May your teen and his boyfriend close the bedroom door, when they're hanging out?

What if the boyfriend were a girlfriend?

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The column we’ll critique today is from the New York Times’ Social Qs, May 21, 2025.

People have asked AdviceObsessed why she never critiques the New York Times’ Social Qs, by Philip Galanes. It’s a fair question, given the visibility of the column.

The short answer is it’s definitely in my rounds, when I cruise the columns in search of something to post about. But when I check it out, I rarely see anything that needs attention, because its advice is usually sensible.

About, oh, 90% of the time, that advice amounts to telling letter-writers to butt out of whatever situation they’re complaining about. Which says a lot, if you think about it.

But today’s the exception to this pattern. As usual, Social Qs advises the LW to butt out, but in this case, she really ought to step in.

The letter-writer’s son is a high school junior. He’s gay, and “has a boyfriend his age.” She and her husband have been letting the kids be alone in their son’s bedroom, with the door closed.

She says she wouldn’t permit this if the boyfriend were a girlfriend, because of the risk of pregnancy. As it is, she writes, “I’m fine with it.”

The problem is her husband. He “thinks I’m a hypocrite because I wouldn’t allow this if our son were straight.” She adds: “He also finds it "‘disrespectful’ for the boys to have sex under our noses.” She asks, finally, for Social Q’s thoughts.

Social Qs begins with one big mistake, and the rest of its advice, unfortunately, flows from that. “I get,” it writes, “that it may be disconcerting to think of your baby becoming sexually active, but he is a young man now.”

Please imagine the sound of a buzzer here. This is wrong, Social Qs! A high school junior is not a young man; he’s a child. Gay or straight, he still needs parents, and he needs them to set limits. That’s limits on a bunch of things, but on nothing more than sex.

High school juniors cannot fathom the long-term implications of early sexual experience. Nor are they ready for the intensity of a sexual relationship. They’re wobbly enough as it is.

It’s always frustrated me when people identify the risks of sex, at any age, as pregnancy and STDs. Not that those aren’t real and serious, but the greatest and likeliest danger, by far, is deep emotional harm.

To its credit, Social Qs acknowledges this, saying the parents should talk to their kid about “his emotional readiness for physical intimacy.”

But conversation suggests the conclusion is up for grabs, whereas no matter how good a game this boy talks, the resulting policy must be that he’s simply too young to close the bedroom door.

His mother, unfortunately, is far from understanding this. His childhood room, she writes, “seems like a safe space for them to explore their sexuality.”

And what, I’d love to know, does it mean to explore one’s sexuality? Is that different from just having sex?

It’s the same thing, right? But compared to, say, “falling in love,” or even being “overcome by passion,” “exploration” takes the focus off the relationship, and turns sex into some kind of enrichment program, like…I don’t know…painting, or tennis, or foreign travel.

Something you can get better at by study or practice. You’d never know two beating hearts were involved.

But the letter-writer’s question is about her disagreement with her husband. As she tells it, they disagree about two things: whether she’s a hypocrite, because she’d have a different policy for a girlfriend, and whether it’s disrespectful for the boys to have sex in a parents’ home.

About this word, “disrespect”: I read in it her husband’s unsuccessful struggle to articulate what’s bothering him. I suspect he’s unhappy about his son’s sexual orientation, but he knows (correctly) he can’t say that, so he lands on “disrespectful.”

Please note that the letter gives me no basis for this suspicion. It’s just my strong hunch.

I think her husband’s right, though, that the LW is a hypocrite.

When a child is gay, love and acceptance are critical, and they need to get expressed right away, unequivocally and calmly. A critical part of acceptance is normalization, which means the parents can’t break character. They have to continue to be Mom and Dad, for the whole conversation.

This mother, though, seems strangely excited about her gay child. She goes on about it: Are they having sex, or aren’t they? The parents don’t hear anything…

To AdviceObsessed, this is over-involvement, and it’s more than a little weird.

Social Qs suggests the couple talk to their child, covering such issues as “his experiences, his safety protocols and his emotional comfort.” It acknowledges the conversation might be “hideously awkward,” and reassures them it needn’t be “perfect.”

AdviceObsessed also advises this couple to to talk to their child. But to invite this mother, in particular, to seek the granular information Social Qs is talking about is a mistake.

These parents should be ready to listen, if their son wants to talk, but they shouldn’t be perturbed if he doesn’t, and they shouldn’t press him. Most teens are pretty private.

It’s fine if the conversation is brief, as long as their point is firmly fixed: that he is too young; that the door needs to stay open; and that this policy would be the same if his boyfriend were a girl.