The New Parent Trap: Have a Fling!

“You shouldn’t get too attached. Don’t you want to date around? I was with so many people in my 20s.”

My parents have been nervous about my relationship with my Ivy League-educated, hardworking, literary-minded boyfriend from the beginning. They’d always been intrigued by the idea of my having a serious romance, but once it happened about a year ago, when we met at college, it was a whole other story.

The legacy of the feminist movement has made my free-love-promoting, baby boomer parents excited about my promiscuity and nervous about long-term relationships. I remember the summer after my freshman year at college, their eyes glittering with delight around the kitchen table as I told them about my escapades post all-girls high school. “When I was in college, I learned a lot about sex,” they would say. “College is full of people you can trust—they had to get in and all.”

I understand where they’re coming from. Casual relationships offer many benefits for them: My identity will not be swallowed up, I will not have to leave the family, and I will be having fun.

My father is a lot of fun. He’s the kind of guy who points out men on the street whom he would not allow me or my sisters to go out with. Watching a special on the Parthenon on Nova with my middle sister, he told her about some facts they left out. Then he came up with a test for our prospective mates, to see if they could expound upon this important cultural monument. Now Nina scans the plaid-shirted men of Bennington College, wondering if they could pass the Parthenon Test.

There are many such tests. Can they carve the turkey? Fix a car? Tell a Titian from a Tintoretto? People on the street who are unlikely to pass: people with tattoos, people with dreds, surfers, rappers, people with weird hobbies.

Parents have always been protective of their daughters, but sexual liberation has put parents like mine, who are at once very liberal and very protective, in a strange position. They fear for my subjugation and boredom, pushing me to get out there. They want me to be powerful and independent—and they don’t want to let go of me.

Back in my freshman year, my feminist parents were proud of my hookups, almost as if they were achievements. I was a powerful woman, taking on my college dorm along with Introduction to European Literature. And one day, far, far away in the distant hazy future, I would find a husband, but for now I’d be independent. I wouldn’t be too influenced by the mind of another human as I matured; I’d be experiencing youth the way they did. I would sleep around, but I’d still be myself. And I’d still be their baby.

I remember Kissing Jessica Stein and Keeping the Faith, in which mothers fret about their children’s lack of a spouse. Why don’t I see any movies where the parents are worried about their daughters’ lack of intellectual independence and erotic success? In my world, having a serious boyfriend poses a serious problem. Next Page >