Whenever I find something, it's usually something I step on in the middle of the night.

Frankly, in an era post-AIDS, sex without protection can kill you. A young lady who gets pregnant can have horrible medical complications. It is Ok to set a rule, no overnight stays in my house with sex partners. It is OK to talk to your son about his responsibilities, about condoms, about STDs. He's a teenager and thinks he is immortal. He's not.

Why are you complaining? You're saving time and effort on washing starched sheets and caked joy rags.

Thank you Kitchen Girl - exactly what I was thinking! For crying out loud - teenagers don't bring home overnight guests without their parents' permission. A without-permission guest of the opposite sex, sleeping in the teen's bed??? ...holy crap.

LW - being liberal DOES NOT mean that you allow your son to do whatever he wants to do. You are the parent. It's your job to set rules and boundaries for your son as long as he's living under your roof. by all means, talk to him about STDs and pregnancy prevention; but also lay down the rules you expect him to follow.

Well, aren't you the clever little bigot?

Now, why don't you go away and celebrate your bigotry all by yourself and wash your hands before you come back to the computer?

Have a discussion with your son about sex. Don't just focus on the negative because lets face it. Sex is great. But afterwards, I suggest a couple of field trips. First take him to the nearest family planning center and have a look around at all the smiling faces there. Next it's to the nearest maternity ward where he can take in all of the incubated bundles of joy. Last, take him to a drug store, show him the rack of condoms and tell him they are useful in avoiding future visits to the places you've shown him.

Cary, with all due respect dude, you want to be hip and trendy but your column reads like bad Judy Blume. Seriously, man, I couldn't even stick with it to get to your actual advice. The letter writer should just go to Dan Savage and be done with it. He'd tell you that, as a parent, it's appropriate to have a sit-down with your kid and establish "rules of the house" (including a "no sleepover" policy if that's your decision.) And, since you know this will only drive them to fuck in the woods, also be sure to discuss contraception. Above all, make sure your kid knows that while you understand and value the impulse, no absolutely means no.

Good luck.

Your son is not going to stop having sex in your house. If you think he is you are fooling yourself. The better way to approach this situation is to have an honest discussion about making sure he uses protection and understands the consequences of his actions.

You are a single parent. You are not going to be able to keep an eye on him while you are working or doing whatever you do in your own life. Your energy is better spent helping your son grow into his adulthood with all the necessary information he needs.

Jeez, some of these "field trip" ideas sound really silly. I mean, the boy is 17 and an A student. He's smart enough to know all about pregnancy, STDs, and condoms. Sure, dad should make sure he does know how to have safe sex, but treating him like an idiot is not the way to do it.

I think the trick is to set reasonable limits - something along the lines of, if you are going to bring people to my house, you are going to notify me first and let me meet them. There will be no illegal activities, including sexual ones (e.g., that would constitute breaking the law due to the ages of the partners). And if I do find a under-aged person in my house in the middle of the night, male of female, I am going to let his/her parents know where he/she was all night.

All that, along with encouraging and understanding words about love, desire, and responsibility, constitute just about all a parent can do to encourage teens to behave safely and yet respect their need to make independent decisions regarding their bodies and lives.

Good luck to all of us parents!

Lord, when did you become so tedious? I used to enjoy this column. Now every response is a too-long study in predictability and blah blah blah. Perhaps the failure of an advice columnist is defined by the letter writer's words being more interesting than the reply. I want to be surprised by a new perspective. Your edges have turned into corners.

I remember having "the talk" with my son when he was fourteen. He assured me he was ready for sexual relationships. Having worked with plenty of young single moms in my career, and also being the mother of a daughter, I assured him that young girls (and regardless of how jaded we believe teens to be these days, 16 is young)weren't emotionally ready for sex in the way he believed he was.

A 17 year old boy's hormones are, indeed, raging; he's approaching his sexual peak. In addition to providing information about birth control, STDs and taking responsibility we have to tell our boys that they are dealing with people and not sexual outlets. Young men and young women can have vastly different interpretations of what a sexual relationship signifies. Tell your son to think about what this girl is feeling, and ask him what he feels about her.

By the way, by the time he was eighteen I provided my son with a book on couples sex that emphasized what a man can do FOR his partner. Face it, letting boys believe that just plain humping away is a satisfying sexual experience for a woman leads to an awful lot of disappointing sex.

Yours was practically the only reasonable letter in this entire thread.