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samboct -> RE: another stupid teacher caught canoodling with a student (1/7/2008 8:10:34 PM)
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Sorry LaM, but I'm going to disagree and ask you to cite a source for what you consider to be common knowledge. I have a hunch this falls under a similar rubric as everyone knew that a homosexual male couple would raise a homosexual son, but that doesn't seem to have happened either. The statistics I've seen suggest that at least a quarter of kids have had some type of sexual experience with a partner by age 12.
We do such an abysmal job on mental health in this country- including children that I'm not sure this question can be adequately answered. But the data I've seen suggest that adults beating children, ignoring children, or denigrating their children aspirations have far more profound psychological consequences than an adolescent boy having sex with an adult. I also think that the lousy world we're leaving to these children has caused lots of depression- and in the extremes leads to the 'mucking at place like Virginia Tech and Columbine. I know Hollywood likes to give abuse- probably from a parent, as the pat reason for these actions, but kids really do have their own sets of genes and don't act in a necessarily predictable fashion. Plus, they have their own view of the world, and it's different than an adults viewpoint.
Quickie summary- kids get messed up from a variety of causes. We know (or at least we think we do, that sex is widespread, most commonly with others of a similar age) but depression and other mental illness has lots of causes, and sex with an adult doesn't seem to make the list very often.
I'm throwing out the hypothesis that if sex with an adult scarred children, odds are we'd have a lot more scarred children from this cause, and far fewer from other causes. Don't think it's that simple.
To the topic at hand-let me throw out another idea- that some of these "adults" may have years on these kids, but may actually not have that much maturity- which is why they're interested in children anyhow- they don't do well with other adults precisely for this reason. If you neglect age as a measure and focus on other metrics, you might find that these "adult" child pairings are closer together in maturity than you might think- and hence, where's the damage coming from? Or do you think it's wrong for 14 year olds to be having sex with anybody? I"m certainly uncomfortable with a 14 year old having sex with a 10 year old, but much less worried about the 14 year old with an adult, and even less with another 14 year old. Our legal system certainly doesn't deal with this concept well, but it doesn't really deal with very much well I'm afraid, Age is very much an arbitrary line for the legal system, but it has much less relevance to maturity since we don't all mature at the same rates. We're getting better at measuring maturity using fMRI, but there's a long ways to go.
Sam
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