High school is a period of every adolescents life in which they are not yet an adult, but are given responsibilities and opportunities that were not yet available to them in their preteen and toddler years. The first to come to one’s mind may be driving a car, getting a job, and applying to college. But there is another topic under observation that has been around since your parents were your age. Even your grandparents may have been involved in this controversial issue; high schoolers and whether or not they should be dating. Ever since caveparents shipped their caveteenagers off to the first school ever created, this has been an argument under debate. Ripe with youth but burdened with tasks and decisions of an adult, the teenager’s experience in high school is meant for exploration and discovery.

As you grow up, you find someone who you are attracted to and are compatible with, and who you might possibly will start a family with them. Dating in high school is a good way to get a feel of what you like and dislike in a significant other. Blindly entering the dating scene as a college student is confusing to say the least; in addition, the college dating scene is currently a considerable mess. Even worse, the prospect of dating after college with no preparation of what’s to come. Additionally, a majority of the people one will date later in life will have had undergone a relationship at some point. With no experience, those without prior involvement will have no idea what to expect and how to properly behave.

It may seem that the combination of naivety and emotions running high would lead to a cocktail of disaster; but that may just be the reason for teenagers to date. This combination leads to teenagers feeling things that they have never before, and wanting intimacy is one of them. Granted, a teenager’s parents can control a lot of their childrens lives, but if their child develops feelings for someone, they might as well let them date. If their parents tell them they cannot date, they will find a way to sneak around, leading to an unhealthy relationship and more trouble than if the parents were to be monitoring the child in the safety of their home.

Not only does developing and sustaining a relationship help the teenager for future romantic encounters, it helps them understand and partake in many other social aspects, including friendships and parent-child bonds. Developing romantic relationships, one is immersed in a more intimate connection mentally; this matures one’s grasp of social encounters, a thing needed for college peer and co-worker confrontations. Another test of maturity lies in the high schoolers decision-making skills that they make regarding sexual encounters. They learn where to draw the line with their partner and how to react when put in a situation that is highly uncomfortable and that is widely considered to be an “adult” subject.

Similarly, the relationship parents have with their children when allowing them to date is built on trust. This kind of trust is one unlike any that one encounters up until this point in life, and will most likely will never encounter anything like it until they have children as well. The adults must rely on their child to make smart decisions and the child must trust the parents’ rules set for their dating. The only other relationship that is even remotely similar in comparison is trust between an employee and their boss.

In closing, whether or not parents allow their children to date is completely up to them. Although if their teenager wants to date someone that badly, which many do, they will most likely proceed without the parents consent. Who knows, you may even be one of the lucky ones that meet their high school sweetheart and never need to take part in the tedious work of dating again!