STACY'S MOM has got it going on. We're listening to the Fountains of Wayne in the car when one of the under-10s pipes up: "What, exactly, does Stacy's Mom have going on?" Oh, my. I nearly crashed the car.

What Stacy's Mom has going on is wealth, a power-career and the California gold body of a fit 20-year-old even though her daughter is 14. I'm not sure these hot moms actually exist outside fantasy - although there are some scorching moms out there these days - but fantasy is what this is really about.

What is it about teenage boys and their crushes on other people's mothers? The school-run scandal doing the rounds in my circle involves a precocious 16-year-old who, allegedly, has had his bottom tattooed with the name of one of his friend's mothers. This group of boys amuse themselves by ranking each other's mothers.

"Your Mum is hot." "Go on, she's waiting for you." "No, goin' home with somebody else's mum today." It's the Oedipal complex run riot.

Some of the mothers think it's cute. Boys with burgeoning sexuality in awe of women they can never have. Deliberately crushing on unobtainable older women because real girls are just too scary. And isn't it flattering to think that with all that artificially bronzed teenaged girl-flesh out there, what boys really want is a sexy mutha? Boys go through a stage where they prefer other people's mothers to their own. They're prettier, they're better cooks, their houses are cleaner.

This is probably because other boys' mothers are unconsciously competing to be the best and possibly even flirting a little in the form of unconditional indulgence. Those teenage boys, once they get past the pimply stage, can be very attractive. You see him in his school uniform and say to yourself, he's going to be hot one day.

This is the way the mothers have been talking. They make it all sound so wholesome, as though a crush on somebody's mom is a kind of practice run for the real thing. Some of these mums really are hot, it has to be said. They dress like their teenage daughters.

Ask them if they would ever do anything about the fact that the boys who should be crushing on their daughters, are crushing on them, and they look at you like you have two heads. No way. There's an agreement that women with their superior emotional intelligence may acknowledge the attraction, but would never do anything about it.

Writing this, I feel yuck. Are we seriously talking about each other's sons being attractive? It's paedophilia, surely, to even be willing to discuss it. And yet, I know that beauty has its own logic. There's something lovely about seeing, with an older woman's eyes, the developing adolescent who will one day become the gorgeous man. Thinking this doesn't mean a woman is going to do anything about it. She's merely enjoying the frisson.

Total double standard here. The hot dads, who may feel the same about their daughters' peers, aren't supposed to think such thoughts, never mind talk about it on the school run. "Stacy's Dad is really, really rad" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

It's definitely not wholesome to think of a girl having a crush on her friend's dad. It's positively dangerous, actually; Oedipal equals cute equals illegal. Can you even imagine a group of school-run dads joking about a schoolgirl tatooing their names on her bum?

While we may unfairly suspect a father of being capable of misbehaving with a teenage girl, the notion that a mother would do such a thing doesn't cross our minds.

I do know personally of fathers running away with their daughters' teenage friends or, at least, teenagers the age of their daughters. However, I know only one case of a grown woman seducing a 16-year-old boy. It damaged him, irrevocably.

Where am I going with this? Well, I think that teenagers need to know the boundaries regarding sexual behaviour. We haven't taught these to them. We've given them a hyper-sexualised world where anything goes. Kids are on the defensive, meaning that when we adults bring up the subject of sex with them, if we suggest that they are behaving inappropriately, they call us pervs. They get mad at us for seeing them as sexual beings. I can't blame them, because with all the publicity around the sexual exploitation of children, they've lost their innocence too soon and we haven't much right to tell them anything.

I think that boys competing with each other over whose mother is sexiest are basically using other boys' fundamental, biological loyalty to their mothers as a way of insulting one another. I think that girls who dress inappropriately have parents who are afraid to set boundaries. I think that, as parents, we have to try to gently engage them in conversation about this, to listen and not judge.

Because we and our own parents with our liberal agenda are the ones that have screwed up their moral world. They don't trust us. Our world is pervy. And from now on, they're going to have to figure it out for themselves. All we can do is have our antenna on high alert, ready to listen to their questions, hoping that somehow the moral compass will right itself.

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