There certainly are parents who cling to their kids to an unhealthy degree. But this pertains to having good friends, doing sports and activities, choosing a college a long way from home, not calling your mother every day, and never getting married. Sex has no direct effect on all that -- only an indirect effect to the extent that a sexual partner will draw you away.

The other end of this dimension is parental neglect of various kinds.

I can't think of any way that a parent's genetic interest is systematically different from a child's -- except perhaps if a father made his daughter pregnant! That's more in his interest than hers.

Yes, a child who marries will make more decisions apart from what the parents want. But that is about marriage, not about sex. What we typically talk about with adult-child sex is something temporary.


I would finally say that even if parental opinion against sex were right, it still doesn't follow that law is the proper instrument to pursue it.

That's a separate issue.