ABSTRACT
Recent media treatments of the adolescent period have decried the end of romance among today’s uncommitted but sexually permissive teens. The movement away from dating is particularly ironic in that academics have now begun to investigate a social phenomenon that apparently no longer exists! Our view is that while less formal and codified than in earlier eras, romantic relationships nevertheless remain an important aspect of adolescent social life (Brown, Mory, & Kinney, 1994; Furman, Brown, & Feiring, 1999), contribute uniquely to development (Giordano, Longmore, & Manning, 2001), and often exert a significant influence on consequential transition outcomes such as delinquency and academic achievement. The link to sexual behavior is also intuitive, but ironically the ‘couple context’ is less well researched and understood than the relationship between sexuality and friendship, family and even community-level processes (Billy, Brewster, & Grady, 1994; Kotchick, Shaffer, & Forehand, 2001; Miller et al., 1997).
