I must admit feeling very pleased when my girls were in high school.

They all went to a co ed school and maybe that helped, but the reason I was so pleased was that, in their leisure time, they hung out with both boys and girls in groups. They didn't seem to go on 'dates' with just one boy which was much more the custom in my era.

The fact that boys were seen as friends and not 'potential boyfriends' was a good thing I felt. There seemed to be less pressure to 'hook up' with just one other and I would therefore assume less pressure to become sexually intimate.

However, I am told by my reliable sources of under twenty year olds that girls still want to have a boyfriend. 'Having a boyfriend' is much more interesting than not having one. It's boring not to have one. There is so much to talk about when you have hooked up with a guy.

So although 'dates' seem passé now and the game looks different, it is still the same old same old.

One casualty of the new look boy/girl relationship thing that seems to have been lost is the precious nature of sexual intimacy. When young girls do 'hook up' with a boy, they seem to expect that sex will follow fairly quickly and they don't seem to mind. The casualisation of sexual relations extends to 14 year olds. So many girls are taking the contraceptive pill now for all sorts of medical reasons apart from contraception that 'being on the pill' no longer indicates that a girl is ready for sex. It's contraceptive value is just a very convenient by product and because loss of one's virginity is not such a big deal, being on the pill means you don't have to plan ahead to avoid pregnancy.

Hopefully youth leaders are initiating the conversation about the Bible's teaching about sex within marriage with young people in church youth group. With such strong pressures in society to experience and enjoy sexual relations outside of marriage, young people need to have a good understanding of an alternative value base in order to make counter cultural choices. Managing to 'flee from sexual immorality' is difficult at any time of life and no less difficult in adolescence but how prescriptive should the guidelines be?

Nicky Lock's article in this month's Southern Cross explores the two opposing schools of thought. Nicky says that in their church they have a group called God Chicks where younger and older women meet together and the question of 'dating' often comes up.

The younger women, often in response to teaching they have received in youth group, are much more cautious about dating, leaning towards a commonly held view in their age group, that one should only date if one has intentions of marriage.

Nicky contrasts this viewpoint with those of the girls' mothers age group who believe that dating is an important way of,

building those relationship skills and getting to understand what being in a relationship means.

It worries me that if we are too prescriptive about when to date and with what motives, this will lead to disappointment when marriage is put on such a pedestal. Maybe relationship values such as respect, loyalty, caring and commitment do need to be practised in training for marriage within the 'dating' phases of life and this needs to be more than just 'hooking up' for the evening.