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<p>…was not called a “hookup” in my day. There was another word. Just sayin’</p>
<p>As someone who came of age in the period in between cheap and plentiful birth control and AIDS, my experience was that it was perfectly common after a certain age (say, 20) for men and women to have sex the first time they were together in a mating context (i.e., at a bar, at a party, or on a pre-arranged date), and no one looked at that as a sign of inappropriate promiscuity. Of course, it was also perfectly common not to have sex with someone you met that way, and the same people (most people) sometimes did and sometimes didn’t. It might have been a sign of inappropriate promiscuity if you had sex with a different person you had just met multiple times a week, but hardly anyone did that.</p>
<p>Most of the women I knew went through several stages while they were in college, one of which was deciding to become sexually active and dealing with their guilt feelings about that, one of which was enjoying exploring their own sexuality without inhibitions and exercising the sense of power it gave them, and one of which was getting tired of that and being more relationship-oriented. </p>
<p>Nothing I see in my kids’ lives (or the lives of other kids I know well) makes me believe that much has changed. Except for one important thing: Kids tend to be a lot more careerist at a young age, and conscious of the way that relationships can suck time and energy, and derail plans. The need to repay higher loan amounts probably has something to do with that, too. So whether or not college students like being in a relationship, many more of them than in my day do not expect to be married and to start a family until many, many years in the future – and of course that then changes the nature and importance of any relationships they have in the present. </p>
<p>Of course, nothing is true of all students, and that’s not a total change from the past. One of the things that really interested me in college was that most of the men expected to be married in the foreseeable future, whereas the women – in the first wave of co-education at an elite university – tended to be quite wary of marrying and subordinating their lives to a husband and children. But the effect of that was mostly to push the marriage moment back a few years from college graduation. My kids and their friends seem to be delaying commitment and marriage significantly longer.</p>
<p>My son – a serial monogamist since the age of 10, and always friends first, not a hook-up type at all – broke up with a long-term girlfriend at 24 because she didn’t want to think about getting married until she was 30, and he didn’t want to be in a relationship that was going sideways for six years. His sister, at 28, for the first time in her life is taking a boyfriend into consideration as she plans her next job search. Her mother, at 21, graduated from college (summa cum laude, PBK), had dinner with her parents, and got on a plane to California the next day for no reason other than that a boy she was half in love with (but had seen only twice in the past nine months) was there. No job, few connections, nothing except some faith that she would figure out something to do and see if the relationship went anywhere. </p>
<p>It’s almost impossible to imagine my kids, or any of their peers I know, doing something like that. Or their parents not having a fit over it, if they thought about it. But if you aren’t at least open to that possibility, then any relationship is something of a hook-up.</p>
<p>Any body remember the zipless you-know-what from Fear of Flying? I had several roommate in the 70s who were very into sleeping with guys no-strings-attached, and other roommates who only did serious relationships.</p>
<p>I think the social costs of that behavior were higher for much of the prior generations. Sure there were some that did it but nobody wanted to marry them. Other women looked down on them.</p>
<p>In the 80s one night stands were huge. Today still huge but different with social media. My D says most of her friends have casual sex all the time and get sloppy in public and she had to stop others from capturing sloppy drunks making out with their phones. My D said even in high school casual sex is looked at as no big deal. It is up to the individual as it always has been only issue with social media it just seems like it is more common. </p>
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<p>Only for women.</p>
<p>It’s been a few years since my kids graduated, but it seemed to me that among the people they knew, long-term relationships were more common than what my generation called casual sex. But perhaps they were an unrepresentative sample. </p>
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<p>I must have missed that prudishness phase of the 80s. We didn’t call it hooking up but we certainly did it. When AIDS arrived, we switched to or added condoms and that was that. Committed relationships were certainly part of the landscape too, but that wasn’t all that was going on and as I recall, casual dating w/sex was what happened in between the relationships.</p>
<p>I don’t really see anything different now either. Social media and technology have affected many aspects of our lives, not only romance/sex/relationships. I hardly recall anyone taking photos at our parties and if we did, they sat in a box or photo album perhaps occasionally shared with a visiting friend. Or perhaps scanned 30 years later, in a TBT post ;)</p>
<p>@barrons: That social cost you’re talking about (and yes, it was only for women) was there, but you have to go a ways back (to the '50’s and before) to find it commonplace everywhere.</p>
<p>They need to be worried about Hepatitis C. At least the Baby Boom generation and maybe the elder portion of Gen X is discovering that now.</p>
<p>Hmm, both of my 20-something sons is in a relationship. S1’s is going on three years now. </p>
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when a perfect storm of HIV, Herpes, and the Reagan-Bush years emerged.</p>
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<p>I agree that HIV and Herpes was a consideration. But…the R-B years??? lol…I don’t know of any boys or girls whose sex drives were impeded by a White House occupant. </p>
<p>Ha! Funny, m2kc! If that’s the case people had better batten down the hatches because it’s going to be a free for all before things switch over in January when kids are suddenly inspired to temper their profligate ways. 
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What I meant was that a mood of cultural conservatism emerged at the same time. Election of the Gipper was more of a signal than a cause. No one MY age changed our beliefs. (Well, I didn’t.) But it seemed that people who entered college in, say, 1985 started out more conservative than my own cohort.</p>
<p>So what you are saying that my experience as a freshman in 1985 was sedate and conservative compared to what it HAD been? In that case, any “hook-up” culture that people think they’re seeing now is as old as the hills.</p>
<p>To be honest, we should all remember that those of us who did not hook-up still exist, and have existed for time immemorial. It’s just that, like with everything else, those who make decisions that they think may be sound at that point in time regarding casual sex, again and again, get the attention. You don’t hear about the happy couple who have been married for 25 years and love each other still and have a great life, you hear about the couples getting divorced or who cheated on who. You don’t hear about kids who do good nearly as often as kids who get killed or have a horrible disease. The story about the girl LL pitcher in the LL World Series was a great diversion, because how many girls do you read about kidnapped and killed? Same with college student hook-ups - does anyone want to read about someone staying a virgin for four years? Or someone staying faithful to the same person for four years?</p>
<p>I think saying that there is a “hook up culture” implies that everyone is doing it. It is just as prevalent as in the past, some people do it and talk about it like changing laundry detergent or reading the latest issue of a magazine. I sat through my first 18 months of college listening to girls who were laughing about forgetting who they slept with. A few mentioning the first time they got VD, and whether or not they knew who they got it from. But some of us didn’t do that. And to be honest, the more prevalent the hook-up culture is in the media as “how it is”, the more adamant some people are to stay out of it.</p>
<p>If you remember those Faberge Organics shampoo commercials, “and they told two friends, and so on, and so on”, that’s my opinion of hook-up culture. But then again, I approach the situation analytically and don’t believe in magical thinking - “this guy isn’t the one who will give me VD” “this guy isn’t the one whose condom will break and get me knocked up”.</p>
<p>And having entered college around 1985, I respectfully disagree with @WasatchWriter. Hook-ups were prevalent even among the Young Republicans who literally would wear suits to frat parties. No one thought that there was any disconnect between politics, world outlook, and hooking up. Certain frats would punish guys who weren’t obviously hooking up regularly, and considering some frats had groupies who had slept with many of the brothers, it was pretty easy to check on that. </p>
<p>@rhandco What exactly do you think I wrote that you disagree with? That people your age weren’t hooking up? I didn’t write that. I didn’t even write that hookups weren’t prevalent.</p>
<p>A simpler explanation: [LaTour</a> – “People Are Still Having Sex”](<a href=“LaTour - People Are Still Having Sex - YouTube”>LaTour - People Are Still Having Sex - YouTube)</p>
<p>@WasatchWriter, I thought you wrote that there were less hook-ups for people entering school in 1985 or so, which I did. I do not think so, that was not my experience, and I have older siblings who went to college as much as ten years before me as a comparison.</p>
<p>@rhandco That is what I wrote, and your new explanation applies to it. The previous one did not. Thank you for clarifying.</p>
<p>FWIW, I was always referring to my experience with the culture at large, not just college. I could still be wrong, however.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to write “my experience is different” than “I disagree”?</p>
<p>Well, “I disagree” is better than “you are wrong” - me vs. you.</p>
<p>How about this:
“Based on my personal experiences and those of my siblings, I feel that, at the college I attended and those my siblings attended, the pervasiveness of hook-up culture was constant from the time period 1975 through 1990”.</p>
<p>Your mileage may certainly vary depending upon your road conditions, as they say. And yes, as I reread your post, you can </p>
<p>I am beginning to think I should never ever use the @ sign, because it seems so easy to take comments personally, so I’ll try to train myself to use “Post #18” instead of a name.</p>