Sex Under the Parental Roof: Home Rules

LIKE the family in the cartoon below, more and more middle-class parents, especially in the cities, are beginning to be confronted by a rather unusual problem: unmarried teen-age lovers who want to share a bedroom on visits home. Some reactions:

> Atlanta public relations director:

"I tell my daughter and her boy friend, 'When you're a guest in my home, we try to make you comfortable. I would appreciate it if you would try to make us comfortable by not sleeping together when you're here.' "

> Wife of a Manhattan investment banker: "My daughter has a very aggressive boy friend who's against hypocrisy of any kind. He just said to my husband and me, 'Look, we're gonna be in the sack together, and that's how it is.' A friend warned us: 'Pretty soon you'll find yourself at Bloomingdale's buying double beds and special linens.' But we capitulated. We didn't want these kids running off somewhere."

> Member of the Harvard University police force: "Not in my house. But what I don't know won't hurt me. If I force things on my kids, I might be forcing them out of the house."

> Wife of a Los Angeles graphics designer: "I have no moral objections, but I felt the relationship would intrude on the rest of the family."

> Washington, D.C., technical programmer, mother of a girl who asked if her boy friend could sleep in a separate bed in her room, keeping the door ajar: "I said it was okay with me, because I like this boy and because I know she's free to do as she wants to anyway when she's not here."

> Atlanta lawyer: "It's my house and my kids will behave the way I say they'll behave."

> Wife of a Washington economist:

"If they want to live together, they should find their own place."

> Albany, N.Y., professor: "I have too many hangups of my own to try to regulate that kind of thing."

> Wife of a Chicago lawyer: "I don't accept the new morality, but I live with it. Nowadays well-adjusted parents care most about their child's happiness and the family relationship; they would rather sacrifice some of their own moral values to preserve that relationship."

>New York artist:

"It might be different if I liked my son's girl friend, but I don't. I don't think it's my province to run a motel. I think he and my other children respect me for this attitude. After all,

I'm not their buddy, I'm their father."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.