Revive Courtship for Seeking Love

With Amy A. Kass, Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2000.

Excerpt:

Last Tuesday’s television program “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire” hit a new low, trivializing marriage as entertainment. But the huge size of its audience–23 million viewers, many of them women under 35–suggests that many young people are very interested in marriage but clueless about how to get there on their own. We have a more reliable suggestion: Let’s revive courtship.

Many American collegians, increasingly dissatisfied with commitment-free sex, seem ready for a sexual counter-revolution and a return to the kind of romance that leads to marriage. More and more of the students we teach every day, especially young women, are owning up to their personal unhappiness with the hook-up culture and admitting deep longings for enduring happiness. Former students, having bumbled along through their 20s and 30s from one bad relationship to the next, report that they now want love-filled marriage. Unfortunately, current custom and sophisticated opinion have little to offer them.

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