16 years

Ah yes 16, the age of jobs, driving, dating, and the dreaded curfew. I tried to be pretty flexible with my kids. Their curfew was they could go but be back by 18 years old. I never wanted to be "The man trying to keep them down".
I am a firm believer in giving my children responsibility, so my kids got chores and that way I knew who to get mad at when I ended up doing them. When my children got to the ripe old age of consent, I let them know it is time to start preparing for the real world and that meant get a job. I wouldn’take their money and what they earned was theirs to keep. Fair enough? I thought so but it was not an incentive to get a job. Their ideas of looking for work is to look on bathroom walls, study ceilings and maybe ask a friend that didn’t have a clue. They just knew that someday a job was going to bite them in the butts and voila’employment would be there like magic. One rule I have always had was that if they wanted to drive they had to have a job. Well there is a way around that, they’d get girlfriends that could drive and would have access to a car. What I found amazing was that not only could those girls drive but they also had jobs. "See mom, not all is lost." They had managed to kill 2 birds with one stone and don’t worry about dignity, it isn’t necessary.
I have met many boyfriends and girlfriends of my children. I can honestly say some I was impressed with and some I was not. Some of them I felt I needed a gun close by. At that time the questions became a little more upfront. "Mom how do you feel about birth control?" or "All the guys carry a condom in their wallets, can I have one too? I promise not to use it." Trying to explain the pitfalls of sex before marriage is like not trying to get crap on my shoes at a Black Angus ranch. So I do the only mature thing and that is not talk about it. Many times I’d go into a crying fit, hanging on their legs and begging them to "just say no!" When that didn’t work I start telling to think of the starving children in Somalia. It seemed at this point they had become so utterly confused and forget what they had asked. That made me happy, I’d wipe the sweat from my brow and realize I had thwarted this subject a little longer. I would have been happy if I could have done that till they were married.