The Death Penalty for Hooking Up? Of course.

As my little girl makes plans to go to a movie at school with two classmates, I find myself reflecting on the newest show of interest in hook-ups, or gang dating. Though my daughter is only eight--and smart, confident, independent, and loved--I wonder if the mob mentality might ever get the best of her.

Now, instead of girls and boys pairing off Barbie-and-Ken (mom-and-dad?) style, they're going out in packs. Awful things are happening. Reporter and author Laura Sessions Stepp has this to say about these things in her new book Unhooked:

Young people have virtually abandoned dating and replaced it with group ­get-­togethers and sexual behaviors that are detached from love or ­commitment—­and sometimes even from liking. High school and college teachers ­I’ve talked to, as well as researchers, remark on this: Relationships have been replaced by the casual sexual encounters known as hookups. Love, while desired by some, is being put on hold or seen as impossible; sex is becoming the primary currency of social interaction. Some girls can handle this; others...are exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually by it. They struggle largely outside the awareness of parents who either ­don’t know what is going on or are vaguely aware but ­don’t know what to do.

Loose girls willing to put all God gave them on a silver platter for some boy--any boy--are not new in this world. I went to school with a slew of them. These little neophytes grew up to become school teachers, housewives, executives, responsible adults.

Now, though, the platter comes off the shelf earlier--in middle school--and the pile of offerings gets higher. I see these self-servers in my college classes. Their ability to expose cleavage without losing their drawers or their baby sisters' T-shirts defies every physical law. We all know they are available. Their boobs and their butts tell us this when they walk into the room.

Strangely, though, their promiscuity has had the opposite effect on many of the young men--if daylight hours are anything to go by. Nothing is private anymore, but neither is it interesting. Those tender folds of flesh here and there in what we used to call private places? They are just bits of skin these days. That's it. There's no allure. The boys have stopped looking at the girls and have turned back to their textbooks. Student for student, the boys have more to offer than the girls. Perhaps they spend less time nursing colds caught as a result exposure and more time studying.

Here I would invoke my mother. "Your father will kill you if..." If you think for one minute you're a prostitute. The threat of the death penalty was my mother's shorthand for "there's nothing to talk about because this is non-negotiable, so do what you're told because I love you."

There wasn't a kid in town who didn't love my mother. The black-and-white clarity was a part of the same woman who put three meals on the table with clockwork precision every day, cared for her home, and didn't mind telling us what we didn't want to hear. She drew the straight line of certainty that ran through the days of my growing up. There's nothing to talk about: you put your clothes on when you get dressed. You keep them on when you go out. You do nothing you wouldn't want your father to hear about. A little hyperbole and a lot of love go a long way.