My mother, who grew up in very rural Tennessee, had to watch me leave everyday for a big suburban high school in a Denver suburb, often wearing a minidress or “hot pants” (that name now makes me cringe!). She was deeply afraid for me, and she often gave me the time-honored lecture about sex: Young men are self-interested and persistent. Young women take all of the risk for no real benefit. Your reputation is all you have.

She even suggested a script I should use with dates who weren’t gentlemen. It boiled down to “This is good for you, but not for me.” In college, I delivered that script in my mother’s Southern accent to audiences of friends in the girls’ dorm to gales of laughter. But we knew that what she said was true about too many men.

My daughters grew up in a different era. The rampant sexism of the ’60s and ’70s, when I came of age, had been replaced by the egalitarian idea that sex is great as long as both parties consent. I didn’t buy it. Certainly not for high school students — girls or boys. And my daughters reinforced my skepticism by sharing tales of woe and quietly wondering why one friend thought offering sex would keep a boyfriend faithful or another “hooked up” and then hated how she felt.

But the advice I gave them was different from my mother’s. Wait until you’re at least 21, I said. Sex is an adult-level commitment. And never have sex with anyone with whom you would not want to raise a child. Because the cost of your impulsive decision should never mean your child will not have a loving father, a present father — a father like Benjamin Sledge, who understands commitment.