Normative Contexts and the Hookup Culture: Strategies, Behaviors, and Contraceptive Risk-Taking

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 12. Hookup Culture

Abstract

Few studies have focused on the implications the hookup culture has for contraceptive use beyond condom negotiation. Research has not looked at the effect of the existence of the hookup culture on contraceptive risk taking within romantic relationships since those in romantic relationships are usually excluded from study.

Interviews covered 45 women’s romantic and sexual history in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Each woman was interviewed individually and was paid 30 dollars. Interviews were transcribed and then coded by hand. Themes were identified relating to the transition to adulthood, becoming a woman, and strategies used to deal with entering college and the associated prevalent hookup culture.

Five strategies emerged for how women dealt with the hookup culture when they entered college. Their behavior in college was directly shaped by their experiences as younger adolescents. While they majority of these women did not talk about sex or contraceptive use with their parents, they experienced varying norms about sexuality in their high schools, and among their peers – ranging from primarily casual sex, to a complete silence about sex. These differences in how competing norms were perceived in high school had direct implications for contraceptive risk-taking in emerging adulthood both within casual sexual encounters and within romantic relationships.

Results demonstrate the importance of normative context over the life course and show how norms one is exposed to in adolescence can dictate how one responds to norms in emerging adulthood, calling for a more explicitly life course perspective in norms research in the future.

Author

• Laurie Elizabeth Hawkins, University of Colorado-Boulder