Over on Blogfabulous, Kim is discussing coed sleepovers. I was pleasantly surprised to see this topic still seems to have a bit of shock value left in it. I first heard of these back in 2003 when a family I was working with asked me what I thought about letting a child attend one. I was in too much shock to speak intelligibly. OK. Maybe that isn't entirely accurate. They were quite the norm back in 1992 when I was in Germany. It is hard to say I haven't heard of something I attended, but that is another story (and no, nothing happened.) But I was shocked to hear it here in America from a Christian family.How common are these events? According to the 2005 final report of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Needs Assessment, 68.4% of surveyed teens reported having attended a coed sleepover. That is a surprisingly high number, and indicates that these events have become somewhat of a norm. That is also a lot of peer pressure for young adolescents who are just beginning to break away from parental authority and experiment with their independence. Especially since an increasing number of parents seem to define their children's boundaries based on everyone else's boundaries.
I think it bothers me more that parents apparently don't know how to answer their children when they ask. At least Dr. Bill from Focus on the Family gives a straight answer. Um, no. Why on earth would you ask? Christianity Today's Tim Stafford thinks they could be good, clean fun. Hypothetically, anyway.
Perhaps most telling is the definition over on Urban Dictionary:
It is a sleepover where there are both boys and girls also known as an orgy.I am certain that I do not wish for my children to participate in that kind of activity. Even if they are the only ones not going. Then again, I tend to parent by conviction rather than by popular vote. And we won't have to worry about it as a school-sanctioned event.
parenting, coed sleepovers, sleepovers, teen sexuality
