Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (33 page)

The notion common among American teenagers that teenage sexuality usually takes place outside of meaningful interpersonal contexts is one they frequently attribute to the media. The American boys and girls both recur- rently and disparagingly speak about how “the media” creates a culture of what one could call “soulless sex,” which makes young people “do it” just as they would purchase a consumer item, just to be cool. Dutch teenagers occasionally refer to the media as shaping their perceptions of gender in relationships—indeed, with many Dutch TV programs adopted from the United States, Dutch teens are subject to some of the same cultural influ- ences as are their American peers. However, they are as likely to mention the media as a source of useful information about sexuality, such as about contraception and using condoms. Moreover, unlike their American coun- terparts, the Dutch teenagers do not attribute teenagers’ sexual activity to the influence of the media, perhaps because they have access to cultural scripts in which adolescent sexuality is both self-generated and embedded in meaningful connections.

That Dutch teenagers have access to a widely shared cultural scenario for such a self-directed and relationally embedded adolescent sexuality while American teenagers construct oppositional scenarios is related to their dif- ferent cultural definitions of love—its requirements and its recognizable features. Dutch girls and boys alike describe being in love in terms that are more earthy than the exalted terms their American counterparts use—as emotions that feel good rather than emotions that are extraordinary, as motivations that are indiscernible from physical attraction and a normal part of life that teenage boys and girls share. While some Dutch teenagers distinguish between the lighter “being in love” and the weightier loving, they do not suggest, as do several American teenagers, that young people cannot know their own feelings, or that discerning the truth of one’s love requires passing some kind of heroic test, like being willing and able to give everything up—perhaps even risk one’s life—for another person.

The definitions of love and relationships and experiences of gender are interconnected. It may be that marriage has remained for many American girls and boys the benchmark for love and commitment, even though mar- riage is very far away for teens on a middle-class trajectory, because, as a symbol, it gives them access to parts of the human potential from which they are excluded by narrow definitions of femininity and masculinity—in marriage, a women can be both good
and
sexual, and a man can be both in love
and
masculine. Although most Dutch boys and girls will eventually marry, none suggest that marriage is the ideal context for sex. With more integrated cultural models of love and lust, masculinity and femininity,

Dutch teenagers also have access to models of romantic relationships that are more age appropriate—attachments that are safe and fun but do not require fully matured capacities and commitments.
36
But the “normality of love” sometimes obscures important distinctions—between doing it safe and being ready, and between love and arousal—which are important to draw, especially for teenage girls.

EIGHT

Sexuality, Self-Formation, and the State

We started with a puzzle. Two groups of parents who are similar in terms of the social attributes typically thought to explain differences in parent- ing practices—education, social class, religiosity, and race and ethnicity— nevertheless differ strikingly: Dutch middle-class parents
normalize
ado- lescent sexuality, permitting teenagers to spend the night at home with girl- and boyfriends, while American parents
dramatize
adolescent sexual- ity, and, with few exceptions, oppose teenage couples spending the night together. One reason the two sets of parents view and manage teenage sex- uality differently is that they draw on different models of modern individ- ualism: given their different assumptions about (self-) control, autonomy, and authority, it makes sense to American parents to view teenage sexuality as a potential drama in the making, while to Dutch parents the “normality tale” is both plausible and desirable.

However, one cannot assume that just because a cultural logic makes sense to parents, it will make sense to their children as well. Belonging to a different generation and subject to multiple sources of (sexual) socializa- tion, teenagers differ, in certain respects, from their parents in how they de- scribe sexuality and gender. And as subordinates within the family, they are less invested in its rules and regulations and more inclined to resist con- trol. As we have seen, both American and Dutch teenagers do in fact resist such control. But in their resistance they also underscore central cultural tenets: The American teenagers view sexuality as something that requires them to break rules and separate from their families, even as parents must exert control to maintain connection. The Dutch teenagers experience less conflict between sex and the generally accepted rules for social intercourse, rendering rebellion against those rules largely superfluous.

Indeed, what we have is a paradox: the dramatization of adolescent

sexuality is predicated on—and stands in service of—an ideal of freedom from social restrictions, while the normalization of adolescent sexuality is predicated on—and produces—a deep disciplinary structure and intercon- nectedness within a web of social ties and obligations. In this chapter, we begin by deepening our understanding of this paradox by applying four questions drawn from Michel Foucault’s work on sexual ethics. Doing so brings to the fore how dramatization and normalization involve different exercises of power, induce different techniques of self-formation, and pro- duce different individuals. Comparing dramatization and normalization— and the different individualisms in which they are based—shows, in turn, how Foucault’s argument about the effectiveness of modern power misses critical pieces of the puzzle, namely connection, support, and self-mastery. The conditions for control, connection, and self-mastery are not pro- duced within the family alone. In fact, there are striking parallels between the constitution of individuals in the household and in the polity. As we will see in the second part of the chapter, there are several ways to un- derstand the parallels between the micro-sociological interactions in the family and macro-sociological state structures. The legal environment and welfare state condition and constrain parents in their choices. Processes of self-formation in the household induce capacities that serve young peo- ple’s functioning within the polity and economy. And the management of adolescent sexuality illuminates core cultural ideals and contradictions that shape both private and public institutions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of challenges to the interdependent individualism and its con- comitant model of governance—with its assumptions of self-regulation and mutual attunement—that prevailed during the 1990s in the middle-

class Dutch household, polity, and economy.

To fully grasp any system of sexual regulation, Michel Foucault has argued, one must understand its sexual ethics, which is often not as apparent as the code of law.
1
But four questions can illuminate it.
2
The first question is: what about sexuality is of concern or, to use Foucault’s words, what is the “part of the individual that becomes the prime material of his moral conduct?”
3
Second, we must ask: what kind of regulation should be exer- cised over that arena of concern and what reasoning is used to persuade people to conform to it? The third question is: what ethical and emotional work must individuals perform to bring themselves into compliance with the ethical rules about sexuality? And the final question asks: what is the

ideal mode of being—both for the individual and for the collectivity at large—that is to result from performing such ethical work on sexuality?

To discern a key difference between normalization and dramatization, we must ask: what aspect of teenage sexuality is of special concern to par- ents in the two countries? The problem of teenage sex is for American par- ents the problem of the hormonally driven or impulsive self. The materials on which parents and teenagers are urged to act are “raging hormones.” On the one hand, strong impulses and drives are looked upon favorably, as potential passions that will propel teenagers away from the parental home and into the outer world. Indeed, although the parents do not explicitly say so, one gets the sense that they would be troubled when teenagers
lack
“raging hormones,” for such a lack might signal the absence of essential life energy and the drive to grow up and move on. One the other hand, they worry about that drive getting out of control and taking their children to places where they make bad and life-altering choices. The key is not to squash or even necessarily to diminish the impulses but to channel them in the right way.

For Dutch middle-class parents the problem of adolescent sexuality is not primarily the problem of the impulsive self; rather it is the problem of new attachments and whether these attachments can be harmonized with existing family attachments. Although Dutch parents are concerned to see their children evidence self-regulation, they do not worry, as their Ameri- can counterparts do, about sexual impulses getting out of control. They express few concerns about pregnancy or disease ruining their children’s lives. They do problematize whether their children will relate in a good way—that is, attach romantically in a solid rather than fleeting manner, choose someone whom they will like, and gradually integrate him or her into the household in a manner that is not disruptive. The horror scenario is not hormones gone wild, but new or wrong boyfriends and girlfriends moving in and out of the household at too rapid a pace.

The second question is: how should the problem be regulated and what reasoning is used to persuade the individual to conform to ethical rules? The sleepover provides a key to the differences in regulation. In Ameri- can families, parents apply a dual strategy of prohibition and expulsion from the home. It is important to note that this mode of regulation is not a purely repressive one: even the most conservative of American parents seek to channel their teenage children’s hormones by providing them a modicum of independent space to date and pursue their sexual interests from age sixteen on. At the same time, even the most liberal among them typically strongly oppose sexual intercourse during the high-school years.

While gender plays a role in many families—girls encounter more explicit prohibitions—even boys who receive tacit approval to engage in sexual ac- tivity elsewhere are rarely given explicit permission for a sleepover.

Regulation in Dutch families consists of a dual strategy of consultation and the incorporation of the sexual relations of high-school-aged couples into the home. At first the sleepover might appear to American parents and teenagers as permissive or hands-off, and a sign that parents “don’t care.” But as we have seen, preparing for and negotiating the terms of the sleep- over can, in fact, involve exercising a great deal of oversight. By bringing teenage sexuality into conversation and into household practices, Dutch parents can encourage teenagers to pace themselves in their sexual and emotional development, to treat pleasure and preparation as equally im- portant parts of maturation, and to choose sexual partners who can be in- tegrated in a
normal
way into the household. Indeed, that several Dutch girls say explicitly that they are not interested in bringing a boyfriend home for the night and would rather sleep elsewhere demonstrates that they are well aware of the controlling aspects of consultation and incorporation.

The two modes of regulation aim at different parts of the self. The dual strategy of prohibition and granting a separated space outside the home to date is more external in nature. Control is exercised by limiting, though not entirely eliminating, the times and the external spaces in which young peo- ple can explore their romantic and sexual desires. This dual strategy of pro- hibiting and granting privileges aims to control sexual
behavior
but not the sexual experiences themselves or the relationships in which they take place. By contrast, the dual strategy of incorporation and consultation aims at the inner life of teenagers, that is, at their emotional attachments and their competencies within those attachments. By foregoing the power of prohibi- tion and granting leeway, while encouraging conversation and consultation to reach agreement, Dutch parents aim to shape their teenage children’s desires to behave in accordance with the socially acceptable rules.

Regulation of sexuality includes the reasoning meant to elicit compli- ance with the rules. Here we find a notable difference: American teenagers are asked to comply with the rules against sex at home because they are teenagers, that is, because they are
not
adults. It is their ongoing dependence on parents that defines teenagers’ non-adult status. Dutch teenagers by con- trast are not asked to comply with the rules because they are non-adults. Rather, they are compelled to comply with the household rules because they are family
members
. Teenagers are expected to “take into account,” an expression without an explicit power differential, the needs of other family members and of the family as an institution. Their job is not to keep their

sexuality out of trouble and out of sight, as it is for American boys and girls, but rather to tailor their sexual progression and the new attachments they form so that these do not threaten the preexisting household culture.

Thirdly, the two modes of regulation require different types of self- formation from teenagers
and
their parents. Foucault calls this process of self-formation the
ethical work
: the work and the relationship to the self that the individual must develop in order to bring him- or herself into compli- ance with the ethical rules about sexuality. The American teenagers must engage in ethical work to physically and psychically separate their emerging sexual selves from their home life and relationship with their parents. While they are not forbidden from all sexual and romantic exploration, they are strongly discouraged from progressing toward intimate sexual contact. And since it is the norm for American teenagers to initiate such sex before leav- ing home, they must perform the ethical work necessary to reconcile their experiences with appearances to the contrary. Externally, this means not “getting caught.” Internally, it means erecting a barrier between their sexual self-expression and their roles as members of their family of origin.