A Parent’s Guide to College: Sex on Campus

“Hooking Up” is nothing new to your child.  He or she has already been exposed to the “hooking up” culture during his high school years, maybe even to a greater degree than you suspect.  However, there are several factors that alter the landscape when it comes to sex at college:

Five Factors Affecting Sex on Campus

1. Availability:  The essence of college life is community.  Your student is virtually never alone.  There are countless gatherings – classes, library, gym, teams, and parties – where a willing partner might appear.
2. Opportunity:  It is communal living — “where can we go?” is just not an issue.
3. Freedom:  No curfew, no supervision.  No mom or dad looking at him directly in the eyes the morning after and asking, “So, how was the party?”
4. Peer Pressure:  There is a perception that everyone is doing it; it is natural to want to fit it in. 
5. Alcohol:  It is undisputed that alcohol consumption contributes to sexual behavior, and is directly linked to risky sexual behavior.  Your child now has easy access to alcohol.

What is Hooking Up?

Washington Post reporter Laura Sessions Stepp, the author of Unhooked:  How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both (Riverhead Books, 2007) gives this definition on her website:  

“Hooking up can be anything from kissing to intercourse. It’s deliberately vague and undefined by this generation so that when you tell a friend you hooked up with someone, you’re really not saying anything at all. It’s a lot easier to say “I hooked up with someone last night,” than to say, “I gave Johnny a blow job.” It conceals what you’ve done, and you can talk yourself into thinking it really doesn’t matter.”

If that’s the case, is this generation of college students really any different than the ‘sexually liberated’ students of the 1970’s?  Remember “free love” and “make love, not war?”  The shift from traditional dating to group partying seems to have started then.  If you were in college during that time, you probably attended many a party where people paired up at the end of the night. You may have had friends who prided themselves on being  ‘sexually uninhibited’ and wore each encounter like notches on a belt.

Stepp, who conducted her research by immersing herself in college life and interviewing students, reports that “hooking up” has taken hold across the board, that it crosses all racial, social and economic lines.  What is startling to many parents is that the “hook up” has replaced the “first date” – after which the couple decides whether or not to pursue a relationship.

Is Everybody Doing It?

The prevalence of “hooking up” may be overstated.  A recent survey for the American College Health Association found that students estimated that their peers had three times the number of sexual partners than they actually had.  Kathleen Bogle, who conducted the study and wrote “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, (New York University Press, 2008) reports that the number of sexual partners for males actually dropped from 2.6 in 2000 to 1.6 in 2006.  There is more support for this:  According to a Centers for Disease Control survey released in 2007 “Trends in the Prevalence of Sexual Behaviors, 1991-2007, “ the number of high schoolers who ever had intercourse dropped from 54.1 to less than half to 47. 8 percent. (There was other good news in that survey:  condom use increased by about 30 percent.)  

Bogle, who studied students at a private Catholic university and a public university states that it is “unfair to characterize the entire system, much less all college students, by what we see on MTV’s coverage of spring break.”  She also notes that students refer to the “walk of shame” – that morning-after trek back to one’s room attired in the ‘going-out’ outfit from the night before.  She queries:  “If students accept hooking up and believe that “everybody’s doing it,” then why do they use the term shame when referencing a hookup encounter?”

Will Your Student Choose the “Hook Up” Culture?

Your student has already faced “hooking up” and has already had to make decisions about how to deal with it. Your child is also armed with a strong background in sex education from our schools.  Don’t forget that he or she is heading off to college with the values and standards you have instilled in him. 

You have been your child’s number one teacher for 18 years.  But now, your son or daughter has to figure out how to navigate this on his own.

That doesn’t mean don’t talk about it.  By all means, talking will help your student think it through….if he decides to discuss it.  Just try to keep communication open on this issue just like other issues they will encounter in college.  Give them plenty of opportunity to describe the social scene, how they fit into it and how they feel about it.  Remember how important it is for you to just listen, just let them talk.  During these sensitive years, a sibling or cousin who’s in college or recently graduated might be the good resource for your child.

Safe Sex

One mom told each child before going off to college to make her a promise to “never, ever, not once, not just-this-one-time, NOT EVER have unprotected sex.”  There is nothing in that request that says you condone anything; all it says is that if he chooses to have sex, he needs to be protected.  As a parent, when you ask for this promise you are doing more than embarrassing him.  You are putting that little voice in the back of his head that you hope will speak up loudly when needed. 

You may also be interested in:

Parent’s Guide to College:  Your Access to Information
Parent’s Guide to College:  Pre-College Summertime Blues
Parent’s Guide to College:  Parenting by Cell Phone

Sources

Guess, Andy.  “The Sociology of Hooking Up,” Inside Higher Education, January 29, 2008.  http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/29/hookups
“Trends in the Prevalence of Sexual Behaviors, 1991-2007,” The Centers for Disease Control, The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System.  www.cdc.gov/yrbss
Stepp, Laura Sessions.  Unhooked:  How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both (Riverhead Books, 2007)
Bogle, Kathleen A.  “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, (New York University Press, 2008)
Website, Laura Sessions Stepp:  www.laurastepp.com/unhooked/steppQA.pdf