1. Dating, Single Life, and Mate Selection
Chapter 6
Dating, Single Life, and Mate Selection

2. Chapter Outline Premarital American Dating
Dating and Extended Singleness
Changing Sexual Mores
Date Rape and Courtship Violence

3. Chapter Outline Cohabitation: Unmarried-Couple Households
Finding the One and Only: Mate Selection
Engagement

4. Why Do We Date?
Dating fills time between puberty and marriage. It is often simple recreation, an end in itself.
Dating is a way to gain social status based on whom and how often one dates.
Dating is an opportunity for the sexes to interact and learn about each other. Dating is also an avenue to self-knowledge.

5. Why Do We Date?
Dating meets ego needs. A person needs to be understood and considered important.
Dating leads to mate selection for most individuals.

6. Modern Dating Characteristics
There is greater opportunity for informal, opposite-sex interaction.
Subsequent dating is less formal.
There no longer seems to be a set progression of stages from first meeting to marriage.

7. College Dating
Hooking up is defined as a sex-without-commitment interaction.
The term joined at the hip refers to couples who spend much of their time together but rarely go out on formal dates.
Because of the close proximity of living conditions in college, there is a great deal of hanging out, where time is loosely spent together without explicit interest in one another.

8. Timing of First Sexual Intercourse
Characteristic
% Distribution
% Who Have Had Sex
Median Age at First Sex
Total
100.0
26.6
16.9
Male
53.4
29.7
16.6
Female
46.6
23.3
17.2
Gender and Ethnic Differences in the Timing of First Sexual Intercourse TABLE 6-1

9. Factors Influencing the Decision to Have Sex
Personal principles
Psychological principles
Social principles
Religious principles

10. Problems Associated with Premarital Sexual Relations
Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)
Unwanted pregnancies
Early commitment and isolation
Quality of sex

11. Date Rape and Courtship Violence
The term date rape has suddenly become popular in the mass media. A better term that encompasses rape but also speaks to broader problems is acquaintance violence.

12. Miscommunication About Sex
Many men and women do not discuss their sexual intentions openly and frankly.
Differences exist in perceptions of sexual intent.
The use of token resistance by some women may create a belief in some men that protest encountered is not really meant by the woman.

13. Miscommunication About Sex
There are differing expectations concerning the stage of the relationship when sexual intercourse is appropriate.
Miscommunication is more common when alcohol or drugs are being used.

14. Statutory Rape
Statutory rape is the case in which an adult has consensual sex with a minor.

15. Cohabitation
A couple’s desire to spend more time together may lead them to cohabit, that is, live together without marriage.

16. Cohabitation & Common Law Marriage
An unmarried partner is now defined by the Census Bureau as a person unrelated to the householder, but who shares living quarters and has a close personal relationship with the householder.
In some states,a couple living together for more than a certain number of years can be treated as legally married, which is called a common law marriage.

17. Factors Influencing Cohabitation
Society’s increased tolerance toward nonmarital sexual relations makes intimate cohabitation more acceptable.
Higher education, especially for women, and the increasing entry of women into the workforce have lessened women’s dependence on marriage as a way of economic survival.

18. Factors Influencing Cohabitation
Increasing urbanization leads to increased anonymity and fewer restrictions on individuals.
The high rate of divorce may make young people more wary of rushing into a marital relationship.

19. Cohabiting Relationships
Many couples consider these experiences to be no more than short-lived sexual flings.
Other couples consider cohabitation a practical arrangement.
Some see cohabitation as a trial marriage, while others see it as a permanent alternative to marriage.
For some who have been divorced, the fear of making the same mistake again leads them to cohabitation.

20. Mate Selection
Propinquity refers to dating and marrying someone living quite close geographically.
Homogamy is the tendency of people to marry persons similar to themselves.
Endogamy is the tendency of people to marry within their own group.

21. Mate Selection
Exogamy is a requirement that people marry outside their group.
In our culture, requirements to marry outside your group are limited to incest and same-sex prohibitions.
Miscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriages are no longer legal in the U.S.

22. First Impressions
The halo effect is the tendency for first impressions to influence succeeding evaluations.
Cognitive compatibility (how the other thinks, what his/ her interests are, and so on) are also important first impressions.

23. Quick Quiz

24. 1. The term joined at the hip refers to
a sex-without-commitment interaction.
couples who spend much of their time together but rarely go out on formal dates.
where time is loosely spent together without explicit interest in one another.
None of these.

25. Answer: b
The term joined at the hip refers to couples who spend much of their time together but rarely go out on formal dates.

26. 2. The requirement that people marry outside their group is
Propinquity
Homogamy
Endogamy
Exogamy

27. Answer: d
Exogamy is the requirement that people marry outside their group.

28. 3. Which of the following is listed in the text as a common reason for cohabitation?
Practical Purposes
Sex
Trial Marriage
All of the above

29. Answer: d
Couples studied listed practical purposes, sex and a chance to have a trial marriage all as reasons to cohabitate.