I have a daughter that is 14 years young. As a mother I understand that teenagers in her age grow up and they want to have fun, most of them with the guys. But still I can't let her go out. I think it's wrong. But my question is, Is that really wrong? Because I remember myself in her age... I also see the friends around her, they don't go out... well she's the only one. But she suffers because of me not letting her to have a boy-friend. Do you think I should let her? Because I'm really confused...

I agree completely with all of Nicholas Smith’s suggestions about parenting. I especially like his remarks about the importance of an "exit strategy." Our job as parents, after all, is to raise our children to be independent and responsible adults, but they can hardly acquire these skills if they are never able to make their own decisions and learn from their own, hopefully minor, mistakes. We do want our teenagers to feel comfortable coming to us for advice and insight, not worried that they will get harsh judgment or even punishment, because as Prof. Smith suggests, if they fear this response, they simply will not come to us at all. At the same time, though, the high rates of teenage pregnancy and of women and children living in poverty remind us of the decisions that many fourteen year old girls will make when given the opportunity. This fact might suggest to us that many fourteen year old girls are not yet ready to make wise decisions for themselves. In such circumstances, it is our...

If you were molested and raped by several of your family members, how would you go about telling someone so you or no one else gets hurt. I don't wanna get anyone else involved but I just want it to stop.

The problem that you face (how to keep yourself (and perhaps others) safe) is very serious and calls for a kind of knowledge (i.e., of the resources available to you in your community) that philosophers don't have by training. But certain constraints that you put on a solution to this problem (that no one get hurt, that no one else get involved) might rest on certain philosophical assumptions that I would like to challenge. If we were assaulted and raped by a stranger, most of us would feel no moral confusion about what we are entitled to do. In such a situation, what the stranger did is very wrong and we have a right to protect ourselves (and others) against this harm, even if the consequences of this protection (e.g., getting the police involved) would be harm to the rapist (in the form of a jail sentence). But in cases in which we are victims of abuse at the hands of members of our own family, it can seem very difficult to figure out what is the right thing to do. We feel that we have...

Concerning the question about a definition of rape answered by Nicholas D. Smith and Alan Soble (http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/question/768), I have the following comment/questions. In all *legal* definitions of rape that I have seen, the main point of argument is not whether or not "sex" (which can generally be defined as a whole range of conduct outside of intercourse) was "wanted" or even "consented to" (as was inferred in the previous posting), but rather, whether or not specifically "penetration" (i.e. invasion of any bodily orifice by a foreign object) was "forced" against a person's "will". I don't see how there could be any argument here, though certain pedants might squabble over an acceptable generalized definition of "will". Here is my concern: I was attacked by a stranger who broke into my apartment late at night and roused me from sleep. He punched me in the face a couple of times, then placed my pillow over my face and threatened to smother me to death if I didn't cooperate with...

I agree with you that the distinction, on which the law must rely insuch cases, between genuine consent and non-consent is tricky. If youagreed to do a sexual act that you regard as repulsive in order to saveyour life, did you or did you not “consent” to the action? If I give a kidnapper$100,000 in order to obtain the safe return of my child, have I actedwillingly? You might worry that Nicholas Smith suggested a positive answer to these questions whenhe suggests that a loving spouse can find sex distasteful but nonetheless “consent” to sex with herhusband “out of love.” She doesn’t want to do it, he suggests, butnonetheless, since she consented, the sex wasn’t rape. I don’t, however,think that Smith’s suggestion has the implication that victims ofcoercion, such as you experienced, count as having “consented” to theiractions. So what is the difference between you and the dutifuland loving wife? In both of these cases, a person agrees to dosomething that she would not otherwise have desired to do had it...

Was I morally correct in asking my (now) ex-wife to delay the divorce which she had initiated, in order to retain her much needed health insurance under my employer, until she had obtained such on her own? Or was she correct in her assertion that it would have been morally incorrect for her remain married to me, regardless of her health needs, due to the example shown to our children when she was meeting and dating others?

Under Federal Law (COBRA), companies with 20 or more employees arerequired to offer health care coverage at the group rate to formerspouses of employees for three years after a divorce. In somestates, companies with fewer employees are required to do the same. So,while it would be less expensive for your former wife to have been covered as a spouseunder your family plan, it’s probably just a mistake to believe thatyour former wife will not have health insurance coverage unless shedelays the divorce. Butsuch an observation doesn’t really touch the deep and complex issuesthat your and your former wife’s arguments raise about the nature andvalue of marriage. Let’s imagine that there were no such federallaw guaranteeing a three-year continuation of health insurance coveragefor former spouses. If you stayed married for the sake of providingyour wife health insurance coverage, wouldn’t you be doing somethingdishonest? Wouldn’t you be pretending, for the purpose of defrauding ahealth insurance company,...

'Zoophiles', as they call themselves, often claim that committing sexual acts with animals is okay because animals are capable of consenting, either by sexual displays (lifting tails, humping hapless human legs, etc), or by not biting/fighting back, or by allowing the human access to them, so to speak. The problem I have with this is that an animal can't attribute the same idea to sex as a human can - for a human sex may be bound up with love and other types of emotions where by and large for animals it is another biological duty. In my opinion that would mean that there is no real consent between an animal and a human because the two are essentially contemplating a different act. Am I missing something here? And is there any validity in the idea that it is wrong to engage in sex with animals because for most humans it is intuitively wrong? If it doesn't really harm anyone - if the animal is unscathed - does that make the whole argument pointless?

I haven’t given much thought to the ethics of sex between humans and non-humans, but it seems to me that the fact that sex between humans requires consent does not imply that sex involving non-human animals requires consent. We require consent in sexual relations between human beings because we believe that making informed choices about intimate relationships is a significant good for human beings. Such choices cannot be part of a good life for non-human animals because such animals are permanently incapable of making them. That’s not to say that non-human animals are to be used as one pleases; it’s simply to say that whether consent occurs or does not occur cannot be a relevant consideration.

Am I morally bound to tell my sex partner if I fantasize about someone else whilst making love to her? Or the subject of the fantasy for that matter? SteveB

Now, now, Alan, don’t you think you’re being a bit hard on Thomas? I dothink that many people feel duty bound to reveal every wayward thoughtto their partners, even when they know that their partners would prefernot to know (I’m with Thomas– I would prefer not to have suchknowledge, thank you very much) and even when they know that therelationship and those in it would suffer from such a revelation(again, speaking only personally, while I know that it would notreflect badly on me to learn that my partner fantasizes about sex withsomeone else [after all, doesn’t everyone, no matter how stellar therelationship, think about sex with someone else?], I’m not sure that Iwould be so mature and rational as to not drive myself [and my partner]crazy by getting fixated on the particularities of the fantasy. Whyher? What does she have that I don’t have? And so on.). So what couldthe possible basis for the duty to disclose be, I take Thomas to beasking, if not considerations of autonomy and happiness? For...