It saddens me when I look at the virtual segregation of boys and girls on the college campus in China where I teach.

If a couple even holds hands, it's seen as something worthy of gossip. Partially as a result of this, many of my students have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend, even at 20 or 21, or even kissed a member of the opposite sex.

I've been in China for a year, and the social atmosphere among the students reminds me of my own upbringing in the US of the 1950s and 1960s.

I was born in the mid-1940s, and raised in a religiously conservative Catholic family, where contact with girls was forbidden and even characterized as sinful.

As a result I was sent to an all-boys school and then college, which was a social nightmare.

It left me uptight and socially frustrated. 

I was indoctrinated into believing that love and affection were only for married couples, rather than a natural part of the human condition.

But when I went to graduate school, I was lucky enough to have liberal teachers who taught me that love was normal, natural, fun, and exciting. I was able to experience the joy of a mature and loving relationship there. Here in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, I see the same puritan values my parents imposed on me being taught to teenagers.

They suffer under the terrible burden of the idea that their relationships are intrinsically wrong, dangerous, or even evil.

Things are more liberal in larger cities and campuses. But generally things are more restricted in high school, since the majority of Chinese parents attempt to forbid their children from dating entirely.

They do this partly from concern that their kids will be distracted from education, and partly because the parents had so little experience with any kind of dating or relationship culture while they were kids. The world their children live in is tough for them to cope with.

I can see why parents in an education-obsessed culture like China's might see relationships as a distraction.

In the West, some very young teenagers rush into emotional and sexual relationships long before they're ready. They can end up scarred as a result, or even dealing with teenage pregnancies and other disasters.

I understand Chinese parents' fear of such possibilities, but constricting kids' social and emotional development can be just as bad.

Many 20 to 24-year-old Chinese, especially the more educated, act like giggling 13 years old when confronted with dealing with the opposite sex.

And with no practice in relationships or heartbreak, they make hasty decisions and sometimes even bad marriages. They're suddenly confronted with the rush of relationships at a time when they're forced into life-long decisions, rather than being given time to mature and develop.

Chinese parents need to be able to teach their kids how to handle relationships appropriately and maturely, not forbid them entirely.

After all, forbidden fruit is that much more tempting. The consequences of a hidden relationship can be that much more devastating, and cause even more friction.

Chinese colleges should drop their unnecessary constraints on contact with the opposite sex, eliminate the gossipy and judgmental atmosphere where students in relationships often face criticism from their peers and teachers, and learn to give their charges the space and time they need to develop as adults.

Tom Payne, an English teacher at Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages