<p>If concern about the physical and emotional hazards a beloved child (male or female) might encounter in the “hook up culture,” makes a parent judgmental, I plead guilty. I also smell a whiff of misogyny in some comments about how girls play “games.” Hmmm. </p>
<p>Juillet, I do think it’s different now. I agree with many of your points but I do believe there is a sort of performative peer-pressure aspect to sexual activity that didn’t exist (at least for women) in the past. The freedom to have sex has been distorted into the obligation to have sex and to have no expectations of courtesy, concern, respect or affection. The revolting PUA subculture is just one aspect of this trend. </p>
<p>Those weren’t his daughters or your daughters. If they were my daughters, for sure, I would care, but since they’re not, so long as my kids aren’t catching STDs from, whether those girls sleep around or not isn’t really my business.</p>
<p>Both of my Ds had roommates who “sexiled” them from the room fairly often freshman year. Both found other roommates for sophomore year. I expect your D will find more like-minded friends and leave this roommate behind next year. And I doubt the roommate’s parents send their D off with any message telling her to hook up. Our young adults are that, young adults. They have minds (and hormones) of their own, and teenagers are pretty notorious for not taking good advice when it is offered.</p>
<p>Actually, on the basis of lots of discussion with my kids, and observing them and their friends, I do think it’s a little bit different now, but only a little. Two changes:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Kids are somewhat afraid of being coupled. Wasatch Writer mentioned that, and I agree. They see – and their peers and parents tell them – that relationships are a distraction from their main job right now, which is getting grades and starting a career. Marriage and children seem something for the distant future; it’s not worth starting to work towards that yet. Meanwhile, they don’t want to miss out on sex, and sex-like stuff. So instead of sex being part of emotional intimacy, either a product of it or an entree to it, they have developed rules that attempt (not always successfully, of course) to divorce sex from emotional intimacy and commitment. It’s a logical, functional response to your parents’ advice that you focus on your studies now. (Your parents may also have advised you to defer sex, but that’s not logical or functional . . . .)</p></li>
<li><p>Thanks to a whole generation of sex ed and ubiquitous porn, young people are comfortable with and knowledgeable about a variety of sexual practices that were super-freak stuff back in the day. So as a parent it’s easy to get shocked, but it really doesn’t have more social importance than anything we did.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I am confident that any 18 year-old college freshman who “hooked up” with five guys in an evening had sexual intercourse with none of them. She probably greatly enjoyed the sense that she had power over them and could make them like her, and the sense that she was free of her old inhibitions. She’ll get tired of those feelings soon enough.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s as common around here among both of my daughter’s friends and roomies. What exactly is the term hook up entails? If kissing, then at one kid’s school you could say one guy had 37 hook ups because he did try to see how many girls he could kiss in one night. Unfortunately my daughter was one of them. She was pretty pissed after found out he did the same to other. He set out to do that on purpose so he can brag.
So it depends on what it entails and there’s lots of bragging, over exaggeration as usual particular when it comes to sex.</p>
<p>My son uses the term to describe any physical contact, ranging from kissing (serious kissing, obviously, not a peck on the cheek) to intercourse between two people who are not in a relationship of any consequence. </p>
<p>@DrGoogle , gonna guess he didn’t have much luck after that with any of the 37 if they heard what he was up to. Might have been a poor long term strategy for him (hope so)!</p>
<p>int, he did it for bragging, not for long term strategy. Young freshmen girls who didn’t know better, but they did talk who did what to whom afterwards.</p>
<p>Bob, yes that kind of kissing but not anymore, at least she didn’t tell me more. :D</p>
<p>Btw, just curious, is this something you didn’t encounter in high school? My impression is that it became relatively commonplace by soph or junior year of HS. </p>
<p>“I am confident that any 18 year-old college freshman who “hooked up” with five guys in an evening had sexual intercourse with none of them. She probably greatly enjoyed the sense that she had power over them and could make them like her, and the sense that she was free of her old inhibitions. She’ll get tired of those feelings soon enough.”</p>
<p>Yup. If it happened at all. What’s the point of going to college if you can’t shock your “square” roommate’s parents?</p>
<p>No most of these kids were APed and ECed to the ears, never had time to do anything more. They did have friends who were not as academic and did more stuff and told them what they did so that’s how I’ve heard about it, but nothing serious, not in my mind anyways. When I read what people wrote on CC I thought most kids in high school have sex left and right, but somehow it didn’t happen at our kids high school. They did date, went to prom but nothing serious.</p>
<p>DrGoogle, my son did IB, plenty of AP courses, played travel hockey, etc., but still found time to relax with his long-term girlfriend. He held up to the ridicule of some of his classmates when he told them that sex in a committed relationship was much more satisfying than casual hookups. </p>
<p>Bob, interesting May be kids in this neighborhood are slow. My oldest found out a lot of kids in college didn’t do hook up either. Some didn’t drink beer to start and this is at a school known for parties.</p>
<p>Oh for the love of all that is good, can we DROP this myth? </p>
<p>Students today are not any more promiscuous than in the last few decades. In fact, the research shows that there is NO difference between number of partners today and number of sexual interactions than there were in the 80s and 90s. </p>
<p>@romanigypsyeyes , I am 63, so I was a teenager during some very exciting times. My father, who was a young adult in Berlin in the 20s, said we were dilettantes in the 60s. :)</p>
<p>Interesting points raised above. I wonder if the parental or societal messages are something like “It’s not all that important, so long as you keep your grades up,” combined with, “Don’t get too serious right now, since you have a decade of career building before you can afford to attach.” That would explain a lot. </p>
<p>It is true knowledge is so much more disseminated. My roommate explained certain practices to me which I then explained to other friends, and word of mouth was really the only place to get the information, amazing as it seems now :)</p>
<p>I agree it’s unlikely (though I suppose not impossible, with the energy of youth) that this young woman is hitting significant bases with all these guys in a single evening, but I’m puzzled why people here assume she’s lying about it for the purpose of being shocking. That’s just my point. I don’t think my daughter’s classmates found this particularly shocking, and I’m wondering, how did we get here, and now that we’re here, how do we feel about it? </p>
<p>Sounds like some folks feel there’s no harm in it, while others think it’s not a great idea. So maybe there’s a regional, cultural component. It is not typical behavior among my kids’ friends, but obviously that’s not true everywhere.</p>
<p>“It” doesn’t exist. Or, alternatively, if “it” does exist, “it” existed when most of the parents of students were in school and they seemed to have turned out just fine. </p>
<p>“When I read what people wrote on CC I thought most kids in high school have sex left and right, but somehow it didn’t happen at our kids high school.”</p>
<p>You can’t know this. You really can’t. It may be that you have a high school with a lot of late bloomers, but no parent can know that Risky Behavior ____ doesn’t go on among kids at this high school.</p>
<p>The idea that AP courses and ECs keep the kids too busy to have sex is…incorrect.</p>
</p>