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<p>In my alumni magazine, I see enough young couples (both graduates) getting married or announcing the birth of a baby that I feel pretty confident that there’s still “regular” dating leading to long-term commitment out there.</p>
<p>IMO the studies are about cultural shift that is happening among young people these days. It is not about individuals or any particular campus. I think the cultural shift is worthy of noting and efforts to understand. On this thread, we don’t seem to get past shouts of denials. Bury your head in the sand if you like. For me, I’d like to read up more and try to understand the kind of pressure my D may be under.</p>
<p>I am not sure there is a real cultural shift. But if so, why does it matter? I do think how we talk to our kids about sex is important. My advice to them was not going to be different depending on perceived campus culture. Maybe different sorts of warnings? I don’t really think so. I want my kids to make their own decisions independently of the culture in which they happen to live.</p>
<p>Maybe I don’t have a backbone. I think culture matters in that culture dictates what is norm and often we accept the norm as ok. I actually had a conversation when my D was in the 8th(?) grade when I thought there was some confusion. I laid out as best as I could the difference between dating and skipping it altogether. So she could see what would work for her.</p>
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Well, I talked to 1000 students at Liberty University, Brigham Young University, and Pensacola Christian College, and I found just the opposite.</p>
<p>Well, I didn’t really talk to anybody. But you get my point. I just take all this data with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>" difference between dating and skipping it altogether. So she could see what would work for her. "</p>
<p>I’m not following. The difference between dating or skipping it altogether in middle/high school? The difference between dating and hooking up? The difference between dating with the idea of eventually choosing a spouse and an arranged marriage? something else entirely?</p>
<p>" I just take all this data with a grain of salt. "</p>
<p>me, too.</p>
<p>I am quite sure that if someone had given any kind of sex survey in my sorority house in the mid 70s, there would have been no particularly truthful answers to put in a statistics table. You would have determined what those young women were willing to report, nothing at all about reality of their lives. I think probably college women are willing to be more open about their sex lives these days, but I have no idea if that is true. Even in my day, a few were willing to talk a lot.</p>
<p>The Joy of Sex was published in 1972. Several of our moms gave us copies to take to college. I remember sitting with a few friends in the dorm freshman year wondering if our moms thought any of the information in the book was “new” because it certainly wasn’t new to us. Our moms didn’t really talk to us. They just gave us books, starting with when they needed a birds and bees explanation for young children.</p>
<p>The difference between dating and hooking up? <- That</p>
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<p>This amounts to a temper tandrum IMO. If anyone is sincere about finding out what’s going on they put in a great deal of efforts in choosing samples first. Until proven otherwise, I assume the standard practice of careful sampling was emplyed. The same goes to 60 people NYT reporter studied. I would think before deciding on those 60 students, the author met with many more and went through selection process to determine those 60 were representative of that campus. Anyone saying it’s only 60 people among 4000 students makes me feel a bit desperate.</p>
<p>Of course, one should take stats with a grain of salt. I am sure statiticians themselves do, too. That’s why there are more than one survey for the same study. When so many surveys coming up with 80%, to me it is about time to look around rather than poo pooing all the time. About not telling the truth to a survey, surveyers know that, too. A good survey incooperates reliability test into it. There may still be undiscovered untruths but that’s really all one can do and so far good surveys proved effective.</p>
<p>Iglooo, you should look at the amazon reviews for that book. They’re interesting. I haven’t had time to look into the reviews’ claims but they highly question her methodology.</p>
<p>I’m not saying whether the criticisms are legitimate or not, I’m just suggesting it’s worth looking in to.</p>
<p>I gather you believe in the increasing prevalence of the hook-up culture. Maybe you are correct.</p>
<p>What does that mean for how you parent, how you advise your daughter? Is the prevalence of a hook-up culture going to mean you rethink any of your basic values? Are you going to warn her about situations and behaviors you might not have thought to warn her about before reading these sorts of articles? How does it change your parenting style?</p>
<p>Whether or not hook-up culture is real, I am talking to my kids about sex exactly the same way. And regardless what I say, they will do what they choose :)</p>
<p>Oh certainly, they will do what they choose. All I am hoping is to point out somethings that my kid may not realize in both dating and casual sex. With more information, the kid will be better prepared in making choices rather than just thrown in. That’s all I wish for anyway.</p>
<p>romani, I didn’t read the review. But that’s only one of the many surveys that are out there. There isn’t all that much disagreement. That I think is rather astounding.</p>
<p>I have a rising h.s. senior daughter. I think it’s worth her knowing about the expectations of men–not the simplistic “all young men are animals,” but if the general expectation of many men is that a drunk female college student will have sex with no further expectations, she’d be very wise to be careful about getting drunk and knowing what to expect.</p>
<p>I thought that the point of the article was that there now exists a noticeable number of ambitious college women who play the same game of casual sex that college men have always played–the zipless f**k that was named by Erica Jong (novelist) when I was a college student many years ago–the idea that for both genders, sex could exist without any expectation of commitment, because it feels good and why not. Many young women played that game when I was in college and in my 20s (long, long ago), but many of them found that they were looking for the relationship along with the sex.</p>
<p>When I posted this article (later merged by the mods with this one), I put it in the College Life forum because I was curious what college students thought. Thanks, romanigypsyeyes for contributing.</p>
<p>Thank you for bringing up Jong. I’ve been thinking about Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl as I read this thread. Both authors and books controversial at the time. I am old too and think I have probably seen it all at this point. Like poetgrl I begin to get a little bored ;)</p>
<p>Here’s a summary of various studies of the so-called hook-up culture:
<a href=“http://faculty2.ucmerced.edu/lhamilton2/docs/paper-2010-hooking-up.pdf[/url]”>http://faculty2.ucmerced.edu/lhamilton2/docs/paper-2010-hooking-up.pdf</a></p>
<p>The only reason I’m so interested in the topic is because it’s my life passion (women’s reproductive health/freedoms). OTOH, I would much, much rather this not need to come up all that often (hell, I’d love to not need a passion like I have but that’s not going to happen in my lifetime so…). </p>
<p>There are many cultures with much more lenient cultural rules about casual sex. Eating disorders and low self esteem are not high there.</p>
<p>Interesting paper, old.</p>
<p>How often on here do we see people scoff at high school and college relationships? Why is it any wonder that some men and women might reject them? Remember, we learn our behavior from somewhere ;)</p>
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<p>These days??? Hookups were already happening on college campuses when I was an undergrad 15+ years ago. </p>
<p>And from some other commenters…they were happening longer than that…albeit under other names.</p>
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<p>The difference noted in the original article is that some female students are now using hook-ups to suit themselves and their career goals–that both genders now play the same game of sex without relationships.</p>
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<p>And that was already happening at least 15+ or more years ago. Only difference is that most female students on more mainstream campuses were much more circumspect about it.</p>
<p>However, at my LAC, it was not only happening…the above reasons you cited as recent were already commonplace in spades. In short, the article is little more than a form of “Get off my lawn-ism” for phenomenon which isn’t very new. </p>
<p>Only difference is that an increasing number of mass media reporters are discussing it to cash in on the tendency of numerous late boomer/early gen-x parents of millenial-aged college students to berate millenials for supposed wrongs with attitudes which could be summarized and satirized in Weird Al’s song “When I was your age”:</p>
<p>[“Weird</a> Al” Yankovic: Off The Deep End - When I Was Your Age - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDcbO2bRxhg]"Weird”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDcbO2bRxhg)</p>
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<p>How different is the world today? After a recent article in the New Yorker, I reread Shulamith Firestone and Kate Millett and it is true the world is really very different for young women today in some respects. I don’t know if sex practices are really that different or just talked about more. Erica Jong discusses the “zipless f***k” but I don’t know if she was the first woman to come up with that idea. I am trying to think if it is the first time a woman writes it? What about Anais Nin and Djuna Barnes? They are a generation before Jong.</p>
<p>Is the difference in the number of young women who have sex like some men do? or is the difference more open talk about it? Or that the media loves to make a story?</p>
<p>adding:</p>
<p>The last decade I’ve had a whole lot of college kids through my house and they seemingly talk about everything in front of me (including young women who want advice on how to achieve “satisfaction” and the difference in what someone might look for in a casual relationship vs a long term partnership) and I’ve never heard any of them say they feel pressured by a hook-up culture to do anything outside their comfort zone.</p>
<p>This is of course second hand information. It is too bad you aren’t getting more student responses.</p>
<p>Hookups were called one night stands.</p>
<p>I happened to be in college during the aids scare, before it was HIV, before we knew what was causing it, and before anybody knew about safer sex.</p>
<p>I lost quite a few of my close male friends to AIDs. You once asked me, Ahl, why I never went into academia? This is why. All my best English Lit buddies were dead by the time I got my doctorate, and the world was sad to me then. I needed to find something new.</p>
<p>So, among the women I knew, all of us quite liberated and knowledgable about sex and what we wanted from sex, the hook up seemed wildly dangerous, and not in the way that makes it more erotic.</p>
<p>We are a pocket of women who lost our friends and taught our daughters safer sex. But, safer sex is not safe sex, and I’m just glad my daughters always seem to be involved in monogamous sex with guys who have been tested.</p>
<p>carry on.</p>