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A conservative women's group will issue a report today contending that while most college women embrace marriage as a life goal, their pursuit of that objective is undermined by the prevalence of relationships on college campuses that feature sex without commitment. The college dating scene leaves many women with two choices when it comes to men: launch intense but vague relationships, or "hook up" for casual physical encounters, according to the report conducted for the Independent Women's Forum, which has gained attention in recent years with its critique of contemporary feminism. "The social scene on college campuses does not support the aspirations for long-term relationships and marriage that these women say they have," said Elizabeth Marquardt, co-author of the report and an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values. "Women say they wish there was something in the middle. . . . They wish they could really get to know a guy without necessarily having a sexual relationship." The New York-based Institute, a non-profit group that promotes the importance of family and fatherhood, conducted the report for the women's forum by surveying 1,000 women enrolled at secular four-year colleges. The report's authors said the telephone survey was aimed at filling a void in the national debate about marriage. The study raises pointed questions about the social landscape on college campuses, which the authors say is bewildering and unfulfilling to many women. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and '70s swept away a concept of dating in which there was an implicit understanding that each party was shopping for a mate and not just for sex, according to the report. With 100 women on college campuses for every 79 men, women are more apt to initiate relationships with men and are more willing to experiment with casual relationships, even when they know such liaisons leave them emotionally empty, the survey found. Where college students once abided by well-known, if constricting, rules of dating, the survey found that those rules are more vague than ever. College women are more likely to "hook up" with male partners -- meaning engage in physical relationships often fueled by alcohol that are devoid of commitment and sometimes even of affection. These hook-ups range from kissing to oral sex to intercourse, the report said. In the survey, 40 precent of the women said they had hooked up with men, and 1 in 10 had done so at least six times. If women are not hooking up, the report said, they frequently fall into fast-moving, "joined-at-the-hip" relationships with men, spending nights in one another's rooms and effectively stifling all other relationships. "Young women are trying more and more to act like men," said Nancy Pfotenhauer, president of the Independent Women's Forum. "But the problem is they don't react like men." A report released two years ago by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University found that Americans are less likely to marry than ever and that fewer people who do marry reported being "very happy" in their relationships. Roughly 85 percent of Americans get married, and they are doing so later in life. The median age of marriage for women is 25.1; in 1970 it was 20.8. While authors of the new report often refer to the 1950s and early 1960s as a time when the rules of courtship were clearer, they stop short of saying courting proved any more fulfilling then. "Back in the 1950s, we got to know one another under artificial circumstances," said Norval Glenn, a University of Texas sociologist who co-authored the report. "You were well dressed; you put your best foot forward. That is not the best way for people to get to know one another. But at the same time, you sure don't get to know anybody well by hooking up." |
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Institute for American Values |
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