Virgins / Hookups - 2/14/07

[Smartmarriages]

- WHAT'S UP WITH HOOKUPS?
- CULTURE OF REJECTION: VIRGINS MAKE THE BEST VALENTINES

Same day, different perspectives.  - diane
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- WHAT'S UP WITH HOOKUPS?
What's up with hookups?
USA TODAY 
Feb 14, 2007 
By Sharon Jayson
A new book called Unhooked takes aim at the no-strings physical encounter
called the "hookup."

((This one sounds like an ad for John Van Epp's RAM model/How to Avoid
Marrying a Jerk program:
> "They don't learn to build that emotional intimacy before they get physically
> intimate," says Holmes, co-author of Girlology:Hang-Ups, Hook-Ups and Holding
> Out, to be published in September. "In the long term, that develops bad
> relationship habits. They may grow up not knowing how to connect with a
> partner on an intimate level."))


Although many consider it a euphemism for sex ‹ or at least oral sex ‹ the
term is deliberately ambiguous; some say just kissing qualifies. But because
hooking up does not happen in the context of a relationship, Unhooked author
Laura Sessions Stepp says, she's concerned. Her book argues that hookups in
high school and college may hinder long-term love.

Those who study young people's sexual behavior say it's too soon to know
whether her cautionary tale of emotionally distant and commitment-phobic
young people will prove true; it's a new area of research, and no long-term
studies have been done. Much less is known about the high school scene,
because parental permission is required to study children under 18.

New research is focused on college, where the findings portray young people
as less inclined to the one-night stand and more likely toward "friends with
benefits."

Researchers say hookups evolved out of the free-love and casual-sex days of
the '60s and '70s, the rise of women's rights, and the birth control pill
into today's norm for advanced degrees, greater friendship between the sexes
and later marriage.

Young women today have mixed feelings about being tied down in a
relationship, says researcher Allison Caruthers of the University of Oregon
in Portland, who studied 340 college women in Michigan from 2002 to 2004.

"They kind of wanted (relationships) but were really afraid of them, too,"
she says. "Their friendships were clearly the most important relationships
to them in college, and they definitely saw romantic relationships getting
in the way."

A study from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio,
published in September in the Journal of Adolescent Research, collected data
from 1,316 Ohio seventh-, ninth- and 11th-graders. It found about 30% of the
teenagers surveyed had had intercourse, and of those, 61% had sex with
someone who was not a girlfriend or boyfriend.

Of those who had sex in the previous year with people they weren't dating,
32% said they felt closer to the person and it changed the relationship; 52%
said it didn't change the relationship; and 16% said it made them less
close.

"There's a notion in society that a lot of hooking up is going on," says
co-author Wendy Manning, a sociologist. "I don't think there's a sudden
upsurge. I think people might have just grown in how much they talk about it
and are concerned."

Among the earliest hookup studies is a report published in 2000 by
psychologist Elizabeth Paul of the College of New Jersey in Ewing, N.J.
Paul's newest work is based on surveys of about 500 students from 2002 to
2004. She says three-quarters of those surveyed have had hookups; of those,
about half have had sexual intercourse. Less than a quarter of hookups turn
into a relationship, she says.

It's this seemingly relationship-less aspect of hookup culture that worries
adolescent gynecologist Melisa Holmes of Greenville, S.C.

"They don't learn to build that emotional intimacy before they get
physically intimate," says Holmes, co-author of Girlology:Hang-Ups, Hook-Ups
and Holding Out, to be published in September. "In the long term, that
develops bad relationship habits. They may grow up not knowing how to
connect with a partner on an intimate level."

Sociology professor Paula England disagrees. Results of a Stanford
University study she began in 2004 of 4,000 undergraduates at five U.S.
campuses support relationship-forming abilities of the young, she says: 71%
report having a college relationship of at least six months.

"I do not necessarily think it's true that hooking up prevents people from
getting into relationships," she says. "I believe hooking up is the new
pathway into relationships. Most relationships today started with a hookup."

Her findings also show that 24% of college students never hooked up by
senior year. The median number of hookups is five; the average is 6.9. But
28% have had 10 or more, she says. Findings also suggest that 35% to 40% of
hookups involve sexual intercourse; 15% involve oral sex but not
intercourse; and just over 30% involve kissing and non-genital touching.

Hookups have become fodder for several fairly recent academic studies,
including those by Kathleen Bogle, a visiting assistant professor of
sociology at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, who has a book on
the topic coming out in the fall.

She says many young people consider hooking up as the way to find a
relationship. "There's something about the way people define college life as
a time to party and a time to kick back," she says. "They're postponing
marriage, so they have time to play the field."

Such thoughts didn't concern Holly Cato, 22, an Emory University senior from
St. Petersburg, Fla. She's engaged.

"It just went from hanging out to being in a relationship," she says. "For
most of the people I know, it's more of a really casual friendship before
you hook up, and then you become boyfriend and girlfriend."

Manning says her data suggest young people want relationships.

"What they really want is someone to feel close to."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/2007-02-14-unhooked_x.htm

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- CULTURE OF REJECTION: VIRGINS MAKE THE BEST VALENTINES

Virgins Make the Best Valentines
A Valentine tradition that works.
National Review Online
Feb 14, 2007

By Patrick F. Fagan

When out-of-wedlock births are nearing 40 percent, when most children will
reach age 18 without both of their parents together, celebrating St.
Valentine¹s Day has less and less the note of joy and romance in it.

Yet America needs a real Valentine tradition precisely because the messages
we give our teenagers pushes more and more young men and women to reject
each other rather than to belong to each other. The vast majority of teenage
young men putting on condoms and teenage young women taking the pill has no
intention of marrying those whom they bed. They join in the embrace meant to
last forever, knowing all the while that they will likely walk away from
each other. Thus they reject ‹ and get used to being rejected ‹ in their
intimate lives, and in the process build not a culture of belonging and
romance but one of rejection and suffering. They pay a price bigger than
most suspect.

A few years ago Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson of the Heritage Foundation
did an analysis of the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth and found that
for women 30 or older those who were monogamous (only one sexual partner in
a lifetime) were by far most likely to be still in a stable relationship (80
percent). Sleeping with just one extra partner dropped that probability to
54 percent. Two extra partners brought it down to 44 percent. Who would have
thought that the price of sleeping with even one partner would lead to
divorce for almost half of those who had only one extra tryst?

It would seem virgins make not only the best Valentines but the best mothers
‹ for raising children well means developing their capacity to be married
parents who know how to stay married and how to select a mate who can do the
same ‹ a long-term task made for two parents who love each other. Making
babies is the easy part of parenting: It hardly takes any effort or
acculturation, hence all the effort Planned Parenthood puts into its agenda.

Today in our culture everyone, even Planned Parenthood sometimes, passes on
to girls the cultural script that mothers and children belong together. But
the difficult script of ³male and female together forever² gets little
attention. Sexual attraction or the falling in love comes easy ‹ no
scripting is required for that. Even belonging together for a while comes
easily enough. It is only after the ³delightful madness² of being in love
fades that the long haul of true love begins. It is virgin women who have
the greater capacity to find the men capable of it.

But fewer and fewer of our young men are capable of this long haul. Consider
how teenage boys are being scripted. How many pick up the message that it is
best to have as many women as possible, versus those who pick up the message
to find ³their one and only true love²? How many get the predator/hunter
message instead of the message to become the ³protector of their love²?

It is easy for men to take to the predator message; it may even seem to be
hardwired. By contrast it takes a massive cultural effort to make the
protector lesson take hold among men. Most cultures (not ours anymore, alas)
have put enormous energy into the protector message because the children of
each generation need their fathers at home with them. Almost a quarter of
our children are aborted today, 80 percent outside of marriage, while 60
percent of those who do manage to make it alive through the birth canal
eventually end up with their parents rejecting each other. We, the United
States, have become one huge culture of rejection.

While 80 percent of the virgins in the Rector-Johnson study above maintained
a stable relationship, 20 percent failed. That data set cannot tell us but I
suspect that many of these latter virgins were foolish enough to trust
themselves to a ³predator²-scripted male. Meanwhile, their non-virgin
sisters who married after they had given their virginity to someone other
than their husbands were all by no means doomed to divorce, but the data
indicate the majority was. From Steve Nock¹s research on Virginia divorces,
we know that roughly two thirds were initiated by the wives. Extrapolating
from Rector-Johnson¹s research I bet most of the wives in Nock¹s sample did
not come to their husbands as virgins, but before marriage were already used
to rejection and rejecting and to moving on to another man. This is just a
hypothesis and it may be proved wrong, but checking it out will make for a
very interesting study.

In the meantime, for the young people who want to have a lifelong valentine
in their future, the lesson is already clear: Consider virginity. It is the
natural prequel to the love that lasts.

 ‹ Patrick F. Fagan, is the William H.G. FitzGerald Fellow at the Heritage
Foundation.

National Review Online -
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MGNiODQ4YmEzMjc1ODc1YTYwNmIxM2Q5ZWZkZmE
3YTM= 

We'll have several youth training programs at the Denver Conference. Here
are just a few.  See program for full listing.

> 112 Two Days - Wednesday & Thursday, June 27, 28
> The 10 Rites of Passage
> Charles Lee-Johnson, MSW
> This abstinence, parenthood and marriage education program teaches at-risk
> youth responsibility to self, family and community with a focus on long-term
> life goals. Qualifies you to teach the program and includes support in
> setting-up your program in community and faith-based settings. $100 spouse
> discount.  Click for more information:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/lee.johnson.html

> 915 One Day - Monday, July 2
> WAIT (Why Am I Tempted?)Training
> Shelly Donahue
> This highly experiential curriculum captivates, entertains and teaches teens
> the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual and financial
> importance of learning how to love well and to wait until marriage to have
> sex. $50 spouse discount. Click for more information:
> http://www.smartmarriages.com/wait.html
> 
> 119 One Day - Thursday, June 28 - Free admission. NO CEU.
> School & Youth Marriage Education Programs
> Kay Reed, chair
> Love U2 - Marline Pearson, MA
> CONNECTIONS - Char Kamper, MA
> Loving Well - Nancy McLaren, MAT
> We have to start with the kids! These research-based, best practice,
> developmentally appropriate programs - being taught
> across the country - teach students the skills and knowledge that are
> central to building and maintaining healthy marriages. Curricula are
> easily adapted to classroom, church or community and youth
> group settings.  Teens encouraged to attend.
> Click for more information: http://www.smartmarriages.com/school.html

- diane 

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