Dr Thomas Stuttaford : Last year there was a lot of publicity about men and women who had no interest in sex either homo or heterosexual. Some of those interviewed were almost certainly secretly homosexuals, but most doctors have had patients who, however carefully questioned, are obviously asexual.

Casual observers of humanity at the time of Alfred Kinsey in the early 1950s would have been content to accept that sex was a non-event in these people’s lives; today the grandchildren of mid-20th-century commentators would say that Jack or Jill, Fiona or Fred just didn’t do sex. Kinsey introduced a scale by which people’s sexual response, whether totally heterosexual or homosexual or somewhere between the two, was measured. He also accepted that some people had no sexual interest whatsoever.

Kinsey reported that the percentage of women who had experienced an orgasm, through petting, masturbation or intercourse, at the age of 16, was low. Only 22 per cent of 16-year-old girls in the early 1950s had ever reached an orgasm and even by the age of 20 only 47 per cent had. In Kinsey’s time, only

15 per cent of women between 16 and 20 had had intercourse, and only 18 per cent of adolescent or young, adult women had been involved in petting with the opposite sex to the stage of an orgasm. These figures would be very different now. Not only are women reaching the menarche (the start of their periods) progressively earlier, but changes in modern mores have revolutionised the pattern of heterosexual relationships in women of this age group.

The relevance of these statistics is that they demonstrate that 50 years ago your daughter’s behaviour would be normal. Not all 16-year-old girls then dated men. In all probability, there is nothing unusual about your daughter, other than that she has perhaps been brought up in a house with deeply embedded opinions on sexual behaviour that stem from an earlier age.

There are all sorts of details about your daughter, yourself and your husband that would have been interesting to know. In clinical practice it would be impossible to give a good opinion unless the doctor had an opportunity to judge a girl’s parents, their relationship to their daughter and their own approach to adolescent sexuality. Adolescents who had a difficult or, paradoxically, too close a relationship with either parent may find that having heterosexual relationships with contemporaries is difficult.

Is your daughter at a mixed or single sex school? If at a mixed school, would a dispassionate observer find her attractive and charming? In a mixed-sex school, it can be hell for a girl who is beautiful and sexy.

The problems this causes can turn heterosexual friendships into a minefield. Does she have close friendships with girls or even crushes on those who are perhaps a year or two older? Whatever the answer, 16 is too early to be dogmatic about sexual preferences.

Possible psychiatric and psychological causes for her lack of interest in boys include social phobia (extreme shyness). Shyness is usually no more than a fear of being appraised physically, intellectually and emotionally; judgment in a sexual relationship is one of the most testing of all. Occasionally, excessive shyness is a symptom of more serious psychiatric problems. Or it could be that fear of physical sexual activity is blighting your daughter’s relationships.

Suzi Godson: No, you shouldn’t. You can’t be sure that your daughter has no interest in boys. Teenage girls are notoriously uncommunicative and, for all you know, she is madly in love with an equally reticent boy whose mother is experiencing a similar bout of anxiety.

If my memory serves me correctly, at 16 the prospect of sharing anything as deeply personal as my sexuality with the woman who gave birth to me would have been abhorrent. As for those “sons of friends”, that’s wishful thinking, love. Billie Double Barrelled might seem like the perfect date to you, but being a teenager is about separating from your parents, so anyone who is linked to them in any way is automatically off - limits. As such, your daughter probably views all “sons of friends” as pond life.

Every mother knows that although 16-year-olds should, in theory, understand something about sex and relationships — because, legally, they could go out and get married — it is asking a lot to expect someone who can’t cook, or clean her room, who can’t drive, drink alcohol or vote, who can’t make a decision, or get her homework done, or string two words into a sentence when granny comes to visit, to know which end is up when it comes to falling in love.

Over the next two or three years your daughter’s feelings are likely to change as often as the weather; and even if she does develop a crush on another girl, there is no reason to believe that it will amount to anything. In the same way that snogging your arm gives you some idea of what it feels like to be kissed, a girl crush provides a butterfly glimpse of the excitement that awaits when you can graduate from loving the one you’re with to having the one that you love.

Many people have same-sex experiences but very few of them would describe themselves as gay. Statistics from the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (a survey of 19,000 people carried out in Britain between 1999 and 2001) indicated that 9.7 per cent of women have had a sexual experience with a partner of the same sex; however, only 2.5 per cent of girls of your daughters age have had sexual intercourse or genital contact with another girl. Though it is difficult to get an exact figure, currently, just 6 per cent of the UK population are gay and the vast majority of that percentage are homosexual men. Having said that, because homosexuality is stigmatised it is more likely to be under-reported, particularly in younger age brackets.

If your daughter doesn’t demonstrate some heterosexual tendencies by the time she is 18 then you should start thinking about how best you can support her. The decision to come out is is difficult and the more that you can do now to show her that you will accept her in any circumstances, the easier it will be for her to move forward. Sadly, despite better support for gay men and women, the murder of the gay barman Jody Dobrowski on Clapham Common, South London, last year is a harsh reminder of the homophobia that still thrives in our society.

If you want to talk to your daughter about homosexuality, you can download the book Talking about Homosexuality in the Secondary School free from the education section at www.avert.org/hsexu1.htm. And if you, or any other members of your family, need help coming to terms with your own expectations you should contact Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (www.fflag.org.uk).