<p>My daughter is settling into her small, supposedly gentle and studious college- not a party school by rep. Bearing in mind that my daughter is square, raised by squarish parents, she is feeling lonely on the weekends because there seems to be a lot of drinking (big shocker) and hooking up. Her roommate recently boasted of hooking up with five guys in one night. And I’m wondering, huh? What messages did this kid’s parents send her off with? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow ye die? Are we really thinking that lots of anonymous hook up partners is a great way to enjoy life and learn how to be intimate? Yuck? I realize I am square, and that lifelong monogamy has worked for me and I have to struggle with a strong prejudice thereto, I am still not getting how parents could be putting out a message that having sex or almost-sex with a succession of drunk strangers is a life-affirming pursuit. I DON’T GET IT. Can anybody explain how we got here? Are parents guiding their kids into this way of relating, turning a blind eye to it, assuming it’s a normal phase, or what? Does this seem sort of sad to anybody but me? </p>
<p>At the small school where I work and the other small school where my youngest attends, that particular behavior (5 hookups in one night) would probably get one a “yuck” yak. </p>
<p>Doubt very much anybody’s parents sent her off to school with the message do the dorm, but let’s face it, parents are not the only influence in a kid’s life. And yes, it seems sad (and horrifying) to a lot of us. </p>
<p>Aren’t these kids worried about STDs? (No, condoms will not protect you against most of them)</p>
<p>Start with the premise that the human body has evolved over millions of years to reproduce during the same years one attends college (and actually a bit younger). Early in the 20th century, people just got married. With the sexual revolution, you got some hooking up, but most of us had long-term sexual relationships. THEY CAME WITH A PRICE. Emotional commitments can mess up your studies but good. I watched it happen, and it happened to me.</p>
<p>So my conclusion (which doesn’t hold for everyone) is that a lot of people want to do what nature tells them to do with less chance of ruining their education in the process. Let’s hope they are also savvy about pregnancy and STDs as well.</p>
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<p>To be fair, this probably way closer to what your daughter meant by hooking-up.</p>
<p>I know the females at my oldest DS’s school play a game revolving around how many parities they can hit on one night and how many guys they can get to kiss and make-out with them. It is a progression thing - get a guy to make-out after each beer, or at least kiss a bit. Kind of the like a reverse the make-out version of beer pong, where the beer comes first and the prize is the guy. Each school has its own version of such games. However, actual sex is not the result with each guy. But, the last guy has the best chance and that is kind of the endgame of the game, not sex with all though.</p>
<p>There are several threads that discuss this issue in all sorts of ways. You may want to look at them, as variations on a theme of the topic have been discussed a lot.</p>
<p>Good luck to your daughter in finding friends that are more like her. There might be a dry house or dorm on campus that she can join where the kids do not partake in such drunken activities.</p>
<p>@ WasatchWriter, interesting. So you view this as a useful development? Hooking up protects your academic success?</p>
<p>The first semester at college is often a time for experimentation and rebellion. Most of these kids will settle down quickly. I know my friends and I did. I have encountered similar threads from parents on Facebook. I’m not even sure that “hook-up culture” is any more intense now than it was in the '70s, when I went to college. I believe that the HIV/AIDS epidemic might have changed things temporarily in the '80s, which is when many current parents would have been in college. Each generation has its own challenges, and I think my kids and their friends are trying to deal with their own. Present economic realities make it difficult for most of them to imagine settling into domestic bliss within the foreseeable future. </p>
<p>To me, I think it’s like our society’s imbalanced fear on very rare circumstances like shark attacks or plane crashes. We see it and it shocks us and we wonder our own chances – despite statistical rarity.</p>
<p>It’s the same when our kid goes to a school (where perhaps in the high school it was less known) – now you live with 40-50 people on a dorm floor and some extreme behavior is exhibited by someone you live nearby (unfortunately her own roomie). I’d say just have her be cordial – many kids (guys and girls) are not like that. Even if they’re willing (or hoping) to experiment more, your DD’s roomie is still not the norm.</p>
<p>There certainly are parents who want to be “cool” and readily be permissive w/kids behavior. Those aren’t the parties our kids have no desire to attend (and we’re glad!).</p>
<p>My DD would be equally horrified with a roomie such as described – we’re prepping her on the many scenarios she’ll be facing in Sept ‘15. She has a level head but our fingers are crossed that others’ extremes don’t invade her too much. </p>
<p>Good luck to your DD. I hope she finds a good group of friends quickly.</p>
<p>My guess is that the “five guys” hook up was referring to kissing/making out. I don’t know anyone who would brag about having sex with five guys in one night, even in a “hook up culture.” The term can broadly cover any kind of “luck,” whether it’s kissing or much more.</p>
<p>I believe the media plays a large role in this. I don’t believe it’s necessarily more common now than it used to be, but it is more commonly serenaded on TV, in movies and magazines. The more we open up and talk about (and glamorize) something, the more prevalent it suddenly seems to be as others join in the talk. </p>
<p>Regardless, it’s not common everywhere. I didn’t notice it to a large degree at my college - many students were in long term relationships with their high school sweethearts. Students who don’t want to be a part of that behavior tend to find other like-minded individuals and do their own thing.</p>
<p>@Demeron2 I’m also a square parent, and from a generation when this type of behavior was rather rare, at least here in conservative central PA. I’m really concerned about sending my son off to college next year, as he has a “follow the crowd” mentality and will most likely experiment with alcohol, drugs, and sex. However, the only alternative seems to be to have him commute to community college, and I think he needs the experience of living away from home. I agree that the hook-up culture is a troubling expression of our post-modern society.</p>
<p>I think kids are exposed to much more at a much younger age than they used to be. Parents may not approve, but they are competing with media/youtube, peers, and their child’s perception of what peers are doing or what’s normal/cool for college students (which may be more influenced by what they are seeing in the media/youtube than by reality). </p>
<p>5 guys a night sounds like a recipe not just for STD’s but anything–flu, mono, etc. Yuck. Hope roomie keeps her germs to herself.</p>
<p>That said, I knew a girl like this in college. One.</p>
<p>@woogzmama:</p>
<p>Good point about the AIDs epidemic really putting a damper on libidos in the late '80’s/early '90’s.</p>
<p>From what I’ve read, the '70’s were pretty wild (can you imagine suburban couples wife-swapping these days?)</p>
<p>However, societal trends do swing to and fro, and we are definitely in a more laissez-faire/less conformist time period in American history. </p>
<p>@kidzncatz:</p>
<p>Send him to an engineering school. They may drink, but getting laid would be difficult and doing drugs would be unlikely. Being addicted to computer games may be a greater concern.</p>
<p>Both my kids took a gap year before heading to college.
It gave them a break from the relentless plodding through the classrooms from K through grad school and when they set foot on campus, I like to think they had a good idea about why they were there.
Which wasn’t to prove that " yes, they are the adult now, and no one is going to tell them what to do".</p>
<p>@Demeron2 I would say that getting physical with 5 guys in one night is almost certainly pathological
– spin-the-bottle type games being an exception. What I had in mind is more of a friends with benefits arrangement. I can see the advantages for people who have a lot of other things going on in their lives. I also wonder, when that’s your major source of intimacy during those years, if you might lose some ability to form a really strong attachment later on in life. But that’s just a guess.</p>
<p>Of course the hook-up trend (not the 5-per-night thing) might be part of a much larger social package that includes texting and social media. I’m not sure how you’d study it, but I suspect that people my daughter’s age may have a whole other way of perceiving their social lives.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m hesitant to judge.</p>
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<p>Really? Your son discusses this with you? It seems like an unusually granular observation for a young man to share with a parent. It also seems pretty gruesome.I doubt there are huge numbers of young women doing this.</p>
<p>Hook-up culture is the result of the lowering of standards of gentlemanly and ladylike behavior and the fear of loneliness. My DH claims that men act as badly as women will let them. I don’t totally agree with this perspective but I do think that it’s a mistake to equate feminism or self-respect with passing yourself around like a bowl of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving (this applies to all genders).</p>
<p>Edited because I misread DS as DD at first (which made it even weirder).</p>
<p>@NJSue:</p>
<p>Sons may discuss stuff with their dad that they don’t with their mom. Especially is the dad is open-minded about such subjects (and definitely not with their mom if she is judgemental about a subject like this).</p>
<p>“Hook-up” culture is not new. It’s just a new name for something that has been going on since the dawn of time. We were more hush-hush about it until the mid-20th century, because nice young girls were supposed to get married and the lack of virginity would threaten that. When birth control became more prevalently available and women’s rights became a thing - allowing a woman to support herself economically even if men were unwilling to marry her - that’s when things came from underground. Not begun, mind you - because young men and women were always having premarital sex. It didn’t come into existence in the 1960s. You just didn’t talk about it in polite society.</p>
<p>You know that saying that every generation clutches its pearls about the one after them? That’s true about sexual mores, too. I do research on reproductive health and sexual behavior. Adolescents are actually less sexually active than their baby boomer parents were. They have sex at older ages, they have fewer sexual partners over the lifespan. They are more knowledgeable about protection.</p>
<p>The major difference, I suspect, is the Internet and social media. But not in the way you think. The difference is that now we have bloggers and journalists and social media ‘experts’ who have given it a name (“hooking up,” “hook-up culture”) and declared it A Thing without a shred of scientific evidence that no-strings-attached arrangements are more common now than they were in the 1990s or 1980s. They interview a bevy of young women - always young women - and opine about how sad it is that our young girls feel forced to have casual relationships when what they really want are long-term monogamous relationships leading to marriage, when the young women in the interviews typically say exactly the opposite of that. They do say what @WasatchWriter alludes to - that they (the girls who are interviewed - not girls in general) prefer hook-ups and friends with benefits situations because they don’t want to deal with the emotional attachments that come with dating. They want to focus on studying and get high grades because they are going to med school. Or they want to be able to move anywhere in the country for a job without trying to coordinate with a boyfriend.</p>
<p>What I always find really interesting is that these articles never interview young men, because the assumption is that young women are the gatekeepers of sexual intimacy and behavior.</p>
<p>Anyway, the other strong possibility is that she’s lying or exaggerating because she’s 18 and she wants to seem cool. I think it’s safe to say nobody’s parents are sending their children to college saying “Go on! Hook up with 5 guys in one night, that’s what life is about!”, ha.</p>
<p>Also</p>
<p>Aren’t these kids worried about STDs? (No, condoms will not protect you against most of them)</p>
<p>This is not true. Condoms do protect against most of the most common STDs - not all, but most.</p>
<p>Condoms are pretty useless against herpes, HPV, and marginal against syphillis.</p>
<p>I hope she’s been vaccinated for HPV. That might be something to mention if she brings up the subject again.</p>
<p>My guess is they interview women in part because they think the guys are more likely to exaggerate their experiences.</p>