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Hooking

For what it’s worth, I agree with this author’s conclusion. 

During a class discussion on adolescence, a high school teacher recently asked her students whether they go on dates. We don’t “date,” the 12th-graders reported. We “hook up.”

If you’re in your 40s, “hooking up” might mean catching a friend downtown for lunch. But to people in their teens or 20s, the phrase often means a casual sexual encounter — anything from kissing onwards — with no strings attached.

Now a new book on this not-so-new subject is drawing fire in some quarters for its conclusion: That hookups can be damaging to young women, denying their emotional needs, putting them at risk of depression and even sexually transmitted disease, and making them ill-equipped for real relationships later on.

For that, Laura Sessions Stepp, author of “Unhooked” and a writer for The Washington Post, has been criticized as a throwback to an earlier, restrictive moral climate, an anti-feminist and a tut-tutting mother telling girls not to give the milk away when nobody’s bought the cow.

We used to have a word for girls who hook up with any guy who happens to walk by.  And the boys (yes “boys,” not “men”) who engage in this are equally pathetic.  Hooking up is just plain hooking, but at a cheaper price. 

On a related note, I wonder what the trend toward hooking up has done to the prostitution industry.

Posted by Owen at 0814 hrs
Culture

1. It is unfortunate that the story focuses so much on the reaction to the author’s conclusions.

   I’d like to see the data on the real long-term effects for career advancement, income, how those girls’ own children turn out, etc.  Are there correlations that show where the girls who hook up tend to earn less later in life, have higher rates of divorce or family dysfunction than those who are more selective or monogamous in their intimacy?

   I think it’s obvious that anyone (male or female) who takes a very laissez faire approach to sex & relationships is more likely to suffer emotional problems.  But in this modern world of instant porn everywhere you look, is the effect as detrimental as it would have been 30 years ago?

   Posted by David on March 10, 2007 at 1005 hrs
   
   
   

2. I first heard the suggestion that the availability of easy pickup sex would hurt the prostitution trade back in the ‘60s, and it wasn’t a new question then. My son, however, points out that you don’t pay a prostitute for sex; you pay her to leave when it’s over.

   Posted by triticale on March 10, 2007 at 1202 hrs
   
   
   

3. Is there any hard evidence that high schoolers are any more promiscuous today than they were 10 years ago or 20 years ago?  Stories like these take on a life of their own after tapping into everyone’s fears.  Teen pregnancy is down last time I checked.  I would think that is a much larger concern and one that has devastating impact on the young people involved, their communities and their children.

   Posted by scott on March 10, 2007 at 1333 hrs
   
   
   

4. As my wife Angela would say, everybody is afraid of what casual sex will do to a girl, but nobody will tell their sons to stop having premarital sex…but then, my wife is smart, so I listen to her.  LOL

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 10, 2007 at 2035 hrs
   
   
   

5. Owen, my wife just told me that , “hooking up” today is what my wife used to say was called convienent sex. The times have changed.  Ask your in laws if they ever went to the bakery on Berry Lake in the past and they will know where we live. I enjoy your web site. P S tell Jed to keep his imput coming! We enjoy you, Wendy and Jed when ever we have the time to read your posts, keep it up, Berry Laker

   Posted by Berry Laker on March 10, 2007 at 2231 hrs
   
   
   

6. There’s nothing casual about aids!

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 11, 2007 at 1253 hrs
   
   
   

7. Of course people should tell their sons not to have premarital sex too!

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 12, 2007 at 0852 hrs
   
   
   

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