Sugar dating, also called sugaring, is a dating practice where a person receives money, gifts, support or other financial and material benefits in exchange for platonic company, and sometimes also sex and intimacy. The person who receives the gifts is called a sugar baby, while their paying partner is called a sugar daddy or sugar momma. The paying partner is typically wealthier, older, and male, but women can also be the paying partner. Sugar dating is especially prevalent among students, who are able to find sugar daddies through online dating services. In 2015, the site SeekingArrangement claimed to have over 1.4 million students among its members, comprising 42 percent of registrants. Almost one million of these are in the United States. According to the SeekingArrangement website in 2015, 36% of "gifts" received by women using their site was spent on tuition payments, while 23% was used to pay rent. The rest was spent on books, transportation, clothes, and other items. The websites used to negotiate sugar arrangements are technically dating sites. Membership on one site in 2016 was $70 a month for sugar daddies, but free for sugar babies. What happens after the initial date, whether involving sexual or other activities, is between the parties. Though students make up a large proportion of sugar babies, the practice is not exclusive to students, as it also exists in older age ranges. Described in 2015 as an expanding trend, sugar dating is most prevalent in the United States, followed by Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Colombia.
There is debate about whether this practice can be considered prostitution, i.e., purchase of intimate attention, sexual or otherwise. Sugaring has been called the modern counterpart of the 17th-century courtesan, "a prostitute, especially one with wealthy or upper-class clients." Sugar dating sites were affected by the 2018 Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act passed by the U.S. Senate, which prompted the closure of many sugar dating sites operating in the US. This includes Established Men, a sugar dating site owned by the parent company of Ashley Madison, Ruby Corp, and the personals section of Craigslist.
