From The Wall Street Journal:
What the Dating Rules You Set For Your Kids Say About You
Parents who are involved in stable romantic relationships with spouses or partners tend more than other parents to set rules limiting teen dating behavior, such as curfews, minimum ages for dating, limits on places teens can go and explicit rules against sexual activity, says a new study of 169 parents and 102 teens by Stephanie Madsen, an associate professor of psychology at Maryland’s McDaniel College. While the reason isn’t clear, the author suggests these parents may hold more conservative beliefs in general; many of the rules involved sexuality.
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A better way for parents to expend their energy, Dr. Madsen says, is to emphasize constant, warm oversight over just setting rules. She calls this setting “supervisory” rules, or keeping up a free flow of communication without intruding too much. This means asking teens to disclose plans, check in by phone and inform parents when plans change. In such cases, the adults were focusing on their roles as parents rather than their own love lives. These parents also had the healthiest relationships with their children.
I guess I’m anticipating something along the lines of a supervisory role when the time comes for Ava to start entertaining thoughts of romance. God. I cringe just thinking about it. I’d love it, of course, if she felt like she could be open with either Leah or me about what she was up to, but I suppose it’s good to be realistic about the odds of being so involved in her inner life. And I think she should have an inner life that’s her own, that’s run according to rules she makes for herself without answering to anyone. Within reason, of course. Spring Break trip to South Padre sophomore year? Not on my watch. Lower back tat for her sweet 16? Uh uh. Nope.
The plan, as I see it, is to gently mold her so that decisions like those cited above aren’t even on her radar by the time she gets to high school. Which shouldn’t entail her becoming some sort of antisocial hermit; I just hope she’s smart about things, is all. Smarter than I was.