Quast

In a world where values are taken on board and discarded again when they become inconvenient to maintain, it is refreshing to see that our young people are adopting a set of healthy moral standards. When I was a teenager back in the dark ages it was considered that any prospective suitor was open season providing he was not married, gay or ghastly thought poor.

These days it is rarer for a couple to be married, as so few people take the conventional trip down the aisle, and the result is the disappearance of comforting borderlines. It is no longer easy to check whether a man is free or not just by glancing to see if he is wearing a wedding ring. Even asking him point blank if he is married will not do; he may well be in a fifteen year, extremely anchored relationship, with the mother of his nine children.

My nineteen year old daughter and nearly all of her friends, with one or two tarty exceptions (who shall remain anonymous but they know who they are) socialize within the most rigid guidelines of behavior when it comes to the boyfriends of friends and acquaintances.

In a society which is becoming increasingly permissive I am happily surprised to find such moral codes in evidence. I would even go so far as to say that I think moral behavior amongst young people has undergone a weird reversal of ethic in the past fifteen years or so.

With the risk of Aids and a whole collection of other nasty sexual diseases an ever present and increasingly virulent handicap to passion, it is hardly surprising that the most intelligent of our younger generation have swapped free love for freedom of infection.

Jan Gamm writes reflections on life with an emphasis on world travel. She has lived in many countries and traveled extensively in the Far East, the Middle East, America, South America and throughout the South Pacific. She writes for fun and for money whenever she can manage it.