Homecoming Losing to Hanging Out

By Jeffrey Zaslow

Last month, a boy asked my 16-year-old daughter to his school’s homecoming dance. She agreed to go, bought a new dress and made a hairdresser appointment.

The boy never bought tickets to the dance. Neither did his friends. They decided that attending homecoming wouldn’t be cool, and instead planned to just dress up that night, go out for dinner and then hang out with their dates at someone’s house.

My daughter was disappointed, as were her girlfriends. They would have loved to have been taken to the dance, to show off their dresses, to see and be seen.

At 6 p.m. on the night of the boycotted dance, about a dozen of these girls and their dates gathered in one boy’s backyard so a mob of parents could photograph them. I found it dispiriting. My heart went out to those girls – all dressed up with no place to go. Couldn’t we, as parents, have demanded that the boys take our daughters to the dance? Why did we stand there, clicking our digital cameras, saying nothing?

This phenomenon is a telling example of the indifference with which young people today view dating, chivalry and romance.

Studies, of course, show more young people skipping romantic relationships in favor of “hooking up.” As teens socialize in packs, forgo one-on-one dating and trade sex nonchalantly, it is no stretch to find that boys are asking girls to homecoming and not bothering to take them there.

With so many young people ignoring once-sacrosanct dating rites, though, how can we respond?

At some schools, students are boycotting dances to protest bans on sexually suggestive “freak dancing.” At others, dances are just falling out of favor. At Cardinal O’Hara High School in Springfield, Pa., class of ’06 homecoming queen Cathy Caramanico never got her big moment at the dance. It was called off due to lack of interest.

Many teens today prefer to gather in someone’s basement because it’s easier to pair off in dark corners. “There aren’t as many chaperones in basements as at dances,” says Caramanico.

Meanwhile, 60 percent of 125 college students in a new study by Michigan State University have had a sexual “friends with benefits” relationship. Nine out of 10 “hookups” didn’t lead to dating relationships, the study found. More ominously, after casual sex, females are more likely than males to show symptoms of depression, according to a study reported last year in the Journal of Sex Research.

“Young women are longing for romance,” says Laura Sessions Stepp, author of “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both.” She interviewed girls who considered it empowering to be dismissive of romance and casual about sex. Later, many were beset with regrets.

Obviously, boys no longer have to call girls on Wednesday for a Saturday date. Now, college boys seeking weekend hookups send girls “U busy?” text messages at 2 or 3 a.m., and girls routinely rouse themselves and go, according to Stepp’s research. Many girls spend the next day clutching their cellphones, waiting in vain for the boy to call.

Family advocates say we should ask our daughters, point blank, about hooking up. “Does it make you happy?”

My wife and I debated insisting that our daughter’s date take her to homecoming. Our daughter asked us not to do that. The boy, a nice kid, wanted to go to homecoming, she said, but was following his peers. Because there was parental supervision at that night’s gathering, we bit our lips and let it be.

Originally published by The Wall Street Journal.

(c) 2007 Sunday Gazette – Mail; Charleston, W.V.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.