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iQuestions Faculty, Dr. Tim Kimmel 
 
 
Question: 
 
When should I allow my daughter to date? 
 
Answer: 
 
Dating is a big part of a teenager’s life, and that’s our cultural way for 
kids to get to know each other and hopefully find the person they are 
ultimately going to marry. 
 
But I’ll tell you what. Age is very important. In fact, age makes all the 
difference in the world, when you introduce single dating to a kid.  
 
Now, let me separate between single dating and group dating. With 
our kids, we could never stop them from liking somebody—nor would 
we want to. Hearts get attracted. That’s fine. We said, “You can like 
anybody you want. You just can’t really do anything about it until you 
are sixteen.”  
 
And here’s why. 
 
Some great work was done by Josh McDowell in a campaign that he 
did, and he found out that the younger a kid starts dating, the more 
apt they are to lose their virginity by the time they graduate from high 
school. Well, this just makes sense, but the numbers were 
extraordinary. If your kids starts at twelve years old dating somebody, 
they have a 93% chance that they are going to lose their virginity by 
high school. At fourteen, it’s 53%. I mean, that’s a 50-50 chance. 
Those aren’t good odds. If you wait until they are sixteen, it’s down to 
20%. 
 
 
 
You say, “Well, one of the reasons why is there is not too many years 
left before they graduate.” Well, it’s more than that. It’s maturity. See, 
maturity matters when it comes to dating. 
 
When you figure a year’s time—365 days in the life of a young 
person—it’s an amazing amount of maturity that’s happening in that 
time. See, one year of my life is just a small little proportion of it, but 
when I was back to twelve, thirteen years old, when it represents 8%-
9% of your life, well, that’s a lot of growing up. 
 
And so, when you have your kids wait until they are older, you set 
them up to make far better choices, be able to resist more, and have a 
better goal in mind for what they want to have when they finally get 
married. 
 
And let me say something of dads. Dads, it’s our job to run 
interference for our kids. We need to sit our boys down when they 
start to date, and tell them, “This is what I expect of you when you 
take a girl out. You don’t take her places she doesn’t belong. You don’t 
take her to parties where there’s drugs or alcohol or anything she is 
going to be exposed to that is going to undermine her. You don’t take 
her to places that are unsafe. And you treat her with respect. She’s 
not your wife. Her body is not your property. You keep your hands 
where they belong. You show respect for her.” 
 
And then, I think our job as dads is to do the same thing for the guys 
who come knocking on the door to take out our daughters. And that’s 
what I did with my daughters. You don’t have to intimidate them. You 
don’t have to be cleaning your guns and all that stuff. That’s kind of 
fun bravado, but when you sit down, heart-to-heart, and say, “Look. 
We did not raise this girl by accident. We were very deliberate about 
it, and we wanted to raise her up to be an extraordinary woman and a 
great wife someday. I see why you are attracted to her. But as you 
take her out, please know I expect you to treat her with respect, to 
 
 
make sure that she is always safe, to make wise choices, and to keep 
your hands where they belong. And I expect her to do the same with 
you. And should this not work out, I assume that you are just dating, 
and I don’t assume any future out of this, but if you guys get really 
attracted and it doesn’t work out, I expect you to be reverent and kind 
to her feelings if you have to break up, and I expect her to be reverent 
and kind to yours, too.”  
 
When they knew that was the rules going in, it made it a whole lot 
easier to get through life. Dads say, “Well, I’m scared to death to do 
that.” Well, you know, I don’t want to be blunt, but we need to cowboy 
up on this one. We are the men. We are called to this. We’ve got to be 
gatekeepers for our kids. We’ve got to run interference. If we don’t, 
boy, we throw them out there to the predators of our culture that 
could really do a lot of damage.  
 
No, they are too important. You love them, don’t you? Of course you 
do. You can be the kind of man who can do that. Just try it. You might 
even find out you’re good at it. 
 
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