Note from the blogkeeper:  This post by Laura Sessions Stepp is in response to yesterday's post by Bill Albert, the subject of which was a Washington Post op-ed by Amy Schalet.

The key phrase here, Bill, is "later teens." I can't imagine parents are offering bedrooms to 14- or 15-year-olds. But older teens? That's a different matter.

By the end of high school, a sizable majority of American teens are having sex. Is a pal's basement a better place than home? How about the back of a car? Or the Econo Lodge? We Americans spend too much time thinking about how to prevent young people from having sex (with mixed results at best) and not enough time helping them think about how, when the time comes, they can do it safely and in a loving relationship. I think Schalet is correct: Sleepovers at home, smartly handled by parents and teens, could encourage conversations that young people badly need before they go to college. And once they get to college, give them something to remember when they're tempted to sleep in some stranger's bed.