Coed sleepovers: Platonic or premature?

Adolescent sleeping habits have long been the stuff of rules and rancor - battles over curfew, "lights out" policies, prep-school dorms bolted against male intrusion. But these days, late-night games of "truth or dare" have a new twist, and girls' pillow talk a deeper rumble: Coed sleepovers are on the rise, creating a whole new realm for rules - and rebellion.

While precise numbers on the phenomenon are hard to come by, the trend has come increasingly into public focus. In a recent survey of youths by TeenPeople, more than half of respondents had attended coed slumber parties. Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times published rules for safe coed sleepovers last year. And parenting experts attest to a flurry of questions about slumber parties where boys and girls lie side by side.

For parents and children, the events spark difficult questions as well as boisterous excitement. Many adults worry the parties open the door to early sexual experimentation, the modern equivalent of late nights in a '57 Chevy. But if they shudder with concern, they're also loath to be Scrooges, quashing innocent nights of popcorn and Pictionary. For boys and girls, coed sleepovers mark a desegregation of adolescent development that can seem both awkward and promising.

"Ten years ago, I think the idea would have been very disturbing, but it's become more mainstream," says Robert Billingham, a human-development and family expert at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Some experts cast the parties as evidence of closer Platonic friendships between girls and boys. With girls heavily involved in sports, and with more cultural models of cross-gender friendships (think "Will and Grace," or Elaine and Jerry on "Seinfeld"), the notion of such intimate bonds may simply be more accessible.

The adolescent social world "used to be very segregated: Boys did this, girls did that, and people made an effort to keep them apart," says Tina Tessina, a Long Beach, Calif., psychotherapist. While calling "the very nature of these boy/girl sleepovers slightly provocative," she sees themas signs of how friendship is evolving.

That was Barbara Cooke's philosophy when she let her 16-year-old daughter, Jenny, host five friends after their Homecoming dance this fall in suburban Deerfield, Ill. Jenny's party, she says, was "almost like a campout.... The girls and guys call each other by their last names half the time."

Still, Ms. Cooke laid out clear rules: No drinking, no drugs, separate sleeping bags, everyone in one room, and no sex - which, she explained to Jenny, meant no contact below the shoulder blades. After a detour for broomball, the group got home at 2 a.m., changed into their pajamas, watched 20 minutes of a movie, and promptly - chastely - fell asleep, sprawled on the carpet of the tan-paneled basement rec room.

With her boyfriend coming to the sleepover, Jenny had balked at the prohibition on shared sleeping bags. But she insists sex wasn't a concern for her or the five friends there: "It's not like that. Out of respect [for me], they would be embarrassed" to do that.

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