Wall Street Journal Article

Several friends lately alerted me that my book I Kissed Dating Goodbye was referenced in a recent Wall Street Journal article. I checked it out and found it interesting. The article, by Donna Freitas entitled Sex Education, examines the practice of "hooking up" on college campuses. Freitas writes:

When last semester I taught Wendy Shalit's "A Return to Modesty," in a class at Boston University called "Spirituality & Sexuality in American Youth Culture," I assumed that my mostly left-leaning students would reject her arguments about the terrible effects that the hook-up culture has on young women and the positive effects of traditional religion and morality on young women's well-being. Instead, my students ate up her critique and were fascinated by her descriptions of modesty as a virtue, especially within the context of faith. One student said that she felt empowered to stop tolerating vulgar remarks about sex made by peers in her presence.

The class was equally attracted to some evangelical dating manuals, like "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" by Joshua Harris and "Real Sex" by Lauren Winner, that I asked them to read. They seemed shocked that somewhere in America there are entire communities of people their age who really do "save themselves" until marriage, who engage in old-fashioned dating with flowers and dinner and maybe a kiss goodnight. They reacted as if these authors describe a wonderful fantasy land. "It would be easier just to have sex with someone than ask them out on a real date," one student said, half-seriously.

Having considered her findings, Freitas concludes with this advice:

So, parents, you may have done an excellent job raising your kids with good morals, strong boundaries and high expectations when it comes to romance and sex, but it would take an 18-year-old of superhuman strength to stand up to the pressures of most college environments. In other words, find out about the dating lives and party habits of students at your child's dream school, or whether hooking up has replaced dating altogether. As students told me time and time again, romantic relationships—the good, the bad and the ugly—can make or break the college experience. Before you mail that check, do your research.