No matter how much she wants her stepdaughter to have a healthy view of sex, a recent request from the 13-year-old might be pushing it a bit for one woman. According to a letter the stepmom wrote to Slate's Care and Feeding advice column, her stepdaughter recently asked her for a vibrator — but she knows that buying her one would royally tick the girl's mom off.
“Would I be crossing a line here?” she asked.
The letter writer's stepdaughter only spends the summer with her and her husband — but she’s really making the most of her time away from home.
As the stepmom explained in her letter, she and her stepdaughter “have become close.”
Although that's most likely because the stepmom tries to “be open and accepting with my children,” she wrote.
That’s probably why she was the first person her stepdaughter told when she came out as a bisexual.
And the LW is the person her stepdaughter goes to when she wants to dye her hair or get a new piercing.
“I tell her it’s up to her parents but if they say yes, we can do it together,” the OP wrote.
But she recently asked the LW for something that gave her pause.
“Today she sent me a link to a vibrator and asked if I could buy it for her,” the LW wrote. “She said she didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone else.”
The LW knew her stepdaughter’s mom and grandmother would “freak out.”
It’s not that the LW wouldn’t buy the toy for her stepdaughter — but it would be a risk.
“I want to be sex-positive,” she wrote, however, “Her mom and I already have a strained relationship. I don’t want to make things worse.”
Would she be wrong for getting her stepdaughter the vibrator anyway?
Some people thought the LW shouldn’t buy her stepdaughter the vibe.
“As sex positive as one may be, buying sex toys for 13-year-olds just isn’t a good idea,” one commenter pointed out.
“Explain to the 13-year-old why you can't buy her something but drop hints how she could buy it herself,” someone else suggested. “And remember that kids like to shock and rebel so being told NO isn't the end of the world. If you were found out buying her this it could be a big issue.”
“I agree with the general conclusion that LW1 should NOT buy her stepdaughter a vibrator—frankly, even if she were the parent, it strikes me as a little boundary-crossing for the mother to actively purchase and gift her daughter with a vibrator, as opposed to facilitating said purchase,” another person commented.
But a few people thought there was a way the LW could make it happen.
“Give the kid a nice sized Amazon gift card, inform her they sell those there," suggested one commenter. "Then give her 30 min alone with the card and laptop and permission to deliver stuff to your address.”
“This is what I would do, too,” another commenter added. “Find some reason to give her a gift card. Birthday, reward for doing well this past school year, reward for helping out around the house while she's staying with LW and dad, something along those lines. Once she has the gift card, how she spends it is her business, and she can honestly say, if her mother ever finds the vibrator, 'I bought it myself.'"
“An Amazon gift card to 'buy a pair of headphones' is plenty enough plausible deniability," someone else chimed in. "There's nothing illegal or immoral about a 13-year-old with a personal massager. Don't get your bonnet in a twist.”
But columnist Jamilah Lemieux agrees with those who advised against it — this is probably not the time to be Super Stepmom.
Although the LW has good intentions, it’s almost definitely not a good idea.
"I want to tell you to do it, to ask for forgiveness later as opposed to asking for permission that you know you won’t get now," Lemieux wrote. "However, 13-year-olds are notoriously irresponsible, and in all likelihood she’ll leave the thing out and have to answer for where it came from."
The LW wouldn’t want her stepdaughter to have to lie about where she got it from “and in any case, consider how bad ‘this adult purchased a sex toy for my child’ can sound under, well, most circumstances.”
Although Lemieux also suggested the LW take her stepdaughter where sex toys can be discreetly purchased and then if the LW feels comfortable, simply “turning your head the other way while she makes the purchase.”
More importantly the LW needs to check in with her husband and see how he feels about this whole thing.
“If they would be OK with this, then you may have some leverage to honor her request, but only if you have clearly communicated to them that your stepdaughter has been talking to you about some of the changes with her body, and you’d like their blessing to be supportive and to perhaps get her a few little items to help her along the way,” Lemieux wrote. “If you do decide to send the vibrator, I’d suggest making a little care package with a book about adolescent sexual health, a journal, maybe some PMS treats … decentering the toy a bit and making this less transactional.”
“Whatever you decide, just be sensitive to the possibility that your partner’s ex might not simply feel slighted or angry, but that she could use a sex toy purchase as evidence of inappropriate behavior toward her child,” she added. “Tread lightly. Best wishes to you both.”
