I might be calling the kettle black with that soap box reference because I do have strong feelings about this, but it is also a part of the resumption of personal power and responsibility that is at the centre of the New Energy revolution.

I have a male friend whose 14-year-old daughter lives with her mother. Said mother has always been the strict and controlling variety of parent which was mostly fine for all concerned until recently. My friend’s daughter, let’s call her X since that is how her mother is inclined to characterise her at the moment, has got in with an older group of friends and her mother doesn’t approve and has banned the friendship. So X lied and went and spent a night with this group, including a 20-year-old man.

The mother is, of course, not handling it well to the extent that X is refusing to live with her any more so her father might have to move to the area so she can live with him. But the main issue as far as everyone including her father is concerned is did she have sex with this 20-year-old man? If so her mother will certainly send him off to jail if she has a say in it. Which, as far as she’s concerned, she does.

I keep on saying to my friend, her father, ‘What’s the big deal about the age of the man? Or about a 14-year-old having sex?’ Fourteen-year-old girls are mostly physically mature. They are designed for having sex. In the right conditions a lot of them want to have sex. Why do parents have this automatic blocking reflex, this automatic assumption that their teenager must be prevented from going where she chooses to go?

I have never received a convincing response to this question. People talk to me about the risk of stds, of unwanted pregnancy, or of being preyed upon by someone who could take advantage of their naivety, but all of these risks are best avoided with open lines of communication between the parent and teenager while she navigates this emotionally hazardous new path.

And the age difference? I just don’t know what that’s about. Why is it assumed, even by law in Australia, that it is better for an inexperienced girl to have her first fumbling sexual experience with an inexperienced boy, when she is still living the fairytale that he wants intimacy and the promise of blissful domesticity, and he is still living the passion to spread his seed as far and wide as he can? Both so pathetically unaware of the other’s agenda.

The issue of interference with another’s personal power is in its greyest area when it comes to parenthood because it is actually a parent’s job to obstruct a child’s wishes sometimes when that child has little or no understanding of safety or of social or practical necessity. All parents have to position themselves somewhere on a spectrum between extreme caution and extreme risk in regard to how much freedom they give their child as they navigate the hazardous path of human life. And on a spectrum of compromise between the parent’s lifestyle choices and those of the child. Somewhere between tadpoles in the bath and mudpies on the kitchen floor, and sparkling hygiene with narry a toy out of place.

Teenagers are not the same as children. They are, when you think about it, essentially adults who haven’t quite got control of their limbs. One thing teenagers are generally very clear about is that they are not receptive to being told how to run ther lives, they are not willing to have their decisions made for them. They could certainly use as much advice as they can get to avoid the pits they are prone to falling into, but they will only accept what is offered freely. They will only accept automony.