"I can't imagine dating a boy, meeting him only outside the home. What's a home and family for if it's not the center of one's life?"
About this Quote
The specific intent is to normalize courtship as something that orbits the household, not the individual. "Meeting him only outside the home" isn’t framed as adventurous or liberating; it’s suspicious, unrooted, even faintly improper. Young turns "home and family" from a setting into an argument: if they aren’t the center, then what are they for? That rhetorical question does the heavy lifting, implying that any alternative lifestyle is not just different but deficient.
The subtext is less about romance than about social order. Dating, in this framework, isn’t primarily self-discovery; it’s a supervised pathway into a stable unit where women, especially, are expected to locate meaning. The home becomes the stage on which respectability is verified: introductions, rituals, familiar walls, the implied presence of parents or community. Privacy is not intimacy; it’s risk.
Context matters because Young’s era sold domesticity as an antidote to modern drift. Postwar culture elevated the nuclear family into a civic ideal, and celebrities were enlisted as proof that the dream was both glamorous and attainable. The irony, knowing Hollywood’s behind-the-curtain realities and Young’s famously guarded private life, is that the line also works as camouflage: a tidy credo that keeps the mess off-camera.
Quote Details
| Topic | Family |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Young, Loretta. (2026, January 17). I can't imagine dating a boy, meeting him only outside the home. What's a home and family for if it's not the center of one's life? FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-cant-imagine-dating-a-boy-meeting-him-only-72288/
Chicago Style
Young, Loretta. "I can't imagine dating a boy, meeting him only outside the home. What's a home and family for if it's not the center of one's life?" FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-cant-imagine-dating-a-boy-meeting-him-only-72288/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I can't imagine dating a boy, meeting him only outside the home. What's a home and family for if it's not the center of one's life?" FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-cant-imagine-dating-a-boy-meeting-him-only-72288/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.




