Why Do Some Parents Tell Their Kids They Can’t Date Until Marriage?
The burger I was flipping burned black while 16-year-old Mia stood by our picnic table, twisting the end of her braid and telling her mom that Javi from chemistry had asked her to homecoming. My golden retriever stole a hot dog bun off the plate and no one even chased him. The air smelled like charcoal and citronella, and Lila, Mia’s mom and my oldest friend, wiped barbecue sauce off her hands and shook her head. “You know our rule, bug. No dating until you’re ready for marriage. I’m sorry.” Mia rolled her eyes so hard her whole head moved, mumbled something about it being just a dance, and stormed off toward the cornhole game where all her friends were gathered.
Later, when the chaos of kids chasing each other with water guns died down, Lila and I sat on the back step with sweating cans of root beer, and I asked her why she stuck to that rule so hard, even for a silly high school dance. I’d heard other people talk about this rule before, mostly in online threads where everyone called parents who made it controlling, so I was curious what it meant for her, specifically.
Lila got pregnant at 17, senior year of high school. She married the dad three months after graduation, and they divorced by 22. She worked two retail jobs to put herself through community college while Mia was in daycare, and never got to start the four-year nursing program she’d dreamed of since middle school. She told me that when she was 16, everyone told her dating was just normal teenage stuff. No one warned her that giving your whole heart to someone that young could leave you broken enough to derail every plan you’d ever made. “I started one-on-one dating when I was 14, and by 16 I was already convinced I’d marry that boy,” she said. “I skipped after-school study sessions to be with him, stopped going to my cousin’s birthdays, pulled away from all my friends. When I got pregnant, I didn’t even tell my mom for two months because I knew I’d broken her rules. I don’t want Mia to hide things from me like that. If she knows upfront serious dating isn’t on the table until she’s old enough to actually commit to marriage, she won’t put herself in that position.”
I’ve seen hundreds of posts in parenting groups shaming parents with this rule, calling them repressive or even abusive. But every time I’ve actually sat down and talked to parents who enforce it, that’s rarely what it is. Some do it for deeply held religious beliefs, which makes sense—they believe intimacy of any kind is reserved for marriage, and dating inherently leads toward that, so they choose to delay it. Most of the people I know, though, do it because they’ve been that kid. They know what it feels like to have your teenage heart broken so bad you can’t focus on school, or to make a decision you’re not ready for that changes the whole course of your life. This rule isn’t about punishing their kid. It’s about putting a guardrail around a pain they already lived through.
That said, I also pointed out to Lila that a hard, no-exceptions ban can backfire. Kids who are told they can’t date at all in high school just start dating in secret. They don’t tell their parents when someone makes them uncomfortable, or when things get more serious than they want, because they’re already in trouble for breaking the rule. That’s exactly what happened to Lila when she was a kid, after all.
I didn’t give her some big speech. We just tossed around small, concrete changes that still fit her core value of waiting for marriage for a serious committed relationship. Instead of banning any time with a crush, she could allow group outings only through high school—no one-on-one dates until senior year, and even then only in public places with regular check-ins. She didn’t have to call it dating if she didn’t want to; it could just be “hanging out with friends” that happens to include a crush. She kept the hard line on unsupervised alone time, which aligned with what she was comfortable with.
Lila thought about it for a week, then sat down and talked to Mia. They compromised: Mia could go to homecoming, as long as she went with a group of six friends, Lila dropped them off and picked them up, and she texted when they left the dance to get tacos after. Mia agreed immediately. She didn’t even push for one-on-one time after, because just getting to go was more than she expected.
I saw Lila at the grocery store last week, pushing a cart full of cereal and laundry detergent, and she told me how it went. Mia had a great time at the dance, she took a million photos with Javi and the rest of the group, and nothing dramatic happened. Now Mia texts Javi all the time about homework, and Lila doesn’t panic about it. They have a standing taco night every Sunday where they talk about whatever is going on, crushes included. Lila still says she wants Mia to wait until she’s ready for marriage to date seriously, and Mia still teases her about being too strict, but they’re talking. There’s no hiding, no screaming fights, at least not about this.
I have a 14-year-old son, and we do things differently at our house—we allow casual one-on-one dates with clear ground rules. But I get it now, more than I did before that barbecue. Parents who make this rule aren’t the monsters online makes them out to be. Most of the time, they’re just people who lived through a hard young choice, and they want better for their kids. It’s not always perfect, and a lot of us think the hard line is too hard, but it comes from the same place all parenting rules come from: a desire to keep your kid from getting hurt. There’s no one right answer, and every family gets to decide what fits their values. Right now, for Lila and Mia, the compromise they worked out is working. That’s enough, for now.
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