More & More Parents Only Want To Host Sleepovers — But They Won’t Send Their Kids To One
“Why I should be expected to trust people to watch my kids when they wouldn't trust me to watch theirs?”
For many a Millennial, sleepovers were a quintessential part of childhood. I can’t count how many times a half-a-dozen (or more!) of me and my closest buds would gather at one of our houses, unfurl our sleeping bags, and giggle into the night. But in recent years, understandable fears of child abuse and assault have put a damper on the erstwhile rite of passage. Kind of. There’s an all-too-common, paradoxical refrain “They can come here, but you can’t go there.”
The subject recently come up on Reddit’s r/Parenting from Redditor u/azulsonador0309 (we’ll call her Azul).
“I do respect that others are allowed to run their households as they see fit, but I'm left wondering why I should be expected to trust people to watch my kids when they wouldn't trust me to watch theirs,” the posit. “It doesn't seem to be a fundamental disagreement with my parenting or household either. My 10 year old daughter has many friends that have never been to a sleepover because their parents only allow them to host, but never to attend as a guest. What is everyone else doing about sleepovers?”
Discussion, as you might imagine, has been lively. As of press time, the post has prompted nearly 900 comments, with spirited debate on whether sleepovers are a sadly dying tradition or a risk that parents are finally, rightly, avoiding.
“The sleepover thing annoys me a great deal,” complains one redditor. “I’m a SAHM and a handful of parents have made it clear to me that they’re OK with me doing free babysitting for their kids during the day, but don’t trust me enough to send them for sleepovers. LOL that’s a no from me, dawg.”
“I absolutely won’t do them unless the parent will let their kid sleep at our place. If not? Respect to them- we have the same beliefs and rules,” says another. “Will our kids complain? Yes. But, FOMO is much better than lifelong trauma.”
“We have allowed sleepovers, but only with friends where I have some sort of established relationship with the parents,” adds another. “I feel better if I have been to their home and/or interact with the parents in some way. So, in reality, there are one or two friends where my daughter can have a sleepover at their home these days if she asks.”
Among the parents who were disinclined to allow their kids to sleep over a friend’s house, the prevailing concern was that of sexual assault. Some, tragically, shared their own heart-wrenching stories of being assaulted by a family friend or friend’s family member at a sleepover. While it’s true that children are most commonly assaulted by people they know, there’s no hard data to suggest that sleepovers are especially common or vulnerable events.
One Redditor stated it succinctly:
“Just to be clear, both of the following things are true: If you are sexually assaulted as a young child, it's almost definitely going to be by somebody you know, [and] most young children are not sexually assaulted by somebody they know, or anybody else.
“Absolutely, be vigilant,” they continue, “and be vigilant based on reality.”
I don’t know anyone who was irrevocably traumatized by not going to a sleepover. And while I know there are instances of horrible things happening, I also know how much I gained from having a childhood with lots of sleepover experiences. Ultimately, of course, this comes down to the comfort and beliefs of individual parents, but it's worth considering what our comfort or discomfort is based on.
