Teenage daughter going away with her boyfriend. Would you be OK with it?

[HowWouldYouRespondToThis]

My daughter has been seeing her boyfriend for a year. They are both 16.

He has asked her to go away overnight with him in the summer holidays. They will both be 17, will have been together for 18 months by then and will be going alone.

I don't have a problem with it. She's reluctant to tell her dad because of the way he has overreacted to, well, pretty much everything! I've said she can't go without telling him in advance, which she has agreed to do, but I know he will be bouncing off the walls about it.

Would you be OK with this?

Yes, why are you even conversing with your ex now and still letting him bother you?

Teach and support your daughter in setting appropriate boundaries with her Dad. She needs to understand this so that she can have healthy relationships. She shouldn't be learning that men she loves can bully her.

I understood the whole "you have to tell your dad first" thing, but given the update that she doesnt live with her dad then i dont really think it matters if he knows or not.

Lots of comments saying it isn't the father's business? He is her father at the end of the day and it's healthy for separated parents to respect one another. I think OP you are doing the right thing in this sense.

I think 17 is OK to go away with a steady boyfriend who i hope is a good for her and a stable good influence in her life,
Good to hear you have pretty good relationship with her too,
so she can talk to you about stuff too

@Andypandy799 - most teenage girls I know are well aware of how to protect themselves against unwanted pregnancy - they don’t rely on their father to protect their innocence! Also just because they enjoy having a boyfriend (which is a totally normal part of growing up by the way), doesn’t mean they ‘need’ a man to thrive or be successful! My DD went away with her serious boyfriend aged 17 - she didn’t come back pregnant and she is doing very well academically taking 3 A’levels and getting good grades.

No parent likes the thought of their child becoming sexually active but if you try to stop it/control it, they will always find a way. It’s far more likely that the kids doing it furtively, behind their controlling parents’ backs, are the ones more likely to end up with an unwanted pregnancy.

I agree he is her father @RitaRitaRita
to a certain extant,
Know stuff about his daughters life,

Obviously if he is a control freak nightmare
a Narastistic type,
As he will twist manipulative about almost anything to create drama a situation that is beneficial to their ego/motivations themselves

Is it allways a good thing to them someone like that everything?
How far do you want them involved?
So they can emotional manipulative, dicate on peripherals of your family life with their usaul 🎪 circus of ring master of speciality of expertise of instigating High drama 🤔 etc?

I'm actually quite amused at the idea of dd having a bf meaning that she thinks she needs a man to be happy or successful. I don't think that idea has ever even entered her head!

Oops typo mistake and omissions
Is it allways a good beneficial thing to let someone who is a control freak ect or Narastistic or personality disorders issue tendencies to tell them everything?

This. Why on earth have you told her she needs to tell him first, and why has she agreed. You need to get her out of the mindset of 'asking his permission' - she doesn't need to.

I’d be ok with her going away. Mine went to Glastonbury and Reading festivals at that age. I don’t ask what happened! They’re adults now, survived well and have families.
Some youngsters are barely 18 when they go away to University and are on their own and can make their own decisions.
My parents got divorced when I was 10, by the time I was 17, my father didn’t know much about where I went, sometimes my mother didn’t either.

@Dogsitterwoes

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves

I agree with both of your points are very valid and emotionally intelligent insightful too,
In regard of Op@HowWouldYouRespondToThis
thread

I wouldn't tell him and I wouldn't tell her she had to. I don't understand why you told her she had to tell him really.

It would be fine with me. Presumably she knows about protection and you know the boy and trust him. I was at uni at that age, DD is a young adult.

My dad was like your ex; rabid about his own puritanical standards but also prone to saying weird, twisted things when he didn’t get his way (which was rare, tbf, cos we were all on eggshells). Might be handy to point out to ExH the damage a father going on like sex is something to be ashamed of and a moral challenge to be resisted, can do in the head of a young woman.

This was the 90s and the world has changed a lot but all my dad’s neuroses didn’t stop me doing it - it just had the cheery side effect of making sex feel dirty and risky and skewed my view of it which led me to bad choices. It also made me think once I’d slept with a boy I’d got to stick with him, matter how unpleasant he was, because sex was such a big deal. Not saying that’s at all whats happened to your DD, thank God she has a kind and rational mum who sticks up for her, but with these sort of dads, they don’t know the damage they do with their Victorian antics.

By discouraging her from having a relationship at 16 is not the same as controlling her at all.

She has full autonomy over her free will and I respect her right to privacy and trust her better judgment as she has her head screwed on.

And to other pp I’m afraid some girls do just want a baby even at 16, so when my son is a teenager I will be encouraging him to avoid relationships as well until he has finished uni

Fine with it though most hotels won’t take two under 18s.

No sex until he is 21 or so?

How likely do you think that is?

Well the time will soon arrive when DD is under no obligation to tell her father exactly what she is doing, and in my opinion it’s here already. Perhaps you/she could tell her father that she is growing up - perhaps reference a birthday or an event like GCSEs or going to college etc, and that her summer plans include some short breaks and visits where she will be travelling with a friend or group of friends. No specific details needed, these are under review.
There is no shame attached to your daughter going away from home briefly and she should not be treated as if there is.

I don’t really understand the issue. Why do you need to speak to him? Why does this have anything to do with him at all?

At 17 (which I appreciate she isn’t quite yet, but she will be by the time this comes around) I would expect that she’d be managing her own relationship with her dad and there wouldn’t need to be any co-parenting going on any more.

Obviously in a situation where both parents are mature, decent people who can communicate properly and have their children’s best interests at heart, it’s always going to be beneficial to keep some of that co-parenting alive and kicking during the late teenage years and into early adulthood while the kids are still possibly still in education and needing some support getting on their feet. But when you’re dealing with someone who is controlling and unreasonable, that’s not the case. Your kids need you to be the best parent you can be, not just to operate within the parameters set by their controlling father. They are old enough to make their own decisions about their relationship with him and he’s going to have to learn that whilst they may ask for and possibly even take his advice occasionally, they aren’t under his control any longer. He’s going to have to find other methods of conducting a relationship with them if he wants to stay in their lives.

Don’t allow him to use you as a tool to control them and force them into accepting his rules. He’s probably realising that his grasp on them is fast disappearing. Encourage them to have proper boundaries! It sounds like they do. So don’t force her to “run it past” her dad. She doesn’t need his permission and approval to live her life.

Good luck with that!

@Andypandy799 in 2020, there were 12.5k conceptions to women aged under 18, in the whole of England and Wales. Which is around 13 per 1000. I don’t know the breakdown of abortions by age, but around 25% of conceptions lead to abortion overall, and probably higher in this age group.

So yes, a handful of 16 year olds each year across the country will have a baby. But really, not many. And your boy could use a condom, or have non PIV sex. Is it really worth trying to ban relationships??

There is also no reason for a young person to consider perfectly normal activities through the lens of ‘ something bad might happen’ . This creates unnecessary anxiety. Of course teenagers need to take care and think through possibilities but why seek to make them afraid of life? So unfair

She has never asked to go away with her friends. Tbh she rarely goes out in the evenings/ night. It's not that we don't let her, she just rarely wants to go. She is much more immature than I was at that age and most of her peers. I hope she matters as she will be an adult soon.

I don’t know why some people think the add and her boyfriend might only have sex when they go away. Don’t you know much about teenagers ?
Also, they might not have sex when they go away.
Too many presumptions.

It should be your daughter's choice how much, if anything, she tells her father about her private life. And you don't have to put up with unlimited unwanted contact from him. Tell him you don't want to hear from him about anything except practicalities and if he persists, you will report him for harassment.

Then don't tell him. I can't really see why he needs to know considering his attitude.