“i mamish don’t know where you come from! it’s much much much healthier, that the children grow up separately and when the time comes, they go out and get married. Everyone has taavos whether they are exposed to the opposite gender/not. What shtusim!”
SD, you feel that way possibly because you were brought up with that type of thinking. i was brought up in a frum environment where the genders mixed at every family get-together, Shabbos meal, simcha, etc. I went to a mixed yeshivah, but the boys were in one building and the girls in another. I think I was educated pretty well, both secularly AND Limudei Kodesh, and I was brought up to not be narrow-minded (not accusing you of being n-m, just saying it about myself).
It most certainly is not healthier to grow up believing that the opposite gender is an aveira waiting to happen. Did you read what you wrote? They should grow up separately and when the time comes, they go out and get married. Do you have any idea how many girls are terrified of starting to date for tachlis, after years of being totally separate from even talking to boys??? They never learned how to swim or even wade in knee deeep water, but they are being tossed overboard into the ocean and expected to win the Olympics! How much better if boys and girls can look at each other as friends, date in a healthy and non-pressured way, and get married to someone with whom they really enjoy conversing (oh wait a minute, you probably also feel that talking too much together is a bad idea. Sorry).
It is not shtuyos that I feel this way. I have observed a lot over the last almost six decades, and what I see today only serves to reinforce what I believe. I am profoundly sad that kids are not being brought up more like the way we were in my childhood and teen years. No one in my peer group would have accused someone of saying “shtusim,” for expressing an opinion.By the way, you mentioned where did I come from – I grew up in East New York.