ABSTRACT
It is often said that “courtship” is dead in today’s society. Indeed, such rhetoric about the downfall of “the family” and of “traditional marriage” has been heralded for over a century (Bailey, 1988). A recent piece by Leon Kass (1997) is illustrative here:
Now the vast majority goes to college, but very few—women or men—go with the hope, or even the wish, of finding a marriage partner…. Sexually active, in truth—hyperactive—they flop about from one relationship to another; to the bewildered eye of this admittedly much-too-old but still romantic observer, they manage to appear all at once casual and carefree and grim and humorless about getting along with the opposite sex. The young men, nervous predators, act as if any woman is equally good: They are given not to falling in love with one, but to scoring in bed with many. And in this sporting attitude they are now matched by some female trophy hunters. (p. 39)
