I PAID FOR MY SON TO HAVE SEX

One mum tells us why she has no regrets over hiring a sex worker to take her son's virginity

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Parenting takes you on some interesting twists and turns, but as I lay in the maternity ward gazing into my newborn’s eyes,  never in my wildest dreams could I ever have imagined that 21 years later I’d be trawling the websites of sex workers looking for a suitable young lady to take his virginity. Yet that’s exactly where I found myself earlier this year.

We’d not long left the hospital when I noticed my baby’s gaze had a distant quality. A few days after his third birthday, he was diagnosed with autism.

He’s now learning to drive and to catch public transport, having finished high school. But navigating social relationships is harder than reading a train timetable or Google Maps.

Physically and sexually, he is a young man, but his social skills lag by several years. I hope one day he will find the right girl, his own version of Love on the Spectrum. But how can we healthily channel his sexuality until then?

Briefly I wondered whether he might prefer to meet the right boy, as more autistic people identify as LGBTQ+ than those without autism. However, while my son thinks he’s bisexual, it’s clear from his comments that he’s primarily attracted to women. ‘No filter,’ his teacher once observed.

This frankness is largely a blessing. Teenage boys now have unfettered access to internet pornography, but – unlike my son – don’t confide their viewing habits to their mother, giving her the opportunity to correct misperceptions.