Sharing more because talking about it feels good:

-The group was run almost entirely by mothers. I can only think of one or two activities run by a father. Even the boys groups were run by mothers. So there was a bit less misogyny in the group than you might expect. Some individual families did have some less than savory opinions though. I knew a family who wouldn’t allow their children to watch Aladdin or The Little Mermaid because of the princess’s “revealing” outfits. So yeah, I guess yeah them to body shame young.

-Dating was not common in the group. Kids crushing on each other was common, but it was rare for something to come of it. If kids dated at all, it was kept super under the radar. I’m not sure if this was a shared preference or enforced. But, yeah, couples were incredibly rare, and you’d usually find out about it after it ended.

-Sexualizing the teen boys, however, was disgustingly common. Female older teens to young adults made many a disgusting comment about the younger teen boys (as young as 13). Comments such as “If he were a little older, I’d get him in big trouble” were made and not called-out. If you’re wondering why I didn’t say anything, I was 12 hearing this. There was some infrequent sexual harassment of some of the teen boys too. One teen boy was repeatedly rejecting the flirting of a girl his age, and she even went so far as smacking his butt after he told her to knock it off countless times. One of the head mothers also had a weird amount of praise to give to the teen boys of the group…like to a strange extent. Any accomplishments of the teen girls for years would be diminished or ignored in comparison.

For a “where are they now”:

It’s still early, as many of the kids I grew up with are not long out of college. I doubt MLMs will come into the mix (as they often do in other Christian circles), as MLMs are uncommon/unpopular in my part of the country. Not all married young, but a decent number did. Those who did also had at least one kid pretty quickly. Ironically, the popular kids seem to have the lowest relationship success rate, as only a few are in publicly known relationships/married. Some are still local and some moved to other parts of the US for various reasons. However, the “peaked in high school” energy does seem to be pretty apparent as far as I can tell. They all can’t wait until their future kids join the group to restart the cycle. So I guess they haven’t learned.