Ruth Institute Blog

by Monica Gabriel and Kara Eschbach

Are “boys on the side” really the answer to young women’s career ambitions?

In case you haven’t noticed, 2012 has been declared The Year of the Women in the United States. Everyone wants to talk about women: Democrats at their National Convention; shocked multitudes following Rep. Todd Akin’s outrageous statements about women and rape; leading columnists debating options for a pregnant Marissa Meyer after her being named CEO of Yahoo! It seems that every time we open a newspaper, turn on the TV, or surf the internet, there is a feverish conversation around who women are and what is and is not good for us.

So it is hardly surprising that when Hanna Rosin, author of the controversial 2010 Atlantic article “The End of Men” (which has spawned a book, just published, of the same name), released one of the book’s juicier chapters in the latest Atlantic, it ignited the conversation anew. Her piece, entitled “Boys on the Side”, proves to be just as provocative as the title suggests.

In it, Rosin takes a contrarian view of the hookup culture allegedly flourishing on college campuses, contesting the typical women-as-victim narrative. If your idea of hookups assumes there will be a broken-hearted girl crying into her pillow because “she thought it was love,” you would be quite mistaken. Not only are college women not upset by the new world of casual sexual relationships, says Rosin, but they have actually become the leaders in initiating and perpetuating the system.

More than just acknowledging that casual sex is the new norm, Rosin posits that this development is actually the necessary ingredient for further female progress. Just as birth control affords women sex without the babies, the appeal of the college hook-up culture is sex without the love that can lead to burdensome monogamy and steal our professional dreams.

Rosin bases these conclusions on interviews and research conducted with college women who, at the time, were immersed in this culture themselves. Can we really conclude from these anecdotes that hooking up is good for young women, and therefore something to be applauded?

As late 20-somethings looking back on a decade of witnessing the no-strings-attached trend first hand, we can’t help but be skeptical. Yes, it may look on the surface that the world is our oyster: we are pursuing prestigious, well-paying careers, living in vibrant cities and traveling the world. Perhaps if we only worshiped at the altar of the shattered glass ceiling, this would be enough. But the reality is that most of us don’t, and our definition of the good life has as much to do with love and intimate relationships as with career aspirations.

By denying this, Rosin’s analysis misses the huge downside presented by the hookup culture, namely, that when we habitually separate sex from intimacy, it hurts our chances of being able to form the kinds of committed relationships that would one day lead us towards the very thing we have been avoiding but claim to desire: marriage.

In one of the surveys she cites, 90 percent of respondents said they wanted to get married. One comment she quotes stands out as particularly encapsulating the attitude of young adults towards marriage: “I want to get secure in a city and in a job…. As long as I’m married by 30, I’m good.” But the reality, according to a 2010 Pew Research Center survey, is that only 44 percent of adults aged 25-34 have achieved that goal.

If “hookups haven’t wrecked the capacity for intimacy” as Rosin claims, and if the only lasting effects are Facebook photos and alcohol-hazed memories, why are our prospects for attaining committed intimacy plummeting?

Some may say our expectations changed as we matured and that we decided we would prefer to delay or forgo marriage. But in the aforementioned Pew report, 61 percent of those who aren’t married say they want to be, so that doesn’t fully explain what’s going on.

What seems far more likely is that separating sex from love can be habit-forming. Sensory experiences can actually change the physical and organizational structure of our brain, meaning―as Dr. Freda Bush and Dr. Joseph S. McKissic reveal in their book Hooked―that years of equating sexual pleasure with emotional detachment and objectification could have long-term effects on one’s sensory memory and ability to maintain healthy, committed relationships in the future.

The other stumbling block seems to be in the deliberately self-seeking and habitually utilitarian lifestyle that gives rise to casual and detached sex―as one survey respondent in a study by NYU sociologist Paula England put it, just being “100% selfish.”

Keep reading.