In the last article, we mentioned a report about attitudes and behaviors of American college women regarding their relationships with men. The practice of hooking up — a sexual encounter with no expectation of commitment — has become widespread. 

Not everyone is hooking up. In fact, most college women are not. But the practice and acceptance of hooking up (whatever that means, and the vagueness is often deliberate) has profoundly impacted the social climate.

At the other extreme, many couples are joined at the hip.  They act as though they are already married.  They spend all their free time together, sleep together, do laundry together.  They fall into this arrangement very quickly, perhaps just a few weeks after they first meet.  Despite the intensity of the relationship, the M-word never seems to come up.  “Marriage is for old people,” they tend to think.

Before they know it, someone gets seriously hurt.

The vagueness of male-female interactions, especially in the coed dorms, is a source of constant confusion and tension.  Where is the relationship going?  No one knows. Even worse, they don’t want to talk about it.

Well, maybe the girl wants to talk about it. But the guy deinitely does not.

The lack of assertiveness of the college male is a well documented phenomenon. He no longer asks women out on dates. He is eager to have sex, of course, but he won’t come clean about his intentions unless a woman forces him to.

Is this what romance is supposed to be?

Here are more findings from the report.

6. “Dating” carries multiple meanings for today’s college women. We found four widely used and different meanings for the term, two of which were more common. A college couple who is “dating” is sometimes in a fast-moving, highly committed relationship that includes sexual activity, sleeping at one another’s dorm most nights, studying together, sharing meals, and more, but rarely going out on “dates.” These fast-moving commitments and hooking up operate as two sides of the same coin. At the same time, “dating” is also often synonymous with “hanging out,” in which women and men spend loosely organized, undefined time together, without making their interest in one another explicit, unless they hook up, at which point dating and hooking up become the same thing.

7. College women say it is rare for college men to ask them on dates, or to acknowledge when they have become a couple. Only 50 percent of college women seniors reported having been asked on six or more dates by men since coming to college, and a third of women surveyed said they had been asked on two dates or fewer. Young women and men more often “hang out” rather than go on planned dates, and if they live in a coed dorm, their dorm is where they most often meet members of the opposite sex. They report that because they can hang out or hook up with a guy over a period of time and still not know if they are a couple, women often initiate “the talk” in which they ask, “Are we committed or not?” When she asks, he decides.

8. College women from divorced families differ significantly from women who grew up in intact families regarding marriage aspirations, getting advice from parents, and hooking up. Women from divorced families appeared more eager to marry, and wanted to marry sooner, but were less likely to believe that their future marriages would last. They were also less likely to report that they were raised with firm expectations about relationships with men, and less likely to report that their parents had told them to save sex for marriage. They were more likely to have hooked up, and if they did hook up, were more likely to have done so often —of women who had hooked up at least once, 37 percent of college women whose parents had divorced reported hooking up more than six times, compared with 23 percent of women from intact families.

9. There are few widely recognized social norms on college campuses that help guide and support young women in thinking about sex, love, commitment, and marriage. College women say they want to be married someday, and many would like to meet a future husband at college. Yet it seems that virtually no one even attempts to help them consider how their present social experience might or might not lead to a successful marriage, or how marriage might fit with other life goals.

10. As a result, the culture of courtship, a set of social norms and expectations that once helped young people find the pathway to marriage, has largely become a hook up culture with almost no shared norms or expectations. Hooking up, hanging out, and fast-moving (“joined at the hip”) commitments are logical, though we believe seriously flawed, responses to this disappearance of a culture of courtship. The options available to college women are obviously strongly influenced by choices that other young men and women make, but each young woman today tends to see her choices as wholly private and individual. For example, while most college women expect to marry for life and 88 percent would not personally consider having a child outside of marriage, 87percent agree that “I should not judge anyone’s sexual conduct except my own.” Consequently, when women are hurt or disappointed by the hook up culture, they typically blame themselves.

Perhaps you are thinking, “These women are making their own choices. If they get hurt, it’s their own fault.”  Really? 

Who is to blame for this state of affairs?  The girls?  The guys? Everyone? No one?

The answer may surprise you.  Stay tuned.  We shall continue.

Source of photo: www.christianphotos.net

Whatever position you might take on this, the debate might just be moot.

In an in-depth study of attitudes, values and behaviors of college women with respect to sexuality, researchers reported that dating — the traditional method of courtship of generations past — is officially dead.  Cultural expectations about how young men and women are supposed to act when exploring the possibilities for romance and marriage are completely gone.  Breaking the rules (for example, by having sex before marriage) used to be frowned upon.  But now the rules just don’t exist. Except for isolated examples here and there, the institution of dating is now extinct.

“No more rules! Hooray! We are free!” 

Not exactly.

The lack of socially prescribed rules and norms has left college aged young people — especially women — dazed and confused.  Not knowing what to do, they make awful choices that hinder their long term goals and aspirations.

You can read the full report here if you like.  But to give you an idea of what women are doing on campuses today, we will give you some of the major findings. 

1. Marriage is a major life goal for the majority of today’s college women, and most would like to meet a spouse while at college. Eighty-three percent of respondents in the national survey agreed that “Being married is a very important goal for me,” and 63 percent agreed that “I would like to meet my future husband in college.” Contrary to what we might think, today’s college women have high marital aspirations and many are actively thinking about marriage.

2. But there are important aspects of the college social scene that appear to undermine the likelihood of achieving the goal of a successful future marriage. For example, since 1980, women have outnumbered men attending college. In 1997, the sex ratio on-campuses nationally was only 79 men for every 100 women.

3. In addition, relationships between college women and men today are often characterized by either too little commitment or too much, leaving women with few opportunities to explore the marriage worthiness of a variety of men before settling into a long-term commitment with one of them.

4. “Hooking up,” a distinctive sex-without-commitment interaction between college women and men, is widespread on-campuses and profoundly influences campus culture, although a minority of students engage in it. Three-fourths of respondents agreed that a “hook up” is “when a girl and a guy get together for a physical encounter and don’t necessarily expect anything further.” A “physical encounter” can mean anything from kissing to having sex. In the national survey, 40 percent of women said they had experienced a hook up, and one in ten reported having done so more than six times. Women who had hooked up reported a range of feelings, positive and negative, about the practice. For example, 61 percent of college women who said that a hook up made them feel “desirable” also reported that it made them feel “awkward.” Hooking up commonly takes place when both participants are drinking or drunk.

5. To say “we hooked up” could mean a couple kissed, or had sex, or had oral sex, but no one will know for sure. Indeed, it appears that the ambiguity of the phrase “hooking up” is part of the reason for its popularity. Although premarital sex is much more acceptable now than in the past, women are still wary of getting a bad reputation. Saying “we hooked up” allows women to be vague about the nature of the physical encounter while stating that it happened.

What do you think about all this?

Stay tuned — there’s more to come.