Many a wild and crazy thing has been trending this year. Things such as Kimye, the ice bucket challenge and “Gone Girl” have gone viral. Even wilder and crazier is the ever-increasing number of college students entering into sugar baby, sugar daddy or mama relationships.
The terminology itself is quite weird and alarming. The term “sugar daddy” or “sugar baby” implies a certain kind of incestuous dependency upon on another person.
According to the website ?SeekingArrangement.com, a site that helps sugar babies and sugar daddies find their ideal arrangements, there has been a 42-percent increase in the number of new sign-ups over the course of 2014.
Many of these new sign-ups have been attributed to college students across the country, and IU is seventh on the list of fastest-growing sugar baby schools.
A source spoke to the IDS about the details of her particular arrangement: She received free room and board at a cushy house — with a great location! — in exchange for spending time with the owner, a man in his early 70s, and sharing a few meals together each week.
This was an ideal arrangement for the student because she was working on completing her fifth year at IU, and money was tight. The arrangement allowed her to live comfortably without having to spend a dime.
This particular arrangement never verged on sexual. It was merely an exchange of room and board for the pleasure of the company of a young woman. However, not at all sugar baby or sugar daddy relationships are so tame. Many sugar babies engage in sexual acts in order to satisfy the agreement they have with the sugar parent.
So long as the sexual relationship is entered into freely and willingly, there is no problem with trading the body for financial stability, but it can arise that the sugar baby feels an obligation to the sugar parent and they are engaging in sexual acts because of ?external pressures.
Sex can become an expectation rather than an agreement, and that puts the sugar babies at risk for violence.
The sugar baby-sugar parent relationship is developing as a way of managing insanely high tuition fees and the costs of living by trading the body and time for financial support.
Tuition fees and the costs of education in the United States have risen to insurmountable heights and student debt has become something that few students across the country can ?manage.
College students are turning toward a sugar parent in their desperation and are, essentially, selling their bodies for access to education.
An educational system that leaves many students with such few options for a financially stable education is greatly flawed, to put it mildly.
Students should not have to present themselves as sugar babies in order to receive the education they deserve or be faced with a lifetime of crippling debt.
Not a single soul should have to use their body in order to access an education. If someone wants to enter into a sugar baby-sugar parent relationship because it brings them pleasure, by all means they should do just that, but an individual should never feel like that is their only option to receive the ?education they deserve.
