Senior Washed Up Girls at Yale

Parents Forum
1

<p>[#SWUGNATION</a>
by Raisa Bruner
Yale Daily News
March 29, 2013](<a href=“http://yaledailynews.com/weekend/2013/03/29/swugnation/]#SWUGNATION”>#SWUGNATION - Yale Daily News)

Some college girls who participate in the hook-up culture as freshman and sophomores become jaded by the time they are seniors. I doubt this is just a Yale phenomenon. There is an old saying, “Why buy the milk …”. Susan Patton recently published some “Advice for the young women of Princeton”, discussed in an essay by Ross Douthat
[The Secrets of Princeton
By ROSS DOUTHAT
New York Times
April 6, 2013](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-secrets-of-princeton.html”>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-secrets-of-princeton.html&lt;/a&gt;)</p>

2

<p>I’m a feminist and I do not believe in the hook up culture. My girls have relationships. </p>

<p>I don’t care if other young women believe in the hook up culture, but I taught my daughters it was the same thing as believing in the drinking to black out culture. It’s not a culture. It’s a loss of self-respect.</p>

<p>I know there are young women who insist they prefer the hook up culture. I say more power to ya. I think you are buying something they are selling on MTV. </p>

<p>Even in high school we insisted on meeting the dates. If a young man came to the house to pick up one of my daughters and did not come to the door, my daughter waited until he did.</p>

<p>When a boy wants to “meet up” and isn’t an ongoing relationship or a friend? We taught our girls to say, 'I don’t make last minute plans. But you can call next week to make a plan."</p>

<p>Everyone can flame me. I’ve been flamed for this before, but I don’t believe, with rare exception, that young women actually prefer the hook up culture to dating and relationships and they do not have to participate to have men in their lives. </p>

<p>JMO</p>

3

<p>You are not going to get flamed from me. We have two girls and we are the same. When our girls lived at home, we met their dates when they came to pick them up. While kids are(were) in college, we met their new BF as soon as there was an opportunity. D2 is a freshman now. She just started to date someone seriously, and we met him few weeks ago. He takes her out, even insisted on paying for everything all the time until D2 told him that she would like to share the expenses. D1 is currently in a 3 year old relationship.</p>

4

<p>Around here, the young people tend to be marrying much later. They seem to be emotionally, behaviorally behind by about 10 years. The singles scenes in NYC is tough on the young women .</p>

<p>Still, I am attending weddings now for these young woment well in their 30s now, and some of them were in the hook up culture for a long time before settling down. Some did go through “washed up” years and most of the parents despaired of them ever settling down, and some of them, most of them are, just later.</p>

<p>A big difference from my day is that many of these young women who did go to top schools, find high paying jobs, and are in some nice positions in those jobs, are marrying men who make a lot less than they are, many of them younger. Two of my closest friends have DDs who are the main bread winner for the family (as well as my SIL). Not a big deal, until the babies come and those maternal hormones kick in, as is a happening with all three of these women. They CANNOT take off the time without seriously impacting standard of living and in some cases they’ve taken on financial obligations that make it an issue.</p>

5

<p>I’m with poetgrl but raising boys. Frankly the behavior of many young women benefits the boys who have very little inclination to put in much effort and I just don’t understand why some girls engage in that type of behavior. These young women “think” they have the power but the reality is the boys have all the power. Good for you poetgrl, if I WAS raising girls I’d adopt your line of thought.</p>

6

<p>My daughter is a freshman at Yale, and relates to this problem. While I think the hookup culture is part of it, I think another part is that girls are, on average, more interested in an ongoing relationship in general than boys are, and this creates problems. There is also the continuing factor that almost all dating and relationships involves boys who are older than, or at least the same age as, the girls. This is part of why the senior girls, in particular, have a problem. Also, women still don’t really want to date men who are shorter than they are. Plus, at least at Yale, it is my impression that there are substantially more gay men than gay women, which also has an impact.</p>

<p>Put all these things together, and there are some issues. We tell our daughter we sent her to Yale to study, not to chase boys.</p>

7

<p>It’s not good for the males either, as a mom of young men. I’m wondering if the Christian fundamentalist down south don’t have some better ideas on raising kids. A lot of them seem to be much more mature, responsible with some better morals. Seriously, I am concerned with what I see here.</p>

8

<p>None of the guys my daughters hoped would call ever didn’t call. I don’t think guys have any problem with dating girls who insist on dates, or on relationships, either, for that matter. </p>

<p>As long as a young woman is clear on where she stands on this, guys respect it. </p>

<p>I suppose there are guys who might not call. But, if they can’t call to even make a plan?</p>

<p>The long term relationship my oldest is in right now, a year and a half, started this way. He texted for her to come down to the bar where he was with some people. She texted that she didn’t make last minute plans, but… He called the next day and made a date. “You’re old school,” he said. He brought flowers when he picked her up. </p>

<p>I’m not sure (all) guys are so in love with the hook up culture, either. fwiw</p>

9

<p>^^Again I agree poetgrl. I don’t think my guys have a problem with “dating” in a classic sense of asking someone “out” but frankly if the girls are knocking on their door they don’t need to make the call.</p>

10

<p>My senior D has had an on-off college boyfriend since she was a sophomore and he was a freshman. They are on again at the moment. Her roommate has also had a steady boyfriend for three years. However, she tells me most of her girlfriends don’t have boyfriends. When they were “off” she did a tiny bit of dating, but with slightly older guys. I don’t think she lked the dating world much- maybe that’s why she went back to the boyfriend! She told me the older frat boys prey on the freshman girls, but not for relationships. I’m not sure that having a boyfriend in college is a good thing, since it can affect her big decisions about grad school, work, etc. On the other hand, her boyfriend has supported her through some very hard times and given her a sense of being cherished. Hook-up culture just makes you feel demeaned.
But since it’s all out of my hands, I am just glad she hasn’t let her relationship stop her from doing anything (work, travel, study abroad, graduate, etc).</p>

11

<p>I found that article very depressing; seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same.</p>

<p>D’s first BF in college eventually broke up with her. I don’t know all the details, but one problem was that D simply wasn’t sufficiently into him, in the hanging-by-the-phone-waiting-for-his-call type of way. Her mentality seems to be “I’m going down this particular path in life. If you’re going in the same direction as I am and at the same time, it would be fun if we traveled the road together. But don’t expect me to change paths to follow you.” Obviously, this mentality won’t appeal to an insecure man and many men are intimidated by it. Yet this is the type of ambitious girl who attends a school like HYPS. Hence the problem.</p>

<p>Still, I would think there’d be plenty of ambitious men who would like a comfortable, exclusive, but undemanding relationship like the kind the girls seem to yearn for. I think D has that now with her second BF. He is very busy too. Basically if she has time and he has time, they hang. No pressure. Seems to let both of them pursue their goals, yet have companionship. Now, when senior year comes and his goals take him one place and hers another, we’ll see if either caves. The woman is traditionally the one who is expected to accomodate, and I just can’t see D giving in all that much at this point.</p>

12

<p>My D started dating a young man who is a junior at the University of Michigan just before she left for NYC. They’ve maintained the long distance relationship all year. I had met him before her spring break, but he spent a lot of time at our house over spring break so I really got to know him better then. Although I think they’re awfully young to be tied down, I have to say… I really, really like this guy and think they are a great fit together. He has taken her to some very nice restaurants here, spent a lot of time and effort to make her a really romantic dinner. He has traveled to NYC three times this year and this last time, took her to a very elegant french restaurant. </p>

<p>It isn’t all the wining and dining that makes me like him so much. They just seem like a really great fit. They both treat each other with a lot of caring, respect, and thoughtfulness. They have very similar interests and are on target with each other intellectually. What really got me though was his positive attitudes toward life and his sense of humor. In our family, we have a cadence of humor that he just fits in with. It is hard to explain, but we can be kind of silly/goofy with puns and things and he just jumped right into that. </p>

<p>He came with me to the airport to drop her off at the end of spring break. He had tears in his eyes after they said their goodbyes. He wasn’t ashamed, didn’t try to hide it or anything. He told me he will look for jobs in NYC when he graduates. She is already scoping out areas where he might be able to afford to live. He clearly cares about her very deeply. He encourages her ambitions and she encourages his. I won’t mind a bit if he’s the “one”.</p>

13

<p>Bernardmom - the trick is not to like him more than your daughter likes him and that could be hard sometimes. A lot of parents have a hard time when/if couple breaks up.</p>

14

<p>Poetgirl - you will not get flamed from me! I am cheering on your Post #2.</p>

15

<p>Picking up on the last couple of posts - staying neutral, one way or another, is tricky for parents, I think. Back in the day, my FIL never liked a daughter’s boyfriend or son-in-law. I can see signs that DH is inclined to be a bit the same way with boys that show interest in our beloved DD. Well, it’s not surprising DH might be a bit like his dad; that’s the role model he had, after all. Challenging for me to figure out what I think of young men that show interest in DD, since DH finds lots wrong with all of them!</p>

16

<p>What’s news about this?</p>

<p>Hunt: Nice try, but if memory serves there are quite a number of men in and around Yale University who are a little bit older than 21-22 year-old senior women. Many of them are willing to date, or at least to have sex with, more mature undergraduate women. They are mostly graduate students (including law, medicine, business, drama, music, forestry, divinity . . . ). That’s who my daughter and her housemate dated at their similar university when they were seniors. Also, there isn’t much of a taboo against senior women being involved with men who aren’t seniors.</p>

<p>Contrary anecdote: I know of a college couple that broke up six months ago, a year-plus after graduation. The woman was happy with the relationship but was not willing to think about marriage or long-term commitment until she was in her 30s; the man didn’t want to be in a relationship that wasn’t allowed to go anywhere. (The man’s mother was heartbroken – she had really liked this girlfriend, and generally had not liked prior girlfriends.)</p>

<p>Something to think about: I married a woman I met in college, and I know lots of other people who did. Every one of those relationships involved one of the couple – usually, but not always, the woman – making sacrifices and taking career risks to maintain the relationship in the transition from college to adulthood. </p>

<p>My future wife graduated from college, put some stuff in a backpack, and flew to California with no job prospects and not a lot of savings, just to be in the same area with a boy she had spent about 10 days with in the previous seven months. How many of us would let our daughters do that? The only reason her parents did was (a) she was the youngest of four children and her parents were tired of parenting, and (b) they were absolutely consumed by their own divorce. She was a superstar, a summa cum laude Yale graduate, and she was stringing together part-time jobs for rent money – today she would be one of those statistics about college graduates who take jobs for which a college degree is not required. (She has had the career of a superstar, by the way, but it didn’t really get underway for a while.) It would have been really, really easy for her to say, “I like that boy, but I have to be responsible, and there will probably be other boys somewhere.”</p>

<p>Which brings me to a final point: Senior year of anything is a crappy time to form relationships. It is a time of real anxiety and uncertainty for most people, and people are going in different directions. And how are you supposed to engage in a leisurely, “dating” courtship when everything in your life, including where you live, is about to change in a few months or weeks?</p>

17

<p>I want to read the whole Yale article again, which I think was excellent, and the young woman who wrote it obviously writes well, is extremely bright, and willing to sit with nuance and ambiguity.</p>

<p>What is the feminist position? I generally agree with all of the above. I don’t want my daughter or my son to be “hooking up” in stuporous and/or impulsive states. I certainly don’t want them making decisions (actually not making decisions) in coercive environments or to flow with the herd.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I don’t want to see my daughter stay with one boyfriend from high school through 4 years of college, especially because I believe this most often happens out of some need for security and lack of readiness to engage in actual mature or even quasi-mature “dating around.” Isn’t that why we see so many college campuses as either “couples practically married” or hooking up, without anything in between? I sometimes think life is backwards. I would get so much more out of college in my mid-40s to mid-50s, and I also would be better equipped to engage in multiple mature relationships somewhere on the continuum of that vast middle ground. Maybe the majority of college kids can’t handle or do what many of us would consider ideal in terms of relationships/romance during the college years, meaning maybe for many they are just not developmentally ready to successfully engage in the middle ground or different different ground…and it’s not like “adults” do a ton better either.</p>

<p>Back to the young women…is there a way to formulate the feminist take that isn’t resisting the hook-up scene and waiting to be called for a date? Can a young woman decide and pursue something casual, in a clear-headed state, or in a party scene where they are doing something they are in control of and want to do? </p>

<p>This is a great topic. I’m going to write more about this elsewhere, but I think some of the problem here is a function of the straight-line, linearity that has come to dominate (i.e. instead of experiences high school and then college become all about laser-focus on resume-building, gpas, picking majors and career focus at 17, never veering off course and growing/exploring/failing, etc, etc). I hope the thread doesn’t get closed, and I am a little confused about how moderators can go around and just close a thread with no discussion and no recourse.</p>

18

<p>Hookup culture was preferred at my LAC when I attended because “dating” was considered “too old fashioned” and “a product of patriarchal norms”. </p>

<p>Didn’t care too much either way as my priorities at the time was 1. Academics 2. part-time work 3. enjoying my undergrad life free of encumbrances relationships could bring…especially after seeing how relationships can be very distracting towards #1 from observing college classmates and older cousins. </p>

<p>Though my parents never had the “wait until graduation” to start dating like most HS classmates, that’s what I ended up doing in practice as I didn’t want to end up like those classmates/cousins who ended up with crappy grades, academic suspension, or even dropping out of college on account of relationship issues. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>At least at Columbia U, most of the undergrad women I talked with who were most outspoken on this topic have said they’d avoid dating grad students because the all-consuming expectations of their studies and being at a different stage in life. </p>

<p>For GSAS PhD students, there was also added concerns about job prospects/financial stability if the relationship got serious. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Actually, it can be tough on everyone due to emotional immaturity and poor social skills such as some friends of both genders and I experienced:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Spending most/all of the first date ranting about one’s ex. (Major turnoff for anyone)</p></li>
<li><p>Spending most/all of the first date fishing for SES/financial information. The experience with one was the stereotype of what it’d be like to undergo a live IRS audit.</p></li>
<li><p>Feeling entitled to use the date/relationship as a form of therapy. Although it’s a stereotype commonly associated with women, I’ve also seen far too much of this among men…including an older college friend whom I snapped at after he couldn’t take a strong hint that I had enough of him venting at me for 4-5 straight hours for all the crap in his life…whether out of his control of self-inflicted. </p></li>
<li><p>Being too distracted by texting/checking texts/calls on one’s cellphone. I may be old school, but if you’re on a date with someone, what’s the point if you’re going to be ignoring your date in favor of virtual friends on text/phone? Either turn it off during the date or if you need it for work purposes, say so beforehand and be apologetic as even this is a serious imposition on the other date…however understand he/she may be. </p></li>
<li><p>One or more parties not seeming to understand that if one’s in an occupation/job requiring long hours that they’re not going to be available when you desire it and getting angry at them over this isn’t going to improve things or help the relationship in the long term. This was a major issue between dates and grad students/professionals…including myself when I worked 12+ hour days including weekends. </p></li>
<li><p>Those who prefer operating on the rational logical plane being labeled “insensitive” by more touchy-feely types to excuse and justify their over-the-top temper-tantrums, meltdowns, and picking fights because they actually enjoy starting and being part of conflicts. Although I’ve been thankful to avoid being in the center of most of those, I was labeled as such for calling out those who started/encouraged all that BS. </p></li>
<li><p>Prevalence of fast pace and long working hours aren’t exactly conducive to starting and maintaining a healthy relationship…especially among Type-A personalities who aren’t willing to do the hard work necessary to come to a mutually agreeable compromise.</p></li>
</ul>

19

<p>To me, the feminist view would be: Women should be able to handle it how they choose to handle it without judgment and double standards. So if a woman wants to engage in the hook up culture, she is not a slut. If doesn’t want to get married young, she is not an “old maid”. Men who do the hook up culture thing get high fives and slaps on the back. Women who do are given derogatory names. And, God forbid she get raped by someone she did not want to hook up with because then she was just asking for it anyway- as if choosing to hook up with a lot of men negates the ability to say no when she doesn’t want to.</p>

20

<p>^^^^Agree with you 100%.</p>