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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I was cool, I watched "Sex and the City" with my 14-year-old daughter. But then she asked, "Can Ben sleep over?"
Jul 25, 2003 | Last summer I wrote an article about watching "Sex and the City" with my 14-year-old daughter. I talked about what a great bonding experience it was, and how it was a friendly way to segue into the slippery subject of sex. And I was criticized by many, even the ladies on "The View," for my questionable mothering skills. A recent New York Times article on the subject quoted another mother saying, "This is not how I want my daughter to live." And then Fox News asked me to do a segment where I was pitted against an Anita Bryant-type talk-show host who basically forecast my daughter's doom.
But I maintain that when it comes to the subject of sex, ignorance is not bliss, and silence is not golden. Teenagers are intensely curious about sex, and I appreciate anything that helps demystify it. "Sex and the City" is not the last word. It's a fun, casual way to get into a dialogue about a subject that is classically uncomfortable for parents and their teenagers. And, hey, my daughter didn't seem traumatized. Let other moms be uptight censorship-mongers. Not me.
But there is a long stretch of time to be gotten through from one season of "Sex and the City" to the next. During that time, my 14-year-old daughter has become a 15-year-old daughter. What's a mother to do?
This, of course, has been the year of the reality show. And, I admit, I became a reality show junkie. And where was my daughter? Was she interested in watching these trashy, exploitative, semipornographic sorry excuses for entertainment? No. As a matter of fact, truth be told, I'd been noticing she was avoiding me in general. This was not how a chummy mom and daughter who watch "Sex and the City" together are supposed to be! Our contact had somehow boiled down to the window of time when she made the trip back and forth from the kitchen to her Communications Center (bedroom) to e-mail, IM and phone (land line and cell) her friends.
So one night, as she was on her way out of the kitchen, I called out to her from the couch, "Joe Millionaire is about to choose between the elderly care worker and the ex-foot fetish model! You want to watch with me?"
"Mom," she said as she passed through the room, "get a life."
I turned back to the show. What was wrong with my daughter? Why didn't she want to watch trash TV like other normal Americans? I couldn't figure it out. But one thing I felt for sure, as I went to bed that night: Zora was a much better choice than Sarah, who was obviously just a fortune hunter. Joe had made the right choice.
Two days later I got the phone call. It was the father of one of my daughter's girlfriends. He was very concerned, because he'd seen my daughter emerge from the basement in his brownstone with this boy Ben and they were both, well, quite disheveled and, well, he just thought we should know.
I thanked him and hung up. Hmmm. A few weeks earlier, she'd engineered a "sleepover" with Ben at another boy's apartment along with her best girlfriend. I had put up a lot of resistance to this. (Maybe it would be OK for Samantha Jones, but not my daughter.) And I made a point of going to meet the mother of this other boy just to be reassured that the mom was sane and would keep an eye on things. My daughter assured me that this was a perfectly innocent, platonic night during which the two girls would sleep in a separate room from the two boys. I gave my OK.
Well. It was obviously time for "a talk," and as soon as possible. Now I knew why she'd been distant. She'd been hiding something from me. I felt annoyed, but I tried to get past that. Every mother knows this is the most crucial time in a teenage girl's life. You've got to keep the lines of communication open, give advice, let her know you're there for her ...
Except. The finale of "The Bachelorette" was on. I was not about to miss that. Maybe we'd talk later in the evening, right before bedtime.
But then my daughter walked through the room to get a snack when the show was about to begin, and I thought maybe we could watch together, and get into a casual chat about what was going on with her these days as far as school, boys, basements ... "You want to watch 'The Bachelorette' with me? Trista is gonna choose between Ryan and Charlie!"
"No, thanks," she said.
"Everyone thinks she's gonna pick Charlie. But Ryan is really cute and sensitive."
"You are such a loser," she said, as she disappeared into her room.
