18 And Dating
My 18 year old son is turning into a drama queen. Oh, he’s always had the penchant for blowing things out of proportion, but it doesn’t seem to be tempered with age now that he’s entering into adulthood. If anything, it’s gotten worse. Case in point…
Last night he calls me to tell me that he won’t be over to my house for Father’s Day until Sunday, instead of Friday to spend the weekend with me as originally planned. That’s fine. I didn’t mind. So, I asked him what was up. “I have a date out by me on Saturday.” He said, meaning where his mom lives (he lives with her). He doesn’t want to use the gas driving from my place to the date since I’m much farther from his date than his mom is. Fair enough.
And then I ask who this girl is and how old she is. “16.” Oh boy. I proceeded to remind him that because he’s 18, if he does anything with a 16 year old girl, it’s legally statutory rap if the parents pursue it. His response was, in a whiny teenage voice “Can’t you just be happy for me!?” Picture the biggest eye roll that you can imagine, and you will have an image of me at that moment.
First, I told him not to be such a drama queen, and then I pointed out that I WAS happy for him, but that I also loved him and was concerned about him. Being 18 and dating is tricky age-wise, because you can’t legally date people younger than you, and people older than you ‘typically’ are a bigger challenge to get you to go out with.
And of course, his mom only hears his side of the story, listening to him talk to me on the phone and probably figured that I was reading him the riot act it. She was telling him to get off the phone for no reason. Nice. “Have a nice time, son!”
In your fair state, the age of consent is 17. The conditions under which statutory rape apply are that the younger party must be a child under 17 and the older party must be an adult over 21. Your son doesn’t meet the “adult over 21” part, but his girlfriend is not of age to consent anyway. And for what it’s worth, I’d have given him a similar “be careful” warning – regardless of eitherparty’s age.
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in my state, it’s within three years – so 19 could date 16 but not 15. Maybe it’s similar?
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“Can’t you just be happy for me?” followed by, God forbid…. “Can’t you just bail me out of jail.” if the situation goes awry. You warned him. I guess that’s all you can do at this point.
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That is a gray area. Wise advice.
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Not the most helpful suggestion, but tell him to move to the UK, no one would even blink at that! It’s 16 here and even if they’re younger (i.e. 14+) then no one has any real issue with it other than to look disgusted (It’s only ever “enforced” if there’s a big age gap, otherwise people just roll their eyes). Probably explains why we have so many teenage pregnancies though…
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Adding to my previous note, I guess I just find it amusing how different our societies are, although I’m more for yours than ours, our underage drinking is completely out of control 🙁 It’s 18 here and if you’re caught drinking under that… not a hell of a lot happens. All they do is take them home to parents and that’s about it, most of the time the parents don’t care anyway! Because they’re under 18 they can’t be charged just with that and it’s not deemed enough of a problem to be need juvenile detention etc! Complete farce 🙁
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