Reflections on this quote.
At a recent dinner party, a woman and I got into a conversation about raising our kids. Our conversation moved towards preparing our kids to face issues about drinking alcohol and sex. She and her husband had practiced a technique that I’ve been hearing more parents doing. When it came to sex and drinking, she told me, she wanted her kids to get it out of their systems before college while they still lived at home.
So, she and her husband tried to get her son drunk. She wanted her son to understand what it felt like so that he could be better prepared. This way, he would know if say, the punch bowl was spiked. This way, he would know how bad a hangover feels like. She figured everyone in college was drinking and having sex. And this would better prepare her son for the road ahead.
I commented that, according to what I’ve read, the number of college kids getting drunk and having sex may be lower than what most people think, which seems to be “Everybody is having sex!” I told her that I most of the friends I had in college, regardless of their religious background, didn’t get drunk and most didn’t have sex regularly. She responded with a look that communicated utter disbelief.
So this quote above by David Brooks piqued my interest. I have not yet checked the background of this quote. But the fact that David Brooks wrote this (and in the NYT), I figure he’s putting his own reputation on the line to make such a reference.
Granted, Match.com is not a hard-core scientific foundation. And there are both good and bad surveys. And we are prone to survey bias. But this quote still strikes me.
I admit that I’m not sure how to feel/think if this statistic is accurate. As a Christian, you’d figure my sex ethics should come from the Bible. As such, I’d encourage people to save sex until a fully committed marriage. But even still, I think many people figured the number would be much higher.
If you read the rest of David’s column, you’ll see that he points out millennials may seem more liberal than boomers, but in many ways they are also more conservative.