RO has just blogged a great post over at our collaborative youth ministry blog called, What the ‘Unhooked’ Culture Means for Youth Ministry. RO is doing a series on the book Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both
If you work with youth or young adults you should be following RO’s posts on this topic.
Young people have virtually abandoned dating and replaced it with group get-togethers and sexual behaviors that are detached from love or commitment–and sometimes even from liking. Relationships have been replaced by the casual sexual encounters known as hookups…Hooking up’s defining characteristic is the ability to unhook from a partner at any time.
—author Laura Sessions Stepp
That quote just had me flash to the “swinging” sixties and seventies – is it possible that the behaviours exhibited then by 20′s & 30′s have now morphed into the teen and pre-teens, two generations later?
I haven’t read the book, although I’ve been wanting to, and I’m curious if she addresses this idea.
She actually does mention that it has rolled down to teenagers (she doesn’t mention pre-teen). She basically says that like many other issues that young adults and college age people deal with eventually always runs “downhill” to high school and even junior high.