As a society, we appear eager to preserve sexual encounters that are romantic and exciting for the adolescent participants, but which are at the same time irrational, unpredictable, and fraught with the high risks that intimate involvement and commitment can bring. I refer to unchaperoned dating, going steady, and personal freedom in mate selection. In speaking to audiences of parents, I find very little enthusiasm for even entertaining the idea of major modifications in this dating system. Parents often encourage dating at very young ages. Even the professionally- oriented adolescents-adolescents who plan to go to college, for instance-date early, as early as the fifth or sixth grade in some instances.
This is one of the major aspects of discontinuity in sexual socialization. The child
who may have been denied sexual self-discovery when young-denied the opportunity
of exploring and playing with themselves, denied sexual encounters with their
playmates, denied sound sex and family life education-is suddenly expected to know
how to handle themselves in unchaperoned dating encounters.
Adolescents are largely monogamous in their dating patterns; that is, steady
relationships are more prevalent than "playing the field." It varies from school to
school and from community to community, but there are more steady relationships
among adolescents and some among preadolescents. They go steady because they like
each other, because it is the thing to do, because of parental and peer pressure,
because it is convenient to date only one person rather than to play the field, because
it gives date insurance for important events, because of the danger (particularly for
girls) of not finding someone new to date, and because (particularly for boys) going
steady is known to lead to increased erotic intimacy.
The unattended home of either the boy or the girl provides privacy for intimate encounters, and the receiving of a
driver's license and access to a car provide unlimited freedom from supervision.
High school students are proud of their steady relationships. They utilize signs-
rings, bracelets, sweatshirts-that make it apparent to others that they have attained
the status. Many adolescent couples develop tender, beautiful relationships, and one's
steady often becomes a confidante in an uncertain present and future and in the face
of unsatisfactory relations with parents. Yet many high school graduates look back on
steady relationships in high school as having had more liabilities than assets. They
were cut off from encounters with other students, they missed out on school activities,
jealousy marred the relationship, and they felt that they became too emotionally and
physically involved for their age.
Physical intimacy is progressive. Adolescents develop their own uncertain sex
codes and practices through trial and error. Youth culture emphasizes a good time-be
attractive, be popular, have a good time; what is fun is good. In intimate heterosexual
encounters, kissing, deep kissing, fondling and caressing, petting in the nude, and
coitus are widely accepted among youth. Today's sexual adventuring is more among
social equals than with unequals or with prostitutes, but for boys first coitus with a
girl of low status is common.
That adolescent coitus always leads to unfortunate consequences can by no
means be substantiated, though the risks are high. Physical hurt, hurt feelings, loss of
self-respect, conception, and venereal disease are too common for any to feel sanguine
or complacent about adolescent erotic encounters. Adolescents need guidance and
perhaps some limits to their relationships. They are not blase about sexual behavior
and sexual morality; they are willing to listen to reasonable proposals and limitations.