Of course.
You really seem to be reading this like there’s a UChicago moral police squadron going sniffing out couples and breaking them up. There isn’t. People just advise first years to be careful about diving headfirst into housecest - and that’s the end of the matter. Some people do it anyways, life goes on, and no one really cares. The warning was given, nothing more to be done.
And yes, you can change houses but most people are loath to do that because of the social disruption. Most people would rather be living with their friends in an uncomfortable situation than totally uproot themselves. But yes, it does happen sometimes.
[My “Of course” above was “Of course” to HydeSnark’s post #38, not to post #39, which I hadn’t seen.]
This exchange really interests me. @JBStillFlying is clearly reacting badly to something, but whatever that is has little or nothing to do with student culture at the University of Chicago. Also, whatever that is, is powerful enough to make it really hard for her to understand the obvious point that if you have a small, tight social community, a situation where people hurt each other seriously within the community affects the whole community, like it or not. Of course, it also affects the community if one of its members gets hurt seriously by someone outside of the community, or gets sick, or has some other problem, but it’s not the same at all. Communities exist to support their members through problems like that. It’s much harder, likely impossible, if the problem is within the community itself. Not only will the community be unable to provide as effective support to its hurt members, but it will also be damaged in its ability to provide support and comfort to any of its members, since it will be disunified, temporarily or permanently.
And there’s another issue, too, one that a parent could relate to. That’s when someone stays in a bad relationship, or even acquiesces in one, because he or she (usually she, in my experience) believes that a breakup will disturb social relationships that seem important. That happens all the time, too, and it’s hardly limited to the “house” situation at Chicago, but it could be a more serious danger within a small, tight community where one lives and eats.
Obviously, such things happen. But it’s not crazy, or fascist, or anything like that for people who value the small community to tell each other, “Be careful playing with fire indoors, there’s more at risk than if you play with fire outside.” It would only be crazy or fascist or something if they actually expected or enforced full compliance with that. That would probably be as bad or worse for house unity as a bad breakup.
Finally: “Housecest” – that’s inherently a funny term. No one talking about “housecest” is ever being completely serious.
@HydeSnark I have appreciated your posts over the past several months I’ve been reading the UChicago threads. You provide valuable perspective. But you are incorrect on my perception – perhaps it’s because you are a student and you feel like a parent is trying to crack down. I realize there is no moral police code – I lived in Hyde Park once myself, I was a student there - I know no such thing exists. Nor should it. Furthermore I don’t know what house dynamics or specific house culture is like. So those are the disclosures.
Having said all that, I do have an opinion that is different from the other parents and from you on this matter. You should not feel threatened by that; rather, you are welcome to set me straight! I as a parent of a newly-accepted student, after all, am new to UChicago undergrad myself. So where am I, in fact, incorrect? Why is such a warning not to date housemates,in fact, relevant? That is called dialogue.
By the way, I’m pretty sure the children of the people we know who have engaged in “housecest” did not dive in head first. You do seem to Imply that it is a bad thing to do that some people do anyway. Since I have evidence to the contrary I simply can’t agree with that. Perhaps it’s all a matter of personal experience which informs a view on this topic.
@JBStillFlying I am sorry I keep misinterpreting your position. I definitely don’t mean to out of malice - when I said I was “really confused” in post #38, I meant it. From my perspective and from the perspective of everyone I know, telling people not to do housecest is blindingly obvious, almost axiomatic. I did not know what to make of your visceral reaction to the prohibition against housecest.
I also apologize for generalizing your opinions as “parental” - that was entirely my fault for not paying attention to usernames as closely as I could have, ha.
I think @JHS did a much better job articulating my feelings about housecest in #42 than I have done. I +1 all of that.
I don’t think this is contradictory with what I’ve said. Sometimes it ends badly, sometimes it doesn’t. Flipping a coin and it landing on heads doesn’t make an assertion that the coin sometimes lands on tails incorrect.
Responding to @JHS at comment #42 - actually, no. I’ve never been in this situation and I’ve certainly never had a “bad” experience - whatever that might be. I simply find those norms to be a tad silly and unrealistic, as I mentioned previously. And I know friends with kids who date their housemates. It’s no big deal to them and I was a bit surprised to find the tut-tutting that has gone on here. Perhaps you can use some evidence to persuade, instead of silly speculation.
I also think that telling people “not to do housecest” is intrusive and controlling (@HydeSnark, comment #44). “Blindingly obvious” indeed. If it were so obviously wrong, there would be a policy about it. Which there isn’t.
One might draw an analogy to taboos on workplace dating but those rules prohibiting such are clearly written out in the company manual, and reinforced via Human Resources. They are there to protect employees from sexual harassment and from power abuse. No such environment exists in the dorm house (at least, I hope not!). This is something that the residents made up amongst themselves - perhaps due to prudential thinking in some cases, perhaps because they feel that some type of restriction should be in place now that gender barriers are down. But it’s by no means in the residential life policy book (unless I missed something?) and it’s by no means applies to everyone - or perhaps even to a majority. “I wouldn’t do that” - sure. That’s a reasonable statement. “You shouldn’t do that” sounds just a tad controlling.
Sorry @HydeSnark forgot to respond to this: “I don’t think this is contradictory with what I’ve said. Sometimes it ends badly, sometimes it doesn’t. Flipping a coin and it landing on heads doesn’t make an assertion that the coin sometimes lands on tails incorrect.”
Totally agree! The issue is whether there should be pressure or advice or informal “rules” just because someone had a bad experience with a house-mate romance. There are obviously differing opinions on this, as evidence by the fact that some go ahead and date their housemates! I stick to my original view that if it isn’t illegal, immoral, etc. Probably should add “dangerous” to that. Would add “fattening” as well but that’s really more applicable to my generation than yours!
But it clearly is dangerous. Not necessarily life-and-limb dangerous, but dangerous to the community, that’s the “blindingly obvious” part – the fact that you obviously don’t care about that doesn’t mean that it’s illegitimate for others to care about it – and somewhat more dangerous to the individuals because of the inherent coercive potential. Does that mean that an absolute prohibition is justified? Of course not. Should the university put it in some manual? Lord, I hope not, because if they put it in a manual they would have to enforce it, or face liability when they didn’t, and it would be a nightmare. This is obviously a “rule” that is going to be broken a lot, but at the margins it may still be a useful idea.
Not every social norm belongs in a manual. There is probably nothing in a manual that says you should shower regularly. I’m pretty certain that if you don’t do that, a few people are going to talk to you about social norms. Do you find that illegitimate? Do you think the housing manual has to spell out precisely what the minimum acceptable number of showers per week is? Or is it a sliding scale based on how often you change your clothes and how bad you smell?
Here are a couple of situations where you may not find the norm quite so intrusive. I think they are both very common among freshmen at any college. (1) Boy A has a big crush on Girl B. It is obvious to everyone, and his behavior verges on, but does not quite cross the line into, stalking, which is possible because they live in close proximity to one another. Girl B can say to him, “You’re very nice, but you know that housecest is a bad idea.” (Then she had probably better act as though she believes that, at least for a while.) (2) Girl C, thrilled to be out from under the parental thumb, and learning that she is much more attractive to men in college than she was in high school, plans to have meaningless sex with as many guys as she possibly can, but rarely if ever twice. This predictably breaks the hearts of 75% of the guys she sleeps with, because everyone knows boys are emotionally vulnerable. It’s not awful if someone says, “Could you do that to boys in other houses? There are plenty of other boys around.”
@JHS - Girl C’s behavior is dangerous and awful to others. Period. Regardless of house. Frankly, if her friends don’t say something to her about self respect, abusive behavior and STD’s, they aren’t really friends. And by the way, that behavior is definitely a sign of emotional issues with the young woman. Not really sure if boys are more emotionally vulnerable than girls, nor whether that generalization should even be applied in a “gender-fluid” setting. Sounds a bit like gender-bias, doesn’t it?
Boy A’s behavior is creepy regardless of where he lives. What if Boy A were in 2/3’s of Girl B’s classes and followed her around campus all day? Somehow that isn’t a problem because they are not in the same house? Also,creepy-bordering-on-stalking behavior should really be nipped in the bud. It won’t be if Girl B says “Housecest is a bad idea”. That’s an opinion not really backed up by anything that will not necessarily stop that kind of behavior. PLENTY of girls have had to deal with creeps who can’t take “no” for an answer. However, It WILL be nipped if she reports to the RA who tells him: “your behavior violates the housing policy and if it doesn’t stop you will be removed”. He’s either removed, or he stops. So a “no-stalking” policy had better darn well be part of the rules of residential living. Bet there’s a paragraph in there somewhere that covers that.
Your examples demonstrate that sweeping “norms” that can’t even be effectively enforced can mask more problematic issues that should be addressed spot on.
“Not every social norm belongs in a manual. There is probably nothing in a manual that says you should shower regularly. I’m pretty certain that if you don’t do that, a few people are going to talk to you about social norms. Do you find that illegitimate? Do you think the housing manual has to spell out precisely what the minimum acceptable number of showers per week is? Or is it a sliding scale based on how often you change your clothes and how bad you smell?”
Yes, they should have a discussion if it’s a genuine problem. You put relationships on par with showering? Doesn’t one really fall more under “basic skills 101” and the other under a more complicated category? I know I taught my children at a pretty young age the benefits of hygiene - long before they had to worry about romance! LOL. BTW, many countries have different standards on this issue - not everyone is as shower-fresh as the US! - and you don’t want to impose rules that disrespect those standards.
“But it clearly is dangerous. Not necessarily life-and-limb dangerous, but dangerous to the community, that’s the “blindingly obvious” part – the fact that you obviously don’t care about that doesn’t mean that it’s illegitimate for others to care about it – and somewhat more dangerous to the individuals because of the inherent coercive potential. Does that mean that an absolute prohibition is justified? Of course not. Should the university put it in some manual? Lord, I hope not, because if they put it in a manual they would have to enforce it, or face liability when they didn’t, and it would be a nightmare. This is obviously a “rule” that is going to be broken a lot, but at the margins it may still be a useful idea.”
There is a difference between “dangerous” and “a bad idea”. It may well be a bad idea to sleep with your housemates, especially if someone is very sexually active. I’d, in fact, argue that it’s a bad idea to be that sexually active, period. There is plenty of data to back that view up. But not all bad behavior is “dangerous”. Is the person imposing negative externalities on the community? Absolutely and it’s perfectly appropriate for a housemate to speak to that individual and let him/her know that they are disrupting the house with their behavior. That kind of “talk” would be problematic, however, if someone were carrying on a nice quiet romance, appropriately discrete, no blowups, no meltdowns, etc. That’s, then, in the realm of behavior monitoring. I realize that all of you are saying - or at least implying - that this doesn’t happen. However, the very presence of some “unenforced rule” makes it more likely that it WILL happen.
And whether I - or you - care about it is secondary. But one thing we should definitely care about is minding our own behavior first. “I wouldn’t do that” is a fine way to live one’s life. “You shouldn’t do that” had better be backed up with some good reasons.
Edit: Sorry: responding to @JHS for the last two posts.
To each his or her own. I suspect we disagree almost completely and actually very little at the same time.
Everything you say is focused on the individual actor: It’s dangerous (to you) if you are sexually promiscuous. It’s bad (for you) if your hygiene is bad. Good relationships are good (for the people in the relationship), bad relationships bad (ditto, although you acknowledge that other people may be affected by a bad relationship). Your preferred formula for advice is “I wouldn’t do that,” because you are approaching everything from the standpoint of making personal choices that are best for me.
I, on the other hand, would be very unlikely to lecture a friend on the dangers of sexual promiscuity to him or her. I regard that as none of my business, unless somehow I suspected that the friend wasn’t smart enough or well-educated enough to understand those dangers. However, I wouldn’t feel nearly as hesitant to ask the friend to limit the behavior to avoid negative effects on me and on our other friends: “Look, do whatever you want, but try not to sleep with any of our close friends, their partners, siblings, parents, or grandparents, OK?” My focus isn’t don’t hurt yourself, it’s don’t hurt the rest of us. And I don’t resent modifying my own behavior to avoid creating problems for my family, friends, and partners, either.
At the same time, you acknowledge that when there is a negative externality, “it’s perfectly appropriate for a housemate to speak to that individual and let him/her know that they are disrupting the house with their behavior.” Why, then, is it inappropriate to say, a few weeks earlier, “Hey, you know you are creating a significant risk that you will disrupt the house with your behavior? Please be careful, think about what you are doing.” Or even saying long before that, long before there is a specific risk, or a specific person at whom the advice is directed, “If you are ever thinking about doing such and such, please think extra-hard about it, and recognize that it would create a significant risk of disrupting the house. Sure, maybe it will and maybe it won’t, but it’s really hard to tell in advance. So we will all appreciate it if everyone is sensitive to this and careful.” Recognizing, also, that with romantic relationships,it doesn’t do much good to say, “Please don’t be so devastated about your breakup, it’s hard on the rest of us.” It’s hard to put Humpty together again, so why not try to keep Humpty off the wall as much as possible?
And of course, you don’t seem to mind “I wouldn’t do that,” even though much of the time it will be hard to avoid the implication “and you shouldn’t either.” Especially when the statement is essentially, “I wouldn’t do that because I’m not a self-hating slut.” My preferred formula would be, “We wouldn’t do that to you, please don’t do it to us.”
Hey, I’ll enter the parental debate on college relationships here, just to say that I see how a house romance could get awkward. Of course it could. The house culture is designed to create a community within the larger UChicago community and from what I can see it succeeds. They do stuff together, they bond. If you have a breakup within that smaller community it can get awkward. However, A) thinking back to being that age, that wouldn’t have held me back from becoming attracted to someone and acting on that attraction. On the contrary, the closeness encouraged by house culture would have made that more likely. I’m not sure how many younger people consciously turn off this kind of emotion and the resulting fling or relationship. B) just because it has the potential to get very awkward doesn’t mean it’s horrible. For one thing, it’s always less than 9 months before you can move. For another, there are many similar scenarios - high school classes, summer camps, etc - and people have to learn to deal with that awkwardness. So while there’s definitely potential for disruption and drama within house relationships, and if you could you might choose someone outside the house for a romantic relationship, sometimes house relationships develop (I would wager quite frequently), and that’s just life.
This is a most interesting discussion. My perspective on it dates from a time when B-J was a guys-only dorm. Girls were rumored to exist - somewhere across the Midway - and occasionally one of us managed to get friendly enough with one to bring her to B-J. The visiting hours were limited, and the door of one’s room had to remain open. It was all a bit crazily stilted and not very conducive to romance. I don’t remember seeing many girls enter the hallowed halls. Nevertheless love managed to break out from time to time. There were always several of us in that condition and there was much comraderie in comparing notes. In its rigors and deprivations the experience was often ridiculously like that of a knight of old. However, certain venues afforded more casualness - after-class chats or meeting at the library (this was the U. of C. after all), which was really a hothouse of fumbling introductions and usually abortive beginnings. We clearly had less full-blooded romance in our lives than our much-envied successors who came to a B-J with actual girls. There was probably something to former Dean Alan Simpson’s jibe that we were “maggoty-minded monks”. Certainly our yearnings tended to be a bit bottled up and unacted-upon, partly for logistical reasons. I doubt that telephone booths still exist at mid-floor of all the floors of all the houses in B-J, but I can tell you that the booths that were once there were arenas of high anxiety. One dialed a much-memorized telephone number, and one’s mouth and mind promptly went dry. Usually a floormate picked up on the other end, and one heard something like the following shouted words: “Margie, there’s a creepy-sounding guy on the line who wants to talk to you”.
So much for an anthropological take on all this. One could argue for the greater significance of the experience when all those tensions and difficulties stood in the way. One could argue for the intellectual thrill of the long Proustean analyses carried out with one’s dorm mates. With all changes of mores something is lost for what is gained. I do think the contemporary way is better on balance because more real and robust. The significant thing is what happens between a particular girl and a particular boy. It will have an effect on the social world of the dorm, but that’s life too and perhaps a source of vicarious experience in its own right. We all need as much of all kinds of expereince as we can get.
@JHS -
“To each his or her own. I suspect we disagree almost completely and actually very little at the same time.”
- I agree!
I think you hit the nail on the head: where we differ is what’s ok to say to someone else. Prevailing wisdom seems to be that if someone is very, very sexually active (“promiscuous”, to use your terminology) it’s none of our business to say anything (given the caveats you state about smarts and education, etc.). However, the data is very clear that this behavior can be quite harmful. The data is also very clear that drinking to excess is quite harmful, and no one disagrees with that, and pretty much every parent here would approve an intervention. And yet not the same for the sexually “promiscuous”. Interesting.
"Why, then, is it inappropriate to say, a few weeks earlier, “Hey, you know you are creating a significant risk that you will disrupt the house with your behavior? Please be careful, think about what you are doing.”
Because that’s assuming that this person might not have thought through the implications. It’s treating him/her as a potential interruption, not as a friend. How about being concerned for the person? If someone is in an unhealthy relationship, speak up / intervene out of friendship. If someone’s in a relationship that is simply causing no issues, then go find something else to be concerned about, please. No one likes a budinksi.
I think that the issue here is that people sense there should be rules, but they don’t like rules about bathrooms, lack of different genders on the floor, etc. But they need some rules. So they come up with the “housecest” rule and they coin a clever term with unpleasant and even abnormal connotations so that everyone knows what it means. But it’s a completely fabricated, irrelevant standard that, as we have read on this thread, a bunch of people simply ignore. Guess I’d be a bit presumptuous to call their behavior “dangerous”!
Let’s suppose UChicago didn’t have houses. Would there be norms about who you could date in the dorm? About dating someone on the same floor? Because those issues disrupt everyone as well. There’s obviously closeness in a “house” setting and that’s a good thing. But the houses are a given - no one is required to participate if they don’t want to. So why is that seemingly OK but dating someone in the house “not ok” and worthy of a “talk”? Or would you advocate that if someone doesn’t want to participate in house stuff that they should get a “talk” as well?
“Recognizing, also, that with romantic relationships,it doesn’t do much good to say, “Please don’t be so devastated about your breakup, it’s hard on the rest of us.” It’s hard to put Humpty together again, so why not try to keep Humpty off the wall as much as possible?”
Again, I’m sensing that this is about not disturbing others more than genuine empathy and friendship. If the house is so close but doesn’t generate friendships and concern for others, then why have the house structure in the first place? And you believe that the Humpty Dumpty principle applies to someone dating a housemate but not causing disturbance, but not to someone who is sexually “promiscuous”? Hmmm. The latter seems to me to be a bit more broken than the former, but maybe I’m just a clueless rube.
“And of course, you don’t seem to mind “I wouldn’t do that,” even though much of the time it will be hard to avoid the implication “and you shouldn’t either.” Especially when the statement is essentially, “I wouldn’t do that because I’m not a self-hating slut.” My preferred formula would be, “We wouldn’t do that to you, please don’t do it to us.””
Wow. I think I see what the issue is: I’m concerned about monitoring my own behavior. You are concerned with making sure everyone else monitors theirs. Therein lies the difference. And it explains why, in your view, this is about not disturbing others more than it’s about friendship and empathy. Do you really think that anyone who is concerned about dangerous sexual addictive behavior thinks “well I wouldn’t do that because I’m not a self-hating slut?” Is someone who is concerned about excessive alcohol intake thinking “well I wouldn’t do that because I’m not a self-hating drunk?” Not in my world! Good grief. BTW, I realize that the college-age is kinda in between kid and adult, but you’d be interested to know, perhaps, that the American Academy of Pediatrics statement on this issue begins with: “adolescents (should) be encouraged to abstain from sexual intercourse or counseled to postpone future sexual relationships.” A bit extreme for the typical college campus, of course. But perhaps they are on to something - other than the obvious alarming rates of STI infection (including HIV) among ages 13-24.
@marlowe1 - the interesting thing is that at the graduate level (at least the department I was in) - love blossomed all over the place! This was back in the '80’s. A few students even married faculty - not sure that’s encouraged anymore! We know a LOT of couples who met at UChicago and I’m pretty sure all are still married. And yes, several of them have sent kids to UChicago as well (for undergrad mostly).
At one point someone published a “The Women of the University of Chicago” calendar. It consisted of sweatered co-eds posting in Harper Library.
@Mindlife at #52 - agree! When I worked very long hours in corporate finance I felt like my colleagues were my best buddies and I can totally see how romance could break out in those circumstances. And . . . it did with some! It’s life.
I guess I just trust that a young couple who believe they should be dating can handle this issue themselves so that they don’t cause a problem for others. They can change their housing, move off-campus, etc. In other words, they can work out a solution like the adults they are quickly becoming. That’s why I don’t like these intrusive rules/norms/whatever-you-want-to-call-them. There is an implicit assumption that they aren’t smart or mature or emotionally stable enough to figure this one out on their own. And, as I mentioned, It treats the house member like a potential annoyance and not much more.
I didn’t attend UChicago - I was at an LAC out west, dormed all four years, and loved every minute of it. Sure, we had parties and got loud sometimes and had to be told to pipe down. But in general, we treated each other like adults. Not everyone was an adult but those kids were pretty much considered to be losers. There was definitely a culture of maturity at our college and it permeated everything, from constructive input from the students at some faculty meetings, to adhering to the honor code during bathroom breaks in the middle of a final exam, to how we treated our dorm-mates.
We did have a young woman in my dorm one year who was obviously seeing someone who acted a bit controlling and creepy. Turns out she was working as a prostitute and that was her pimp. Glad someone intervened in that case!!!
This has gotten ridiculous, but I am sort of hooked in.
– One place where you are misreading me (and HydeSnark, and everyone else) is in assuming that we are in favor of some sort of intervention when Student A begins a romantic involvement with Student B. No. I agree with you, that’s unpleasant, intrusive, and also really pointless, because it’s unlikely to accomplish anything. A general culture, folklore, though, to the effect that “housecest” carries dangers to the house community – and bearing the double message that of course it happens all the time, that’s why we have a name for it and concerns about it – that doesn’t offend me at all. It’s not directed at anyone in particular, or telling anyone in particular to stop doing something they want to do.
It’s just like one of those posters, “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires.” It tells you to think twice and be careful when you are lighting (or dousing) a fire in the forest. It isn’t a prohibition on using matches or getting warm. I think that’s fine, and functional.
– Yes, this particular bit of folklore is entirely about not disturbing others, as opposed to what’s best for you. It’s not about friendship or empathy for the principals. That doesn’t mean that every social rule is like that (although many, many are). That also doesn’t mean that it’s the only thing that matters. If I have a friend – a real friend – who is harming himself, of course I will try to get him to stop, although the point at which I think it’s appropriate to intervene directly in someone’s life is pretty far down the road.
– The funny “housecest” thing has very little to do with ungendered bathrooms, or alcohol abuse, or postponing future sexual relationships, or some Freudian idea that the world is going nuts and rules aren’t OK but we ought to have rules about something.
– You, not I, suggested that there was some really important difference between “I wouldn’t do that” and “You shouldn’t do that,” with the former being much preferred. It turns out that there are all sorts of things you think people should counsel each other not to do. Those are “you shouldn’t” statements, no matter how they are phrased.
– For heaven’s sake, the American Academy of Pediatrics is talking about counseling 13- and 14-year-olds to postpone sexual relationships. By the time people get to college, those relationships have either been postponed or not. Counseling college students to abstain is like King Canute counseling the tide to stay out.
– I think there are versions of this idea outside the University of Chicago house system. I have noticed the terms “dormcest” and “floorcest” used at other colleges. Weak as the “housecest” taboo is at Chicago, I think it’s even weaker elsewhere, to the point of being 90% joke, rather than ~60% joke.
By the way, my wife and I met and became friends only because we were in the same residential college, although we were not romantically involved while we were both there. I know of two other long-term marriages between people who were in our college around the same time. There was no social norm against dating within the college – which at 450 people was a lot larger than a Chicago house, but smaller than most high schools. But maybe there should have been. My earlier point about people feeling social pressure to remain in abusive relationships comes from friends’ experience then, and my college was seriously riven when, in the wake of a romantic breakup, one member bludgeoned another to death. (Please do not accuse me of saying that interfering with college harmony was worse than killing someone whom I liked and cared for, it wasn’t, or that being in the same college caused the killing, which it didn’t. But there were certainly issues that stemmed from the fact that many of the killer’s closest friends, who were trying to give him support and fellowship, and many of the victim’s closest friends, who were grieving her loss and furious at the killer, lived cheek-by-jowl and ate all their meals together.)
OK @JHS you and I agree for the most part. If your analogy is more about Smokey Bear posters than your previous statement of: "However, I wouldn’t feel nearly as hesitant to ask the friend to limit the behavior to avoid negative effects on me and on our other friends: “Look, do whatever you want, but try not to sleep with any of our close friends, their partners, siblings, parents, or grandparents, OK?” - then we are in agreement. The house leaders can recommend anything they feel is appropriate and the members can vote as they see fit.
You have to admit that calling it “housecest” puts a negative connotation on the activity. Clearly meant to discouraged (however general the warning).
“I wouldn’t do that” vs. Y"ou shouldn’t do that" refers to an attitude and a focus. The attitude and focus I’ve taken from this conversation has been that it’s ok to discourage housemate-dating. That’s a “You shouldn’t do that” approach to living with others. My preference is to leave it alone and worry about yourself - to me that’s the BEST way to live with others in harmony. If they are truly harming themselves or another then by all means intervene - in fact, you have an obligation to from a moral standpoint. But If they are merely dating a housemate, but out. (Which you are telling me you would, so no worries). It does take a grownup to distinguish between these two and the young people won’t always make the best judgement (nor do a lot of adults!). But it’s an important distinction.
And the AAP is NOT just talking about 13 and 14 year olds although clearly they believe that some of the issues start at that age (or younger!). The statistic is 13 - 24. (15 - 24 for HIV specifically I believe). Haven’t looked but pretty sure I won’t find something similar from the AMA on abstaining! I do know that our pediatric clinic will see my kids through the college years, should they opt for that. Furthermore, they specifically have providers on staff who specialize in seeing and treating college kids so you are not just bundled in with the 6 month olds getting their shots. The older kids have their own section, their own exam rooms and their own doctors. I assumed this was standard protocol for a pediatric clinic. They are a stickler about following AAP guidelines so I’d be shocked if somehow this was out of the norm.
@JHS I am so sorry to hear of that traumatic situation you described. Obviously there would be no justification for not intervening even at the beginning stages. Probably a lot of that is hindsight - I can certainly see why you feel the way you do! I have never had anything remotely like that experience so I can totally understand if you think this conversation is a bit cavalier on my part. It certainly isn’t meant to be - and I would hope that situations like that never happen anywhere again. I don’t think discouraging “housecest” is the answer to preventing something like that from happening - I don’t know what would be, short of educating the sexes completely differently from one another which no one really wants to go back to. I think that’s probably the risk that we all take when we loosen up some of the older rules. As @marlowe1 was saying - it’s better now (at least many believe that). It’s just that when something awful like a murder happens it can shake that belief.
My condolences, however long ago that happened!