I have a 14 year old daughter who has yet to get into that....but I feel your pain.

It sounds like you're doing all you can...if you've impressed upon your boys the potentially dire consequences of getting too familiar with too many girls, then you've done all you can.

Our teens live in a world that is different from the one we grew up in. It's more sexualized in terms of media, email, and text messages. But in terms of what teens actually do, it's LESS sexual. Yes! According to the CDC, which tracks teen sexuality, today's teens are LESS sexually active than our generation was at their age, and much more likely to use condoms (because of AIDS). In the 1980s, 54% of teens had intercourse by their 20th birthday. Today the figure is around 47%. Teen pregnancies are down 33% since 1990. If you have communicated your sexual values to your son, then I'd say you've done your job as a parent.

I have two kids, now 21 and 17. My wife and I never installed any NetNanny software on our computers. Of course, my son downloaded porn, but that's the 21st century equivalent of reading Playboy. To those who say: But porn is so much worse than Playboy, I say: Whatever you think of porn, look at the statistics. Today's teens are less sexually active than we were as teens.

My wife and I never invade the privacy of our kids' phone calls, text messages, etc. If you do, what you communicate is a lack of trust. Teens are on their way out of your control. Personally, I never cared for the police aspect of parenting. I'm happy to have my kids making an ever-increasing proportion of their own life decisions. We've told them what we think about sex: Never pressure anyone for it, ever. Never allow yourself to be pressured, ever. Be very careful with alcohol. Always use condoms. Beyond that, it's their lives.

Remember the White Album? The song: Why Don't We Do It In the Road? At the time, cultural conservatives railed that the Beatles were actually advocating sex in the streets. Of course, they weren't. It was just a song. Sure, it was suggestive, but mostly it was amusing. I bet your sons view those suggestive e-mails the same way. How would you have felt if your parents had smashed your copy of the White Album?

While I have a slightly different approach to this than Michael, he's right on the money with his assessment of the situation. I, too, have teens about the same age (girl 21 and boy/girl twins 18). The fact is that the world IS much more sexualized than it was in our day, and realistically there is little you can do from a control standpoint to 'protect' your sons. Michael's point about imbuing your kids with your own value system is the important take-away here, since that is the ONLY thing that will ultimately be able to really protect them.

That said, he and I part company on the monitoring aspect. In our house, the family policy from Day One has been "Until you are 21, privacy is a privilege, not a right." That is, I reserve without question, and with full knowledge of everyone involved, the right to monitor all activities under our roof, including phone calls, emails, web visits, et al.

For those of my kids who have demonstrated responsible attitudes, monitoring tapers off until it is only done sporadically, and ultimately not at all. But it continues in those cases where bad stuff is happening, with direct parental intervention as required.

The distinction I make, however, comes in considering what is "bad". To me, that is behavior that is illegal, unethical, or harmful to others (cheating on homework, spreading rumors about someone else, cursing online, etc.) But the porn downloading engaged in by my 18 year old son is something that is just noted quietly by me, under the theory that I would rather know what is going on, than effectively drive underground behavior that is, for all practical purposes, unstoppable.

So, for whatever it's worth, my suggestion is to lighten up a bit on the proscriptions, do your very best to inculcate the right values in your son, and feel free to monitor (as non-judgementally as possible) his actions.

Good luck!

I know parenting a teen can be a most difficult experience -- been there and done that X 2. The issues we need to look at are complex and show no possibility of developing a single "one-size-fits-all" solution.

First, we need to ask ourselves:

What do we believe our role as parent should be? Then, if we have a partner in the situation - thank God I had my wife who wasn't so likely to go off halfcocked as I was - we look at what works and what doesn't in pursuit of our kids' developing healthy values.

As a family therapist, I was put in the position of Solomon and asked to make decisions and "get" kids to behave. "Sorry, folks, no can do," I would say. "Kids need to feel they are part of the solution or it will be your problem, not theirs."

First, establish healthy dialogue with your kids at an early age, not after-the-fact, when the cow is out of the barn and the calf is crying for milk.

Second, figure out what moral principles you want to teach as the basis for your kids being able to function in an adult world without getting themselves put in jail for illegal activities or shot by their spouses for immoral ones.

Third, begin a dialogue with your kids about these principles before they are ready to apply them. Try to present balanced views including what you know their friends believe.

* Believe it or not (at your own risk): Kids do NOT practice sex because they understand both its mechanics and dynamics. A 14-year-old girl is likely to be less vulnerable to a 15-year-old boy's protestations of love when we, as adults, know it is only protestations of the tightness in his shorts he wants to relieve and pass on that fact to our daughter.

* Help kids understand that there are NATURAL consequences to EVERY action. You don't have to lift a finger for the natural consequences to occur. If kids have sex before they are ready, they seem to develop a sense of sadness and loss that they will never share with you but that affects the rest of their lives. When is too early? When a kid is not really ready for an act that has the possible consequences of pregnancy or the emotional changes in the relationship once that line is crossed.

If we teach our kids about social pressures to adhere to the group mentality and its consequences, they may have better defenses against it when it happens ... and it will happen unless you raise them chained to the radiator in the basement.

The two most important things you need to remember are:

* From high school physics: All pressure is met by equal and opposite pressure.

* From filosofee 101 the following conundrum, If a girl's panties fall in the forest and her parents are not around to hear, is she devirginated?

Yeah, the kids have learned to take it to the woods when they have judgmental parents who use draconian measures to prevent them from receiving a proper teen age edumacation. The statement, "Don't let me catch you having sex," creates the following reaction: "Yeah, mom. I won't let you catch me!"

Let me quit before I write another book. I hated the book tours. Bad food, bad transportation, radio and tv hosts who were clueless as cattle as to what I was trying to discuss. After all, hosts are basically actors and you know what the famous acting coach Mervyn Nelson said about actors? "You can never be too dumb to be an actor!"

The middle ground usually holds the most goodies. Neither extreme produces much but chaos because there is not firm footing there.

Give it up. Get a hobby to find other ways to fill out your day and not worry about it. They are going to find a way no matter what. Instead talk to your sons and make sure everything is safe. They'll think you are cooler, like you more. Furthermore, what the hell are you doing reading your kids' emails? Are they allowed any privacy? By being a police woman all you are doing is motivating them to want to do everything more, and for good reason. I was active at around 14 years old and it lowered my stress levels, which in turn got me better grades, taught me a lot about what to avoid talking about and doing in bed, and overall improved my life. When somebody walked out of my room at 8 on a sunday morning my parents did nothing more than make fun of me, and I loved them for it. They would never dare read my emails or text messages. Show your kids respect and they will return it.

My "teenager" just turned 23. The greatest single lesson I learned during her teen years was that the best wedge against unhealthy and dangerous behavior was us, her parents, talking to her about her life. Her life in school, on the computer, after school, on the weekends, including drinking, IMing, dating, the car et al. Even if every word you hear isn't the truth, you'll get mostly the truth if you are persistent (the untruths are swiftly exposed in persistent conversation). Better than spying and policing, person-to-person communication--and showing that you care enough to want to know--will promote smart decisions. Plus I always used the honest threat of a stepped-up policing effort as the necessary consequence of a refusal to talk. Neither ever happened. Which is not to say we didn't have some very big issues. Just none that we couldn't deal with.

I have a 17 year old daughter and a 14 year old son and I know exactly what you are going through. We have a firewall that prevents access to porn, drug and assorted weaponry sites. We do not view porn as non harmful. That old reliable 'boys will be boys' attitude is criminal and degrading just as is the notion that 'kids will be kids'.

Share your values with your kids, ask them about what they think, and listen to them. My daughter complained about the pressure to do drugs and to dress sexy. I think a lot of young girls feel they need to be sexually active to be accepted- it's very sad. Society doesn't help but I think how we live our lives is the best ammunition we have in this media centered world.

An example of where we are today- for my daughter's 14th birthday a boy got her thongs he bought at Victoria's Secret and a book about sexuality to help her 'loosen up'. We called his parents- they were more upset that their son had embarrassed them than they were that their son did this! Did they take that as an opportunity to teach their son anything? It don't think so.

In my opinion, parents are there to provide a soft landing when their kids make mistakes not to prevent them from ever making them at all. And, from the responses here, you can see that we all have different ideas about what those are! (I'm not going there)

Anyway, back to your question- talk with your sons, let them know where you stand. Oh, and, ignore the assumption that boys are always the ones pressuring the girls- it's not always the case.