A: The optimism that parents and grandparents display when discussing their childrens’ or grandchildrens’ lifestyle in general, and especially their sex life, never fails to amaze me.

Unfortunately, in most cases these conversations are based on ignorance: for teenagers tend to keep the true state of affairs about their sex lives themselves. Usually, but obviously not in your household, adolescents, although they can discuss other peoples’ sex lives frankly and give their opinions about sex in the abstract, are too excruciatingly embarrassed to talk about their own experiences to parents.

When a 15-year-old girl asks parents about the Pill the motivation for the question isn’t likely to be academic. It is more likely that she wants to discuss contraception in general. If so, it is a safe bet that she and her present boyfriend are now so intimate that, even if their sex life is more bread and butter than cordon bleu, pregnancy is a real possibility.

Even some well-informed 15-year-olds have peculiar ideas about virginity, and what is necessary for conception. I have known bright, apparently street-wise young women who have thought that they could conceive only if they have an orgasm. Similarly, others think that if their man withdraws it “doesn’t count” and that pregnancy is impossible.

Everyone has their own opinion on the appropriate age to start close but non-consummated relationships with the opposite sex. My own belief is that 15 is far too young to pair off or have a series of short affairs. The evidence is that in many cases it is the boy who wants to prove his manhood, whereas the girl is persuaded because her crush on him is so intense that she doesn’t dare to risk losing her man.

It is always slightly surprising how many 15-year-old girls, once they have agreed to penetrative sex, admit to a neutral observer that they would never have done so if he hadn’t “pestered me into it”.

One important reason, other than a devotion to a man, why young women can be reluctant to risk ending a relationship is that having their own man gives them status among their peers. Peer group influence is of greater significance than realised and can match that of parents, home or school. When chatting to friends, your daughter, like other young women, won’t like to think that others may be more knowledgeable about the world and have had enjoyed experiences that remain a mystery to her. Adolescents want to understand, if necessary by sampling, the sexual activities with their hints of joy that they see displayed in advertisements and in television soaps. Most women are not aware that, at 15, although adolescents mature physically earlier than in other generations, they are still emotionally ill-equipped to have a rewarding sex life.

What should a concerned parent do? They should obviously strive to have as good a parental relationship as you have, so that they can have relaxed family conversations. Parents have to realise that 15-year-olds are neither children nor yet adults and that in this intermediate age they will have her own views, friends, mores and needs.

As family relationships are so fragile, so far as adolescents are concerned, I would suggest that you persuade your daughter to obtain a professional, emotionally detached outside opinion. The professional adviser — most districts have some form of teenage advisory service — will be dealing with problems similar to your daughter’s every day. A professional adviser can determine more easily (and create less offence in doing so) than a parent just how much an affair is powered by peer pressure and how much by love, and to what extent they, and your daughter herself want this friendship to become sexual.

A: Worry about what will happen if she doesn’t go on the Pill and she has sex anyway. Though we’d all love our children to wait until we, their parents, were ready for them to have sex, teenagers are governed by more powerful influences.

Paternal counsel pales into insignificance beside the surge of hormones that accompanies first love. Add to this, basic curiosity and the social pressure that demands that a boy or girl progress at the same rate as the peer group and you see what your “good advice” is really up against.

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