Should we have sex near little children?

Never thought about it – our kids sleep in the next room to us having sex – it’s called using pillows over the face. our face, not theirs.

Sex in silence

That is why our bedroom door has a lock (and luckily my son is a sound sleeper).

I think if the kids are really young, say infant to age 5, it’s okay for two adults (the parents) to have sex nearby, as long as it’s concealed under the covers, so to speak. There’s still nothing wrong with children older than 5 nearby, but again, as long as it’s done “hidden from obvious view”. If children inadvertently “discover” that you and your s/o are having sex, they probably won’t even know what you’re doing, and if they do, it won’t “damage” them for life. Lol.

In crowded places like Asia, parents and children of all ages live and sleep in close quarters, so sex nearby is unavoidable. Personal privacy in crowded Asia is virtually unheard of. It is common practice there for parents to have sex right next to their young kids (on the tatami mats in Japan for example——lol), and there is nothing shameful or disgusting about it. It seems to be more of a “problem” in Western countries, where people place a high value on personal privacy and their own “individual needs”.

You guys have to see the clip. Really really funny.

Frankly, I do not think there is a thing about sex that is inherently harmful to children raised in societies that aren’t riddled with sexual hangups and hypocrisy about the subject. But ours isn’t one of those idyllic societies.

I’m pretty sure that throughout most of history, children living in caves or nomadic animal-skin huts or small hovels saw what went on between their parents, and were not damaged in the least by it. Likewise the South Pacific islanders before white men arrived and sullied their unspoiled culture.

But in the society we live in today, children need to be shielded from direct observation of sex till they reach the age where they are ready to explore their own sexuality. They still need to learn the facts of life, the dangers of STDs and how pregnancy happens as well as the mess an unwanted pregnancy can make of a young life. But no watching the nasty dance for our little ones. Our culture must do a lot of growing before that will be OK.

That little girl in the clip needs to understand that if Mommy and Daddy had never done that, she would not exist.

“Now my daughter knows my name!” LOL

would you rather them find out on you tube? or sit them down and tell them whats up?

@filmfann That was funny.

A question, that has most likely been asked, well, maybe not asked since it there may not have been a lot of choices for most people for a very long time, but dealt with long as there have been people having sex and people having children. Throughout most of human history, parents have not really had the luxury of their children sleeping in separate rooms and they have managed to have sex and not traumatize their children too much.

I never caught my parents having sex growing up or even heard anything. For that I am extremely thankful.

My parents didn’t have sex.

who has time for sex when a kid is around anyway?

i have a two year old, and there is no sex anymore, so the real question should be, should you watch internet pron with kids near by?

porn*

@ant2887 Welcome to fluther. Hope you have sex again soon. 2 years and, I’m guessing 9 months is long enough without. You wrote: so the real question should be, should you watch internet pron with kids near by? Uh, no.

Next.

haha thanks

At the risk of sounding immature..
No. That’s gross.

Luckily I’ve never seen my parents doing it, but I’ve heard them twice. First time was when I was around 12. I had nightmares. The second time was quite a few years later, and that’s when I learned always to call and give my parents ample time before coming home from a friend’s house.
I also wasn’t a fan when I heard my housemate and his girlfriend having sex.

There are plenty of opportunities to do it while your kids are out of the house and not planning to be back in many hours. Wait until then please :(

Kev – you had nightmares from it?

I’m not a prude, but what was funny about that clip? Seriously?

Luckily my daughter has always been a really heavy sleeper (you can pick her up, upside-down, by one ankle and she won’t wake up) so we haven’t had to worry about it.

Heck, we’ve had sex on one couch while she’s asleep on the other couch three feet away. She snored through the whole thing.

No prude. The clip wasn’t funny.

@MRSHINYSHOES: First of all, your comments on Asian cultures are exagerrated. I’m not even going to go into that any more.

BUT UP TO FIVE YEARS OLD? AND PAST THAT?

What in the fuck?

I’m with @Sarcasm

My daughter sleeps with us. I know I know a big mistake. She has her own room too. We have sex in other rooms. and Lock the door. We have not been caught yet.

@asmonet That’s exactly what I was talking about here.

@ETpro: I agree with you. I was the most well informed child and teenager I knew, and it helped me not make some dumb ass mistakes and to better understand my world. Needs explaining, but you don’t need to bang in front of a five year old.

Discreetly or not.

The clip wasn’t funny to me. A lesson in the wrong discussion if it should happen.

I don’t think it was that funny, either. And having sex in front of children? Even if they’re sleeping? Um, no. That’s fuckin’ creepy as hell.

Yeah, I totally thought that clip wasn’t funny either.

Sorry guys, I know it is not supposed to be funny and that it is a serious situation. BUT that video clip was so cute! I could listen to that sweet little girl going on about it all day. Cuuuuuuuuute!

I wouldn’t have been laughing if i had been caught, i’d be making up a story just in case she told everyone she knew.

Cringe!

I thought that the clip was funny. She clearly doesn’t know what was going on. And as @Seaofclouds mentioned, that is one of the reasons that there are locks on bedroom doors.

My parents never locked their bedroom door. It’s because they never had sex. And if you don’t believe me, feel free to ask any of my siblings.

All of our kids slept with us until they were about a year old. During that time, we’d make use of a couch or the spare bedroom. Sometimes we’d get the baby to sleep in the crib, which was in our room, and we’d have sex in our own bed. I’m sure if a 6 month old baby would happen to wake up, that baby wouldn’t have any idea or memory of what was going on with his or her parents. A toddler or older child, though…out of the question.

Our room now is very close to the kids’ rooms. All the bedrooms are in one hallway. We close our door and keep it quiet. Once or twice one of the kids has walked in on us, but thankfully we were just making out and not even undressed yet. Both times it was my middle child, and in each case he didn’t even seem awake or at all aware that we hadn’t been sleeping. We try to be discreet, but I don’t really worry about traumatizing the kids. I’m sure I can come up with a true, but age-appropriate, response if one of them were to really catch us in the act.

One of the more disturbing things I’ve heard was from someone we know whose daughter slept in their bed for several years. She was five or six at the time, and the parents would have sex while she was in the bed with them. If she woke up and asked what was going on, the father would say, “I’m just rocking Mommy to sleep. You go back to sleep too.” WTF?! It’s not the worst thing you could do as a parent, but I was still pretty disgusted.

When my kids were really young, three/four years old. I often wondered how they must have thought Mummy was very very religious & yet never seemed to go to church :¬)

Never thought I’d be reading so many different views on the subject.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir with both of you having a pillow over your faces? How do you breathe?
@MRSHINYSHOES with your description and feelings about it, why not have sex in the nude next to them while they watch tv? It wouldn’t harm them for life, right? just a natural way mommies and daddies show affection.

@Aster He’s quieter than I am. So the pillows are mostly on me.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir: My wife is the same. Lots of pillows with bite marks on them.

That’s what the bed sheet is for or a pillow (putting it in her mouth to muffle the loud moans and quiet screams). We have no kids, but, we do have thin walls and have to be careful of the neighbors. Sometimes, we don’t care..

lock the door! silence is golden!

Uh, where is this going… Perhaps we should move this to another thread, like, the who moans the loudest during sex…

@asmonet Obviously you have never lived in many places in Asia, and like most North Americans and Westerners, you haven’t seen how crowded living quarters are in many Asian cities——a family of six may share ONE, yes one, tiny room in a small apartment flat in Hong Kong, for example. It is a very common living arrangement. Consequently, privacy is never taken for granted like it is here in the West. I’m sure if a Westerner tried living a week in their shoes, they’d ball their heads off and cry “Where’s my privacy!! Where are my rights?! I’m going insane!!” Lol. Thus, what I said about parents having sex near their kids is NOT an exaggeration my friend.

@Aster I wish people would read my comment more discriminately and carefully——I said as long as it’s “under the covers” and out of young children’s eyes, it’s okay. Don’t twist my comment out of context and make a cheap joke about it. That is insulting. Your joke is yet another reflection of a typical Westerner’s incorrigible hang-ups with sex and nudity. It’s not surprising to me.

So long people. ;)

I thought the video was disgusting because of the way the father was taunting his daughter…like he was proud of himself. I don’t believe in encouraging your children to be hung up about nudity and issues about their bodies. But, this kind of behavior seems crude to me. What do these folks value?

@MRSHINYSHOES: You know nothing of my experiences or any of the cultures I have been exposed to. Nothing about my life is in any way obvious to you, only what I have chosen to share. Stop making assumptions. I’ve learned in other threads and been reminded in this one that you are not someone I care to continue this discussion with. I shouldn’t have responded to you. I’ll be on my way.

It is apparent that when children are exposed to sexual activities between adults, normal or natural though it may be, it can lead to inappropriate sexual behavior between very young children and sexual abuse between older children and younger ones. So I think parents should behave with propriety and yep use the old pillow in the mouth trick.