Why Some Parents Tell Kids They Can’t Date Until They’re Ready For Marriage
Last month, my 13-year-old daughter Mia had her friend Lila over after school. We were folding the week’s laundry in front of the TV, our golden retriever was chewing on an old sweat sock he’d pulled off the pile, when Lila’s phone pinged. She grinned, tapped out a quick reply, and tucked the phone back into her hoodie pocket like she was waiting for me to tease her. “It’s just Jaden from algebra,” she said. When Mia asked why she doesn’t just go to the movies with him like the rest of their friends do, Lila shrugged and said, “My mom says no dating until marriage.”
A week later, I ran into Lila’s mom Mara at the middle school soccer meet. We ended up sitting on the top bleacher, out of the cold wind, sharing a bag of cheese puffs because both of us had forgotten to pack dinner. I asked her about the rule, not to judge, just curious why she’d chosen it. She leaned back against the fence and told me she started dating at 15, the same age Lila is now. She fell hard for a boy two years older, skipped three weeks of school after they broke up, failed two classes that semester, and still remembers laying on her bathroom floor crying for 12 hours straight like it was last week. No one had warned her that a teen breakup wouldn’t just feel like the end of the world—it could derail all the other things she’d been working toward, like getting into the college she wanted. She didn’t want that kind of pain for Lila.
I’ve encountered this rule in enough families to know it’s not just for religious or conservative households, either. My cousin Riya, a first-generation Indian American, grew up with the same rule. Her parents didn’t set it to be controlling; they grew up in a small town in Gujarat where casual teen dating wasn’t common, and they’d watched too many of their friends struggle with heartbreak that derailed their education and career plans early on. Riya told me once that she didn’t mind the rule as a teen—it gave her an easy out to turn down guys who asked her out, and let her focus on getting into engineering school without the drama of on-again, off-again relationships. She started dating when she was 24, when she was ready to think about long-term commitment, and got married two years later. It worked for her.
But I also know how it can go wrong. A girl I went to church with growing up, Clara, had the same rule enforced by her parents. When she started dating a boy in her freshman year of college, she hid it from them for a year. When he started putting her down and pressuring her to skip classes to be with him, she didn’t tell anyone. She was scared her parents would say she’d broken their rule and pull her out of school. By the time she got the courage to leave him, her grades had dropped so much she lost her scholarship. The rule only works when the lines of communication stay open, not when it’s just an unnegotiable order.
Most people who see this rule from the outside assume it’s about control or outdated ideas about romance. But more often than not, the why behind it is pretty simple: most parents who set this rule are coming from their own hurt. They’re not trying to rob their kid of the “teen experience” they never got. They’re just trying to keep their kid from feeling the same kind of crippling heartbreak they felt young, when you haven’t built up the coping skills to bounce back fast.
If you’re a parent thinking about setting this rule, the biggest concrete difference I’ve seen between rules that work and rules that backfire is openness. Mara doesn’t just forbid one-on-one dating and shut down any conversation about crushes. She lets Lila hang out in mixed groups, go to the mall with five friends including Jaden, study for tests together at the library after school as long as other people are around. Every Sunday, they stop for iced coffee on the way home from grocery shopping and talk about what respect looks like, what questions Lila should ask herself if she likes someone, and what to do if someone pressures her to do something she doesn’t want. The rule isn’t just a ban—it’s a delay, paired with constant conversation.
If you’re a parent with a different approach and your kid asks why their friend can’t date, don’t badmouth the other family to make your own choices look better. Instead of saying “that’s so crazy, her mom is too strict,” you can say something like, “Her mom had a really hard time when she was your age dating young, so she made this choice for her family. It’s different from what we do, but that’s okay.” It keeps the peace and teaches your kid that different families get to make different rules that work for them.
Last week, Lila came over again and showed me a silly drawing Jaden made of her cat for her birthday. She taped it to the back of her phone case, and when Mara came to pick her up, she held it out to show her mom. Mara just rolled her eyes and smiled, no yelling, no lectures. Lila still hasn’t gone on a one-on-one date with Jaden, and right now that works for both of them. This rule isn’t for every family, and no one knows if it’ll work perfectly long-term for Mara and Lila. But it makes sense where it comes from, and that’s more than can be said for a lot of parenting rules we pick.
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