Sleeping with the nanny less than half your age isn’t a great start for a discussion of power dynamics in a sexual relationship.

I’m not going to assume anything either way, bo the women deserve to be heard, at the very least.

Agreed, but in my experience people in their early twenties can be surprisingly experienced and conscious kinksters, able to voice consent and negotiate intense situations. While people in their fourties can be incredibly insecure, unable to communicate their needs and insecurities, while still wanting to play.

It’s a matter of experience, self-awareness and skills, and those don’t come with age, but with work on yourself and education. We need so much more sex education and communication about these things.

The woman in question doesn’t seem to be an experienced kinkster though, and she should totally be heard in any case. But the age argument distracts from the real issues, I believe.

I’ll disagree about age. At 23, the pre-frontal cortex is still developing and won’t be finished until around 25.

It’s responsible for:

• Executive functions (planning, decision-making, problem-solving) • Impulse control • Emotional regulation • Social interactions and behavior

There is a distinct imbalance between someone in their 60’s and someone in their early 20’s. I’m not saying it can’t be carefully and respectfully navigated, but it has to be acknowledged and accounted for.

It doesn’t sound like that happened here.

Then we have the power dynamic of a celebrity who is also your employer. Add in a healthy dose of fictive kinship due to the live-in nature of a nanny and you’re in a situation rife with the potential for abuse.

IIRC, that study didn’t conclude it stopped at 25, it expected it to stop at 18, but it kept going, and they ran out of funding at 25. A likely conclusion is that it never really stops, it’s just that what was measured wasn’t really development, but “change”.

Okay, source it if you’ve got it, because the idea that a single study ran out of funding at 25 and that’s where the number comes from is such an odd suggestion, as though no one else has studied the brain’s development and neuroscientists everywhere just shrugged and thought, “if only the funding were there.”

Here’s a well-sourced article that concludes the brain continues to develop well into the mid-20’s.

While the brain will always continue to develop and grow, due to neuroplasticity, the concern is whether or not the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for long-term decision making, is properly developed. This development continues into the mid-20’s and is well-documented.

Here’s a 2022 study where they looked at over 100,000 brain scans from people 110 days old to over 100 years old used to draw and affirm similar conclusions.

While 25 isn’t magic number, as everyone’s brains develop on different timelines, it is a rational and reasonable landmark that can be reliably used for broad discussions.

Here’s more from the National Institute of Mental Health and Penn Medicine.