DEAR ANDREA: I'm the father of a boy who recently turned 13. He's beginning all that stuff I have almost forgotten about, and I want to be as cool about it as possible, but ... what do you think about letting him have unfettered access to Internet porn? I know he looks at it.

When I was his age, it was so damn tame, compared to a few clicks now and you're suddenly staring at some intense, sometimes scary stuff. Most of it, of course, is just fake sex performed by actors, which I have no problem with, but I want him to have a healthy view of women. If he's like I was, his room will be repainted in sperm by the time he's 16, but I can laugh about that. Maybe I shouldn't worry about the porn. I'd be interested to hear your opinions.

Love, Dithering Dad

Dear Dad: I am not the parent of an adolescent, and having to be one, eventually, is probably the only aspect of parenthood I don't much look forward to. I wish you luck. The best advice I can give you, based on what good parents and good parenting books tell me, is to leave this alone and don't sweat the cool stuff.

A teenager doesn't need a cool dad; he just needs a dad. Surely you remember how desperately you wished to avoid discussing certain aspects of your growing maturity with your parents? You know that a friendly "I see you've been visiting that Barnyard Betty site. Some stuff, huh?" will result in the sort of mortification compared with which the slowest, most agonizing death seems preferable. And then there are your son's feelings to consider.

I'm afraid your choices are a) block his access to porn sites (you'd better make sure every one of his friends' parents have done the same), or b) let him roam free, with the assurance that you are there to discuss anything he doesn't understand. Chances are slim he'll take you up on it, but it's good to make the offer. What I wouldn't recommend is allowing him access to "nice" porn while keeping him off the tentacle-bondage nonconsensual bestiality sites. That seems needlessly complicated (and slightly weird) to me.

The "healthy view of women" part seems trickier, but I don't think it is, really. Unless you're locking him in the basement with nothing but tentacle-bondage, et cetera, porn as input, he has lots of other images of women (as well as actual women themselves) on which to base his attitudes toward the opposite sex and gender. You can ask him about girls he likes (provided he even likes girls) and see how that process is going. You can step in for some stern correction if you find he's thinking of his barely pubescent classmates as bitches and hos. He's your kid, and his behavior is yours to correct. His nascent fantasy life, though, is his alone.

Love, Andrea

Dear Andrea: I'm not very socially gifted, but I like to think I have some things to offer women. However, I think the women I like won't be interested. Therein started my problem. There's a thing called hentai, cartoon character porn. My need to find some comes and goes, when I'm feeling unloved or unappreciated. But while I only like certain kinds, and I'm not into the bondage and rape stuff, I still feel like a perverted freak. The closest I've come to telling anyone is when I told my brother but didn't elaborate. I'm not out of touch with reality, and I realize I won't have a chance of scoring with a character from a TV show, but I guess I'd like to have it come true. I'm ashamed of this. Is this a serious problem and something I need to get taken care of?

Love, Fanboy

Dear Boy: You may not be out of touch with reality, but you're well out of touch with geeky-guy culture if you think you're the first lonely boy to dream of scoring with a cartoon character. This has, I assure you, been going on since well before the invention of the Web: it certainly predates the printing press, and maybe the pen. Moreover, it really doesn't matter whether you fantasize about abusing your imaginary friends or buying them cartoon flowers and candy – they'll still be cartoons, and they still won't care.

Where you can go wrong, and tragically so, is at the interface between fantasy and real life. You already told your brother about your secret life, and I imagine that if that had gone well you would have mentioned it. In the future, keep your tastes to yourself and never under any circumstances tell a real girl you beat off to line drawings with big, round eyes and big, pointy breasts. Not unless she's a major geek herself and you met her at an anime convention – and come to think of it, that's not a bad idea.

Love, Andrea