Is the anxiety a lot of men have around women the product of American domestication?
Quote:Quote:http://ow.ly/iuQyQ
An odd recent New York Times op-ed by sociologist Amy Schalet touts the rise of, as the headline puts it, "Caring, Romantic American Boys." Schalet, who studied American high school sophomores (along with Dutch ones) for a forthcoming book, reports that "boys [are] behaving more 'like girls' in terms of when they lose their virginity," by which she means they "are becoming more careful and more romantic about their first sexual experiences."
Maybe her book will flesh out that claim, but in her op-ed the boys sound downright terrified: "American boys often said sex could end their life as they knew it. After a condom broke, one worried: 'I could be screwed for the rest of my life.' Another boy said he did not want to have sex yet for fear of becoming a father before his time."
If "I could be screwed for the rest of my life" is what passes for a romantic sentiment at the New York Times, the editors' Valentine's Day cards must be a laugh riot.
Schalet's most interesting assertion is that "the American boys I interviewed seemed more nervous about the consequences of sex than American girls." It's not clear if she interviewed girls as well as boys, but she offers this further point of comparison: "The 2002 National Survey of Family Growth found that more than one-third of teenage boys, but only one-quarter of teenage girls, cited wanting to avoid pregnancy or disease as the main reason they had not yet had sex."