A purity ball is a formal dance event typically practiced by some conservative Christian groups in the United States.[citation needed] The events are attended by fathers and their teenage daughters in order to promote virginity until marriage. Typically, daughters who attend a purity ball make a virginity pledge to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. Fathers who attend a purity ball make a promise to protect their young daughters' "purity of mind, body, and soul." Proponents of these events believe that they encourage close and deeply affectionate relationships between fathers and daughters, thereby avoiding the premarital sexual activity that allegedly results when young women seek love through relationships with young men. Critics of the balls argue that they encourage and engrave dysfunctional expectations in the minds of the young women, making them vulnerable to believing their only value is as property, and teaching them that they must subjugate their own mental, physical, and emotional well-being to the needs of potentially or actually abusive partners. From Wikipedia
