[ALBSA-Info] Dating customs of North American Aborigenes

[Kreshnik Bejko]

<this is an editorial from today's edition of the Wall St. Journal>

Girl Meets Boy

Birds do it. Bees do it. And so does that highly secretive species known as 
the American college student.

But just what exactly do they do and how do they do it? It's one of the 
perplexities of our culture's obsession with "tolerance" that we know more 
about the courtship and mating rituals of virtually every form of wildlife 
other than young men and women on campus. As a new study suggests, we ought 
to be paying more attention. Society has a stake in how its young people 
relate to one another.

"Hooking Up, Hanging Out and Looking for Mr. Right" is a survey of college 
women on their attitudes toward sexuality, dating, courtship and marriage 
conducted by the Institute for American Values for the Independent Women's 
Forum. The report is not for the faint-hearted. Parents with daughters in 
college should read ahead at their own risk.

First the good news. The survey finds that marriage is a major life goal for 
the overwhelming majority of college women. More surprising, given that the 
age of first marriage for women is now over 25, a majority would like to 
meet their future husbands in college. Also good news is that most think 
it's a bad idea to have a baby out of wedlock.

The bad news is that the overall context in which young women attend college 
today is thoroughly unsuitable for meeting these goals. Instead, the report 
found two extremes of "romantic" entanglement prevalent on campus. One 
extreme is "hooking up," aka "friends with benefits," and involves casual 
sex with no commitment. Although a minority of students engage in it -- the 
study found 40% of women had "hooked up" -- the practice has a huge impact 
on campus culture. Women don't like it, but they go along with it, believing 
they have little choice. The other extreme is "joined-at-the-hip" 
relationships, in which a young couple, usually without knowing each other 
very well, plunge into a sexual relationship and spend virtually all of 
their time together -- sleeping together, studying together, doing the 
laundry together.

Another finding is that "dating" -- in the traditional meaning of 
boy-asks-girl-out -- is virtually extinct. Instead, co-ed groups of young 
people "hang out" together in unstructured groups that leave women confused 
about what a young man's intentions might be. Even if a woman has sex with a 
guy, the women surveyed say they often don't know what to make of it. In 
such a case, the new etiquette leaves it to the woman to initiate something 
called "the talk" to find out if they are a couple. If the man says no, 
that's it. Sure, dating was hell, but this is progress? Whatever happened to 
female empowerment?

If all this sounds grim, consider the culture in which these confused young 
women exist. The message they hear from colleges and parents is to delay 
marriage and focus on their careers. In and of itself, that's not 
necessarily bad advice for a young woman, especially in an era when divorce 
can leave an unskilled wife in a precarious economic position. But at the 
same time, universities and parents are offering no guidance on how young 
women ought to comport themselves socially in the interim.

For possibly the first time in history, young women are left to make up the 
rules for themselves without older adult guidance. Parents, college 
administrators and health professionals have withdrawn from this role, the 
survey finds. While older adults are "willing to pass on information in the 
interest of protecting young people's physical health, [they] are largely 
and curiously silent when it comes to the deeper questions of love, 
commitment, and marriage."

So what is to be done? Here the report isn't of much help, except to say 
that young men need to take more initiative in dating and that parents and 
universities ought to support the creation of "updated social norms, rituals 
and relationship milestones." That's a lot more easily said than done, 
especially in an academic setting, where administrators have had three 
decades of experience in opening coed dorms and then closing their eyes to 
what goes on in them. In any event, this report is a good first step to 
explaining how the birds and the bees operate on campus these days and to 
understanding how parents and universities are failing young women.


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