[ASTalumna06]

Snag a husband in college? Not so fast, 'Princeton Mom,' parents say:

http://www.today.com/moms/snag-husba...say-2D79351714

...do most parents really want their kids to find a spouse in college?

“There is a tiny kernel of truth in the premise,” says Fran Stephenson of San Antonio, Texas, a communications professor and mother of a son, 19. “There probably is no other opportunity like college for the same group of like-minded individuals at one place.”

On the other hand, Stephenson says, Patton seems out of touch with today’s students, as Generation Y tends to have much more casual relationships in their college years. She notes that young people tend to go out in groups, as opposed to one-on-one, more serious dating.
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Like it or not, finding a spouse early on can affect a woman’s decisions — if not her career trajectory. Brenda Ramsey Jones, a product strategist and Fayetteville, Ark., parent of two daughters, 23 and 20, and one son, 18, got married her senior year of college. “I have no regrets about my choice but I do know that it generally affected the career choices I made,” says Jones. “There were a couple of job offers that I truly wanted to take to fulfill a dream of mine, that I passed on because it was not a great choice for us as a couple.”

Patton’s advice to women doesn’t square with the realities of today’s marriages, says writer Lisa Endlich Heffernan. As a parent of three boys, ages 17 to 21, she says telling students that college is their only and best shot at connecting with smart, interesting or like-minded mates doesn’t make much sense in a social media age.

“Your high school and college communities don’t end at graduation,” Heffernan counters. “My children have probably never lost touch with anyone they’ve met in school.” As she points out, in the old days, you might not have known how to contact that cute guy from your freshman seminar after graduation, but with Facebook or LinkedIn, you can easily message him years or even decades later.