Coed sleepovers: Platonic or premature?

But when Cooke wrote a column about the event for her newsweekly chain, the Pioneer Press, some readers were furious. "You are either naive or uninformed," wrote one. "I am incensed at the article and do not believe it should be published in a family paper."

Some experts share that wariness. To Mr. Billingham, same-sex and coed sleepovers serve very different social functions. The former, he says, help children see how they fit in with members of their own sex and show they're grown-up enough to be away from home. The latter subvert that purpose, because adolescents "have not had time to define themselves within their own sex group."

With his own children, Billingham allowed coed sleepovers up to age four. But his son, now 11, finds the notion "pretty gross" - and Billingham is encouraging that view.

Cooke, too, sees a dividing line in age: "If this had been an eighth grade graduation party, I should have been thrown in jail." But she let her three children attend coed sleepovers once they were juniors in high school.

For the most part, Jenny agrees with her mother. "You're not as mature yet," she recalls of her salad days in early high school, "and so you're more likely to give into peer pressure."

But down the road in Deerfield, Jacquie Lewis puts coed slumber parties off limits - far off limits - for her daughters Andi, 16, and Shelly, 15: "To give them the opportunity to have a sleepover with kids of the opposite sex can only lead to curiosity," she says.

Ms. Lewis worries that the gatherings spawn promiscuity, and she's heard horror stories, such as one about a romantic couple separated from friends by a sheet pinned up as a makeshift (but not soundproof) curtain. Indeed, in the TeenPeople survey, 83 percent of respondents had heard of peers "fooling around" at coed sleepovers. Yet the magazine's online message boards are filled with raves about coed slumber parties, making them seem as routine as the SATs.

In setting policies, parents don't want to overreact to their fears. That desire kept Cathryn Tobin, a pediatrician and author in Toronto, from outlawing her youngest daughter's sleepovers with boys. Still, she's been surprised at their frequency in the age 10-to-12 set, and was relieved when fifth-grade Madison decided she was tired of boys' teasing and wanted to end the sleepovers.

If you're a parent looking for reassurance, don't ask Dennis Aguiling, 18, of Renton, Wash. His friends at all-male O'Dea High School host coed slumber parties a few times a year - usually planned strategically so the parents are gone.

He says sex, as well as alcohol, is "a legitimate worry": He talks about holding his "v-card" (virginity), while other friends are "dealing" theirs. "We're hormonally driven beings who think of nothing other than personal gain," he concedes. "So in the right situation, the right mood, it's gonna happen."

So should parents keep lock-and-key tabs on their children? To Ms. Lewis, it's not such a harebrained idea: "There's no need for kids to explore that level of sexuality at that age."

Page: 1 | 2