Hookup culture is one that accepts and encourages casual sex encounters, including one-night stands and other related activity, without necessarily including emotional intimacy , bonding or a committed relationship. Most research on hookups has been focused on U. The rise of hookups, a form of casual sex , has been described by evolutionary biologist Justin Garcia and others as a "cultural revolution" that had its beginnings in the s. The sexual revolution of the s brought a loosening of sexual morals which allowed for sex to become uncoupled from relationships and non-marital sex to become more socially acceptable.
Support for sexual freedom became increasingly popular as new ideas and beliefs evolved about the positive and negative aspects of engaging in sexual intercourse. Feminism grew substantially in the s, with supporters arguing that a woman should have complete control over her own body. Kathleen Bogle has stated that the growing acceptance of casual sex in the s could also be attributed to a sharp rise in female student enrollment at colleges and universities.
Some scholars, including Garcia and Freitas, have found that dating , while it has not disappeared, has decreased as the frequency of hookups have increased. According to a review by Garcia, this is "an unprecedented time in the history of human sexuality. As a result, Garcia and other scholars argue that young adults are able to reproduce physiologically but are not psychologically or socially ready to 'settle down' and begin a family.
These developmental shifts, Garcia's systematic review of the literature suggests, is one of the factors driving the increase in hookups, a "popular cultural change that has infiltrated the lives of emerging adults throughout the Western world. Garcia and others have noted that the "past decade has witnessed an explosion in interest in the topic of hookups, both scientifically and in the popular media.
Research on hookups is not seated within a singular disciplinary sphere; it sits at the crossroads of theoretical and empirical ideas drawn from a diverse range of fields, including psychology , anthropology , sociology , biology , medicine , and public health. It is hard to make sense of hookup culture without understanding why it exists in society and why individuals participate in the culture.
