KB: When do you picture yourself getting married?
Violet: I’d like to get married after I get a job. But I do need a boyfriend [first]. I have always thought about getting married at age 25. I don’t know why but that specific age I always think about. When I get married I want to be 25.
Not surprisingly, none of the college men I spoke to spent time thinking about their future wedding day.
KB: Do you think that either guys or girls are looking for someone that they’re going to end up marrying while they’re in school?
Joseph: I don’t. The way it is now it’s like people don’t even think about that stuff until they’re older now. . . . I know guys who have been dating their girlfriends now for two years. If you mention marriage then they get all like: “What?” [Laughs]
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It seems likely that because some women are interested in marrying younger (than most men want to), they are more interested in finding a potential spouse during their college years.8 Given that the hookup culture is not particularly conducive to relationship formation, this may put men and women’s agendas for relationships at odds.
The trend toward marrying later may be fueling the hookup culture on campus. If students do not intend to marry until at least three years after graduation, there is no significant pressure to find their future spouse during their college years. This is particularly the case for the college men, who suggested they did not plan to marry until their late twenties or early thirties. This translates to 5 to 10 years after college to look for a potential spouse. Thus, one’s college years can be spent in less serious relationships than those that occupied previous generations.
The current hookup script offers a casual alternative to more serious, potentially marriage-bound relationships.
College men and women delaying marriage is part of a larger trend of young people delaying many of the traditional role transitions characteristic of becoming an adult (e.g., parenthood, home ownership, full-time employment, etc.). Due to the postponement of these role transitions, along with changing conceptions of what “becoming an adult” means, researchers have found that over the second half of the twentieth century, 18–22-year-olds have become less likely to think of themselves as adults.9 Psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett found that traditional college-age youth and beyond (18–25) is a distinct period in the life course. Arnett refers to this life stage, which is after adolescence, but before full-fledged adulthood as “emerging adulthood.” Emerging adults are free from some of the parental supervision that adolescents have, but do not have the work and family responsibilities of adults.
This freedom allows for experimentation in many areas of life, including relationships.10
There may be another factor to consider, which may help to explain why college life lends itself to casual relationships. On many campuses nationwide, there are more women than men. On both campuses included in this study, close to 60 percent of the students are female. In addition, college women often perceive that there are too many “beautiful girls” on campus competing for too few eligible men.11 This gives women the impression that college men have plenty of women from whom to choose, while college women are stuck competing for a scarce resource. Since most students on both campuses tend to revolve their T H E H O O K U P S C E N E
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social lives around university life, they have few opportunities to meet nonstudents.12 Therefore, for college women, it seems that there are not enough men to go around.
For college men, there may actually be power in lack of numbers.
Given the real or perceived sense that there is a shortage of men, there is great incentive for women to “hold on” to one man; however, there is very little incentive for college men to be in an exclusive relationship.
This situation puts men and women’s goals at odds.13 Some of the students I interviewed, particularly at State University, like Marie, a senior at State, were keenly aware of the male/female ratio on campus and how this favored men’s interests.
KB: So, [from what you are saying] it seems like the guys decide
[when it is a relationship or not]?
Marie: I feel like they do, I definitely feel like they do because most of the girls I know are looking for something, you know someone, even if it’s not serious, someone that is there to hang out with and talk to, [girls want] a feeling of being close to someone and I don’t know if it’s even guys don’t want that, it’s just they don’t care if they have that, it’s like: “Whatever.” It could be any other girl any night and you know that’s fine with them. [Emphasis by interviewee]
Jen, a junior at State University, had this to say: Jen: I think this school has a lot of pretty girls in it and I do think that’s a factor [in understanding male/female interaction on campus]. Because I’ve been to visit other schools where it’s not like that and the guy ratio is stronger. It’s different.
KB: So there are less guys here is that what you mean by guy ratio?
Jen: Hmm-mm. Yeah . . . I just think there are so many pretty girls and that’s really not, I don’t think too common . . . because there are too many options for these guys. You know?
They’re not anything that special and they are probably getting to hang out with and having such beautiful girls be so into them . . . I think that it’s just great for [men on campus].
They come here and it’s just like wherever they turn there’s
[another girl] and the girls are willing, too.
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KB: Willing to what?
Jen: Just hook up with them, you know . . .
