As I was checking in with what my Facebook friends were up to the other day, I came across a status update of a friend I went to high school with. She had been talking with her teen kids and found herself confused by the conversation. Seeking advice from her Facebook friends, she posed the question: “what’s the difference between ‘going out’ and dating?” She was surprised to learn that they may be different things to the youth of today than they were to us. Based on the Facebook replies she received, “going out” seems to mean having a commitment to the person, while “dating” seems to refer to someone you’ve gone on a date with but not exclusive with yet. A quick search for the meaning of dating terms on google, however, opened a pandora’s box with many different possible meanings emerging for different people. As a sociologist, I’m not surprised that words have different meanings among different groups in different settings at different times. For example, at the beginning of the Start Strong Wichita grant, we held group discussions with parents of middle school & high school youth to ask them about their perceptions of tween/teen dating in our community. Many of the parents of middle school youth did not describe their kids as “dating” yet because as one parent said, “they’re not going anywhere!”
For middle school-ers, “dating” takes place in a variety of ways: by texting and talking on the phone, at school (ex, having someone that you sit with at lunch or walk to class with), by meeting up at the mall or by sitting next to each other at the movies, regardless that they went in a large group. To complicate things, each of these activities can also be considered “hanging out” (which many define as spending time together without labeling the relationship). Regardless of how you define what’s happening, Wichita youth clearly view themselves as having “romantic” relationships.
Findings from the Start Strong Wichita General Youth Relationship survey reveal a gap between when school staff and parents think adolescents are ready to start dating and when tweens/teens think they are. The majority of youth (51%) reported that they think adolescents are ready to start dating during middle school. In comparison, only 20% of school staff and 12% of parents agreed. However, 55% of parents and 68% of school staff acknowledged that youth DO likely start dating in middle school. In fact, 57% of our sample of middle schoolers reported that they have had a boyfriend or girlfriend at some point in their life. However, most tweens do not feel their relationships are taken seriously. 69% reported that they did not believe that adults they know viewed their romantic relationships as important.
Based on life experiences, it is easy for adults to minimize adolescent relationships, attributing them simply to “puppy love.” While it’s true that very few of these relationships end up lasting for long periods of time, we must remember that adolescents learn how to be in relationships as adults through the relationships they form as youth. It’s important to talk to your child about relationships BEFORE and AS they are forming. Let your child know they should treat someone they care for with respect and how they in turn should be treated with respect. And finally, try to acknowledge their feelings in the moment because it’s how they learn to handle all the moments along the way that will shape who they become in the future.
-Jodie Hertzog
Associate Professor Wichita State University
Department of Sociology
