The sexual “hook-up culture” is widespread on college and university campuses, regardless of whether the institutions are Catholic or secular, a Catholic academic says, according to the California Catholic Daily.
Boston University religion professor Donna Freitas reports her findings in a new book, Sex & the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses.
She says that “with the exception of evangelicals, American college students see almost no connection between their religious beliefs and their sexual behavior.”
I’m not surprised but so many of us don’t seem to be preparing our children for the college hook-up culture.
According to Freitas, the prevalence of the “hookup culture,” where students seek sexual experiences with a variety of partners, was a disturbing enough trend. But, “the theme party culture is probably the most shocking shift.”
In theme parties, men and women dress up, the women acting as sex objects. Themes include “CEOs and Office Hos,” “Millionaires and Maids,” and “Golf Pros and Tennis Hos,” she told the Reporter. According to Freitas, young people often regret their participation in such parties, but they “feel they have to go along with it to make friends, or to find a guy if they want a boyfriend.”
According to Freitas, 41% of students, both men and women, who engage in the “hook-up culture” are “profoundly upset” about their own behavior. Of the students at Catholic colleges and universities, 45% said their peers were too casual about sex – an opinion expressed by 36% of students at nonreligious private and public schools. But, Freitas told the Wall Street Journal in April, “with the exception of evangelicals, American college students see almost no connection between their religious beliefs and their sexual behavior. This radical separation of religion and sex tells us important things not only about the power of the college hookup culture but also about the weakness of religious traditions in the face of it.”
But here’s the real truth. Freitas believes that Catholic colleges and universities forsaken values for admissions. Freitas said Catholic colleges have ignored the sexual hook-up culture because they fear alienating prospective students.
I can honestly say that I never once heard a sermon about casual sex from the Jesuits when I went to college. It is by far the most prevalent issue on campus. That and drinking. But never once did I hear anything about casual sex. They ignored it completely.
But Freitas says the parents have plenty of the blame as well. She suggests that parents of prospective students be given a list of questions. Ten of the questions should be about sex and the hookup culture. “Parents have to buck up and look beyond the ivy. My theory is the parents and applicants hold all the power. When students are in the middle of it, they don’t know how to get out of it.” But I fear that too many parents are more concerned with being their child’s friend than acting as a parent.
So what we have is a negligent clergy who never discuss sex, colleges which turn a blind eye to sexual behavior to pump up admissions, and parents who want to be cool. And who pays the price? The children. They pay with broken hearts, STD’s, and abortions. And then all of the adults shake their head wondering about kids today.
June 25, 2008 at 1:27 pm
What I’ve found among parents who take their faith seriously is a rejection of the typical, “apply to colleges, garner the best financial aid & loans, then shoot the kid off to school” mentality. Many parents I know have kids who are waiting to attend college until they are a little older, or who are attending local colleges & living at home. These kids tend to be more involved in their church and home-parish life, and look for community and friendships in the “real” world as opposed to the kindergarten-jungle that many colleges have become.
June 25, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I recently heard (this is unsubstantiated, but perhaps indicative of college campuses) that a young woman at my alma mater was pregnant and decided to have the baby – and our student services refused to provide adequate and supportive prenatal care. Basically, the pressured her to have an abortion every time she had an appointment. I never thought about it before, but I’m guessing there were a lot of abortions among the students.
So, as an additional word of caution to parents, not only may your child be caught up in the hook-up culture, but your daughter may end up pressured to kill her unborn child if a pregnancy results. I can easily imagine how such a young woman would have trouble reaching out to her peers or parents for help in that situation.
June 25, 2008 at 5:49 pm
On the flip side of this, my wife’s alma mater (Baylor University) has a VERY strict policy against immoral acts.
Anything constituting immorality will result in automatic expulsion and it’s one of the very few (if not the only) coed schools where NO female has posed nude for a Playboy centerfold. This despite an large standing offer of cash from Hugh Hefner’s people.
Just how strict do they get? It wasn’t till a little over ten years ago they started allowing coed dances on campus.
My wife’s attendance confers legacy preferences for our kids if they choose to go to college, we’ll probably use them.
June 25, 2008 at 5:49 pm
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June 25, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Kansas Mom– That sort of thing happens all the time:
When my husband was in grad school, I fell and hurt my ankle. We were on the student health plan, so we went to the health center to make sure it wasn’t broken.
The nurse runs through the normal list of questions, history, etc. Then, while my husband was out of the room (getting a drink or something), she asks in a hushed voice, “Could you be pregnant?”
I responded that I had no idea. I could be, I supposed. Probably not, but it would be awfully nice…
“Well, have you been having unprotected sex?”
“I’m 24 years old an married!”
She looked very serious and pursed her lips. Then she wrote down “doesn’t know if she could be pregnant or not”
So later, as we’re going to the x-ray room, she says. “Remember, honey. Don’t forget to tell the x-ray tech that thing you told me.”
“Which thing?”
“That it might be possible for you to be p-r-e-g-n-a-n-t….”
If this was how they treated a MARRIED woman who had a week to go before she’s even CONSIDER BOTHERING to take a pregnancy test, I can imagine how horribly they would have treated an unmarried undergrad!
(When I finally DID get pregnant, we paid out of pocket to go to a GOOD OB who did NOT think pregnancy was shamefull! =) )
June 26, 2008 at 3:28 am
There is an irony in all this. The generation that was supposed to be honest and open about sexuality, is the same one that is so afraid to talk “the birds and the bees” with their own kids, so they leave it to the schools. I know kids who can’t even IMAGINE talking to their parents about sex. And “family life education” programs are the only ones in some public schools where the parents aren’t allowed to sit in. After all, their kids would be afraid to open up.
I didn’t have a lot of control over how things happened to my son, whose mother left me when he was five. But when he got older, I didn’t let him off the hook when it came to bringing up this stuff. I have never understood the trepidation of parents in this area, but I believe it carries over to when the kids head off to college.
Eventually, the whole notion of sex can be divorced from an association with family life. Hey, wait, that’s happening now, isn’t it?
Who knew?
June 26, 2008 at 5:00 am
Excuse me! What makes you think the hook-up culture starts in college? The only good thing about this happening in high school is that as my daughter gets exposed to aspects of this now, I’m around to talk about it… It makes me very sad though for the kids doing this.
June 26, 2008 at 5:36 am
one of the reasons i left my first college was because it felt like high school all over again- just with fewer rules and no adults. most conversations that took place around me centered on sex and hook-ups and the like. no one could understand why i didnt like it there! i actually wanted to grow up and pursue values and morality…imagine that. so i transferred to a Catholic school (Franciscan University of Steubenville) my second semester of my freshman year. i was so much happier there and have been able to develop healthy friendships with girls and guys. FUS does have some fairly strict intervisitation rules, but it pays off in the long run.
i definitely think that a big part of this problem is parents afraid to talk to their kids about this stuff and not being good examples of proper sexuality, etc. themselves. it all starts at home.
June 26, 2008 at 2:55 pm
What our world needs is Theology of the Body for Teens. There is a parents reference. Let’s give the WHY and not just the NO.
June 26, 2008 at 4:30 pm
why even give a no? at least at first. what we should be doing is giving kids yes’s. yes to chastity and purity and healthy relationships and stable marriages. yes’s to families and health and morality. the no’s will follow naturally. tell a teen no and they want to do it. tell a teen yes and they will respect you and naturally follow the no’s on their own.
one of my biggest pet peeves with chastity speakers is when they start “i did this and it was bad” and then launch into why it was bad, why its better now, and why Christ is obviously the better choice. recently i’ve seen many male speakers do a much better job of conveying the beauty of sexuality and waiting, but the women are lagging! i wrote my senior thesis on theology of the body and had the privilege of giving a few chastity talks. my most successful ones were those when i started with the dawn of creation, explaining why women are the crown of creation and then explaining Satan’s attack on humanity and his use of sexuality against women to do so. when you explain (esp. to girls) why they are beautiful they will naturally want to know why these other things make them less beautiful.
the fear on every kids’ heart, though, is “what if i end up alone? i don’t want to be alone!” so we also have to give them tools to build healthy relationships- friendships, familial, romantic, and most importantly, their relationship with God. of course with God we are never alone, but kids need to learn how to let God into their lives. we need to give them the tools to choose Christ over the pervading culture.
June 26, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Exactly, Mr. Portman.
June 26, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Well spoken, Frusciante. (Or written. Oh well. I can read it out loud, so there.)
I think that what’s going on here is that the priests are trying to keep the kids at Mass and thus are scared of offending them by talking about chastity and temperence. As such, the kids never have the question put to them, never have to make a conscious decision to be either all the way in or all the way out; they fool themselves for a long time into thinking that they’re good Catholics (often remaining communicants) despite participating in the Thursday night revels.
Not that there’s anything wrong with a party, some music, or a drink or two… but it’s way out of hand.
Related development: these 18-22 year olds are still kids precisely because none of this has been put to them in terms that will make them decide what kind of adults they’d like to be. Instead they shake themselves at 30 and realize that they are particularly unpleasant and unhappy people who’ve been adolescents for 20 years.
June 28, 2008 at 8:56 am
As an Evangelical parent of two teenage kids (I should add here that I am a Brit so our college system is different in some respects) I found this post interesting. Interesting from the aspect of the findings as regards Evangelical students for one. However, to be fair to Catholic colleges and parents, I think that its not a question of whether you are Catholic or Protestant, but whether or not you have a genuine faith relationship with our Lord.
If you do, then as a parent you will make the connection between faith and lifestyle. If we want our kids to live moral lives we do need to prepare them for life as an independent adult, both by teaching them principles that will guide them through life, by setting examples with our own behaviour and also with praying them into the Kingdom, as at the end of the day, its only if they have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that they will be equipped to resist the many temptations that face each and every one of us in our daily lives.
What the research shows is that nothing really changes, sexual temptation has been around since man first went through puberty! Our kids will always leave home one day (we hope!) and so we need to equip them as best we can as parents and trust the rest to God, always bearing them up in prayer and loving them, even when they fail, as we all do.