Parents' acceptance may involve more than just saying 'yes' and more than just providing a bed. It could mean anything from having an occasional visitor for breakfast to having a full- time extra member of the household. There is much to negotiate about monetary and non-monetary contributions to the household in such circumstances. Financial considerations are sometimes overtly part of negotiations about sons' and daughters' sexual relationships, and again, this appears to be related to parents' views about independence and adulthood. Contrary to the situation outlined above, if a son or daughter is contributing financially and is independent in most respects, parents may feel that their offspring have the right to a place to conduct a regular sex life.
Physical privacy is very important in most sexual relationships.
When sons or daughters have a sexual relationship in the parental home, cultural expectations and social norms about the private nature of sexual relationships are put in jeopardy. The issue is not only one of possible embarrassment for either the parents or the young couple. Restraints on privacy which make sexual intercourse less than satisfactory may affect the relationship in general. It is difficult to estimate how great a shift in parents' attitudes over the past 20 or so years the findings represent because, unlike many other aspects of the 'sexual revolution', little has been written specifically on this topic. It is likely to be quite a major shift, but not, however, an unexpected one, given the other changes which have taken place, particularly in regard to cohabitation.