandfather to supervise, plus her own known aversion to sex (so we thought). Then she came home form a long visit, with a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI)... and I called her on it, then took her to the doctor for the Pill and antibiotics. Her biggest crime at the time, I told her, was in going ahead and NOT telling me, because she needed to learn how to avoid getting a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) and I would have warned her. I didn't want to gross her out by telling her when she was too young.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 - round heels. We KNEW we'd have trouble with her. Again, we couldn't watch her every minute of every day. Trust me - we tried. Really, really hard. She still got past us. And it was her, not him. We knew what she was like, we knew that she would be OK but it would be devastating for him - and it was.
Neither of our girls were promiscuous, but we knew that they would be likely to have sex once established in a long-term relationship, even though still under 18.
We never had boy-girl sleepovers with a group, we also banned easy child from going to them when she was younger. But when older, she often slept over when there were mixed groups. But the larger the group, the less chance there is for anything to happen. We knew the kids involved and knew there were enough kids who really cared about our girls as friends, to make sure nothing happened to them.
Once the kids begin gonig about on their own and visiting friends - fi they wnat to have sex, it doesn't have to happen overnight. The kids will MAKE it happen. husband & I sat & talked about it, we felt we'd prefer it to happen somewhere safe qwhere they cancome talk to us if they needed to.
Mind you, I did my utmost to use aversion therapy. husband & I will kiss in front of the kids, we make no secret of "where they came from" even though most kids would prefer to beleive themselves to be the product of Immaculate Conception!
I took the kids (all of them) shopping for condoms. Where we live, they can be bought in the supermarket. There's nothing so offputting for a kid, as to have a mother publicly discuss the merits or otherwise of ribbed/non-ribbed, flavoured/non-flavoured. I bought supplies and made sure the kids knew where they were kept so they could raid them.
THis was not condoning it, it was saying, "I'd rather you waited. But I'm a realist and want you to be safe. Safety is vital. Abstinence is safest. After that - responsibility. And if you choose the adult pleasures, you MUST also accept the responsibility. ALL of it."
For a while easy child 2/difficult child 2 & BF2 were actually living as a couple, in our spare room.
We never suggested it. Uh uh. We DID accept BF2 as a boarder, there were too many good reasons to. And if we hadn't, he would have got his own place and easy child 2/difficult child 2 would have moved in with him. Which they have since done. But at least for the first year, there was a transition, under our roof. It gave us time to "house-train" BF2. They were both over 18 when he moved in. About 20, actually.
easy child & BF2 have been sexually active since they were about 16, I think. They're getting married on Friday. She is almost 27.
Sometimes it works out.
Marg