Read Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex Online
Authors: Amy T. Schalet
ones—commanded almost half of the primetime market share (van der Haak and van Snippenburg 2001, 218). Moreover, as has been the case in the United States, the internet has greatly increased young people’s exposure to unregulated media content, especially with regard to sexuality.
CHAPTER THREE
A recent study found that “cervical cancer screening continues to limit prescription of routine and emergency contraception by many U.S. obstetrician/gynecologists” (Schwarz et al. 2005), despite the fact that in 1993 the Food and Drug Administra- tion voted to allow physicians to prescribe oral contraception without performing a pelvic examination. One year earlier, Planned Parenthood changed its medical stan- dard to allow a three-month deferral between prescription and exam. This change was “based on a nationwide survey done in 1986 that revealed a 60% rate among teenagers who considered the exam a barrier to family planning service use” (Re- vised Oral Contraceptive Labeling: FDA Approves Recommendation Allowing Delay of Pelvic Exam 1993).
See Mosher et al. 2005 and de Graaf et al. 2005.
See, for instance, Luker 1975 and Nathanson 1991.
The absence of a language of love to refer to adolescent sexuality in American public education and health campaigns is particularly notable when compared to several European countries. As noted in previous chapters, a publicly financed and widely used Dutch sex education program is entitled “Long Live Love.” In France and Ger- many, themes of adolescent love have also been integrated into prevention cam- paigns (Berne and Huberman 1999). However, in an exploratory comparison be- tween the United States and Denmark, Rose (2005) suggests that Danish girls are less inclined to use the word love in relation to their sexual relations than American girls.
The vision of sexuality as an arena in which adolescents can easily lose control of themselves is common in American social scientific writing as well (Griffin 1993).
See also Michaud (2006) for the dominance of the risk paradigm in public health research and Fine (1988), Fine and McClelland (2006), and Fields (2008) for its prevalence in American sex education.
Kirsten Rickets and her husband seem to have a similarly gendered dynamic. When their fifteen-year-old son went to a sleepover party together with some female friends, Kirsten’s husband Gary was hoping that he had sex. “You think he’ll get some tonight?” he asked Kirsten. Her husband “loved his teenage sex years and so he wants my son to have the same thing.” Kirsten Ricketts’ response to her hus- band’s musing was, “it’s like, ‘GARY!!!’”
Brad Fagan believes kids are ready once they are eighteen: “Out of our house, out of sight, do what you want.” However, were his daughters to come home and say, “By the way, we’re sleeping together anyway and we’d like to share the same bed here,” he would consider it. His wife is skeptical, but Brad insists: “If they wanted to fight their way through it, and if they’re adult enough to talk about it, then I’m adult enough to respect that.” One could interpret Brad’s criterion for adult recog- nition as an application of what Robert Bellah and colleagues (1985) call “expres- sive individualism”: individual personhood is determined by the capacity to express oneself.
In a book first published in 1968, anthropologist David Schneider (1980) argued that in the symbolic logic that defined family and kinship roles in America, sexual
Notes to Pages 66–77 / 237
intercourse was something that should only happen between parents. More than four decades later, there is still considerable symbolic power in this definition of kinship roles.
Bellah et al. 1985. See also Derné 1994.
In articulating romantic and realistic conceptions of love and commitment, the American parents illustrate the two languages of love that Ann Swidler has argued middle-class Americans draw on: the “heroic” language of love, which corresponds to the experience of the institution of marriage which requires a life-altering choice, and the “prosaic” language of love that “helps people be the kinds of persons, with the kinds of feelings, skills, and virtues, that will sustain an ongoing relationship” as marriage has become a less stable institution (Swidler 2001, 131).
This is a common theme. Many American parents do not want their children to repeat or to know about their “wilder” days—whether those concern sex, drugs, or alcohol. For similar accounts of regret regarding one’s experiences during the 1960s, see Tipton 1982.
By contrast, Henry Martin, who grew up in a working-class environment, describes having had fewer resources.
See for instance, D’Emilio and Freedman 1988.
Duyvendak 1996.
In his study of American culture, the French sociologist Hervé Varenne (1977) found that adolescent love too is conceived as a drama in American families.
During the 1950s, many young Americans established their own families in their teens and very early twenties. In 1951, the average age of marriage was 22.6 for men and 20.4 for women (Bailey 1988, 43), although as Frank Furstenberg (2007, 9) has pointed out, early marriage did not necessarily equate postponing sex until af- ter marriage, as throughout the 1950s a large proportion of teenagers who married were pregnant.
CHAPTER FOUR
Garssen 2008; Kost et al. 2010; and van Lee et al. 2009. These differences are based on a comparison of 2006 rates. See also chap. 1, n. 16. The differences between the two countries were even greater during the 1990s when American teenage preg- nancy rates were higher.
The available data suggests that sexual intercourse outside of monogamous roman- tic relationships is more common among American teenagers than it is among Dutch teenagers, but it is not possible to draw firm conclusions since the surveys ask different questions. De Graaf and colleagues (2005) found that 80 percent of sexually active Dutch girls and women and 68 percent of sexually active Dutch boys and men, ages twelve through twenty-five, had their last intercourse in a steady, mo- nogamous, romantic relationship. (Native-born Dutch boys and men were signifi- cantly more likely than first- or second-generation immigrants to have had their last sex in a monogamous romantic relationship.) There were also differences by age: two-thirds of fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds, versus three-quarters of eighteen to twenty-year-olds, had their last intercourse in a steady monogamous relationship. Most American teenagers have their first sexual intercourse in the context of a dating relationship. However, a recent study found that once sexually experienced, half of girls and two-thirds of American boys have intercourse outside a dating relation- ship, usually with a friend or acquaintance. More than half of those in non-dating sexual relationships, and four out of ten of those in dating sexual relationships, say
one or both partners is “seeing someone else” (although not necessarily having sex with them) (Manning, Giordano, and Longmore 2006).
For descriptions of gender roles and authority relations in American middle-class families of the 1950s, see, for instance, Coontz 1992. For descriptions of gender roles and authority relations in Dutch families of that time, see van der Kamp and Krijnen 1987 and du Bois-Reymond 1990.
Brinkgreve and Korzec 1978; du Bois-Reymond 1993b; du Bois-Reymond, Peters, and Ravesloot 1990; Alwin 1989; and Lareau 2003.
Bellah et al. 1985, 142.
See also Wright 1977 and Hewitt 1989.
Bellah et al. 1985, 144.
Bellah et al. 1985, 146. See also Swidler 2001. 9. Swidler 2001, 157.
Cherlin 2009.
An indicator of the social security net is the “unemployment benefit replacement rate.” In 2000, this OECD-calculated summary measure of benefits was at least 25 in most of continental Europe. In the Netherlands, this summary benefit measure ranged from 48 to 57 between 1965 and 2000. In the United States, by contrast, it ranged from 9 to 14 during that same period (OECD 2009). Even those govern- ment programs that have lifted segments of the population out of poverty in the United States—such as Social Security—are commonly conceptualized in terms of individual earners and savings even though, in fact, they involve intergenerational redistribution (Fischer et al. 1996).
Whitman 2003.
The culture of control that has permeated American legal and extralegal institu- tions disproportionately affects poor and minority youth but also affects the white middle class (Garland 2001). One Corona boy, interviewed in 1998, for instance, complained that police surveillance was becoming increasingly strict.
Stephenson 1989, 232. Stephenson also notes the high value in Dutch culture placed on
gezelligheid
and on spending time together, even if that means spending time together in very close quarters, a value which he contrasts with that placed on getting away from others in North American cultures.
Stephenson 1989, 244.
Schama 1988. Others have also argued that the geography of the Netherlands has shaped Dutch culture. Robert Kaplan (2010) has argued that as colonialists in In- donesia, the Dutch “were the most utilitarian of imperialists,” as a consequence of their struggles with water in their own home land, much of which lies below sea level: “You could ‘manage’ water but could not ‘force’ it. Thus, there developed the supreme need for tolerance within their own community, out of which such coordi- nation and cooperation could emerge. It was a culture of ‘consensus’” (264).
Kickert 2003. Lijphart (1975) coined the term “politics of accommodation.” Until the 1960s, Dutch society was organized according to “pillars” (one Catholic, two Protestant, one Liberal, and one Socialist), resulting in a “segmented” pluralism that kept members of the pillars largely separated from one another. The pillars, perhaps best envisioned as silos, had elaborate political infrastructures which included not only political parties but also unions, newspapers, sports clubs, and other institu- tions of public life. Membership in a pillar was determined by religious affiliation or politics. Because none of the pillars could attain a majority status, elite members of the pillars had to form coalitions and broker agreements with one another in
Notes to Pages 80–81 / 239
order to govern, although lower down the social ranks of each pillar the population was expected to be quite passive (see also Ellemers 1984). During the heyday of pil- larization, between 1920 and the 1960s, movement between the pillars was mini- mal. However, with the secularization and social mobility of the 1960s and 1970s, the pillars lost much of their grip on Dutch society. Today, the shell of the older pil- lar structure can still be found in politics, the names of clubs and newspapers, and in the organizations of schools.
New interest groups included, for instance, gays and lesbians (Schuyf and Krouwel 1999; Duyvendak 1996) and recent immigrants (Soysal 1994). In her 1980s study of immigration policies in Europe, Soysal found “consultative arrangements” with immigrant groups to be taken for granted at all levels of Dutch policymaking.
The emphasis in Dutch social theory of 1970s and ’80s on interdependence and the strengthening, rather than loosening, of commitments was preceded by such an emphasis in Dutch political rhetoric of the 1960s. The Dutch, writes historian James C. Kennedy (1995), became convinced that “solidarity, unity, and integration were
necessary
developments” (my translation and emphasis). The Dutch queen illustrated this conviction when she stated in her speech of 1963 that “in this time of dynamic developments the awareness of mutual dependence grows and the de- sire for cooperation increases as well.” The belief in interdependence did not just extend to intranational social relations but also to international ones. In donating aid to non-Western nations, the Dutch were among the most generous (Kennedy 1995).
This scholarship accepted as a given premises of Norbert Elias’ civilizing process thesis. Abram de Swaan (1981) coined the term “management by negotiation” to describe the new ways in which behavior became regulated in intimate and pub- lic relationships, a form of behavior control that created greater latitude but also required greater mutual consideration and self-control. Cas Wouters (1986; 1987) argued similarly that as people became more interdependent, it meant that their behavior could become more informal and diversified, but also that they experi- enced greater pressures to control themselves and identify with the needs of oth- ers. Dutch family sociologists echoed the same sentiments. In 1990, Dutch family scholars stated authoritatively that “the modern household” was based on “indi- vidualization and negotiation” (du Bois-Reymond, Peters, and Ravesloot 1990): modern parents must develop critical capacities such as the ability to rein in their aggressive tendencies and refrain from physical punishment, and to communicate effectively and reach solutions agreeable to all parties. The shifting balance of power makes the relationships between the sexes and generations more equal and also more emotionally intimate. Surveying family research of the preceding twenty-five years, a report by a national Dutch research and policy institute observed in 1997 that the emotional bonds between parents and children had “strongly increased,” and it asked, only partly tongue in cheek, whether the Netherlands might be able to stake a claim to the Nobel prize for childrearing (Praag and Niphuis-Nell 1997).
On the unusual equalization in the Netherlands in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, see De Graaf and Ganzenboom 1993 and Szirmai 1988. For the history of the Dutch welfare state, see Engbersen et al. 1993. Writing in the early 1990s, the latter au- thors state that in relation to the American one, the Dutch policy style is “informal, flexible, cooperative, and consensual rather than adversarial, relying more on per- suasion than on coercion, and willing to take account of specific circumstances of individual clients” (20).
Tonry and Bijlenveld 2007.
Although it goes beyond the scope of this study, I suspect that other cultural and philosophical traditions also played an important role in facilitating this transition, including religious traditions that emphasize self-discipline, notably Calvinism (see also Gorski 2003). Historian James C. Kennedy (1995) suggests that Dutch interpretations and experiences of the 1960s were shaped by German idealism and romanticism. From that tradition, they took the notion that society is like an organism that grows according to its own rhythm, a notion, Kennedy points out, that is reflected in the Dutch expression “society develops itself.” Echoes of that same sentiment can of course be heard in Dutch parents’ discussions of
er aan toe zijn
.
James C. Kennedy (1995) argues that by taking a flexible, accommodating approach, authorities largely maintained order in the Netherlands. Garland (2001, 202) also argues that the Netherlands, along with several other countries, does not fit his ac- count of the emergence of a culture of control in the post-1960s era.
Drug use was more common among American youth who were high-school aged in the early 1970s than among Dutch youth of that time. In 1975, more than 40 percent of American twelfth graders had ever used cannabis (marijuana or hash- ish) versus (an estimation of) less than 20 percent of Dutch eighteen-year-olds (MacCoun and Reuter 1997). International comparative data for more serious drugs is not available for that time period. However, a recent international survey by the World Health Organization found much higher lifetime use of both can- nabis (42 percent) and cocaine (16 percent) in the United States than in almost any other country. Dutch lifetime use was 20 percent for cannabis and 2 percent for cocaine (Degenhardt et al. 2008). Comparing cannabis users in San Francisco and Amsterdam, Reinarman and colleagues (2004) found that the former were more likely than the latter to also use “hard drugs.”
The expression is a play on Barbara Ehrenreich’s
The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment
(1983). While Ehrenreich argues that American men’s flight from commitment to the family started before the sexual revolution, Kristin Luker (1975) and others have contended that the sexual revolution loosened the gender bargain between men and women that had previously provided women both emotional and economic security.
Knijn 1994a; 1994b; and Kremer 2007.
As wages fell behind the cost of living in the late 1970s, Claude Fischer (2010, 54) argues, one way middle-class families could maintain their lifestyles was by having mothers work a greater number of hours. In her 1990s study, Hochschild (1997) found that while middle-class mothers generally embraced their working hours, working-class mothers preferred to work less but could not afford to do so.
Drawing explicit comparisons with the United States, James C. Kennedy (1995) ar- gues that Dutch public administrators responded sympathetically, rather than hos- tilely, to the youth protests of the 1960s. Choosing an accommodating, nonviolent exercise of authority in order to channel new developments in a socially acceptable direction, public administrators of the 1960s prefigured a philosophy that would inform the Dutch policy in the following decades. Historian Beth Bailey (1999) comments by contrast on the aggressive—both verbal and physical—reactions to student protests and rebellion in the United States.
Interestingly, Dutch youth and American white youth move out from their parents’ home at roughly the same age. Among twenty to twenty-four-year-olds, a little over
Notes to Pages 83–95 / 241
a third of young women in both countries live in their parental home. In that age group, 65 percent of Dutch young men and 52 percent of white American young men still live at home (Iacovou 2002).
In Tremont, a high-school student who is caught at a party at which alcohol is served is, by high-school statute, automatically suspended from playing sports. Such suspensions carry not only social repercussions in a town where playing and watch- ing high-school sports constitutes a treasured pastime, but they can also carry eco- nomic repercussions for those who would otherwise be eligible for college athletic scholarships.
Until the mid-1990s, these student stipends were unconditional for those participat- ing in higher education. Since then, “basic stipends,” which can be supplemented by needs-based stipends, have become conditional on successful completion of a degree within ten years. Otherwise they are converted into loans.
Despite their greater dependence on parents, American young adults cannot make a legal claim to ongoing parental financial support, as can Dutch young adults whose parents are required to continue to support their adult children up to age twenty- one, if they can afford to do so.
A few American parents, who were typically raised Catholic, are more open to the idea that a sixteen-year-old could be ready to drink. Kirsten Rickets, for instance, says, “I was raised Irish. Everybody drinks from the time you’re little. You don’t drink copious amounts; you just have a drink with dinner.”
Several parents comment on ways in which legal constraints and culture shape their responses to the question of whether or not a sixteen-year-old is ready to drink al- cohol. Bonnie Oderberg, for instance, says that most are not ready to drink: “As our laws stand now, no. In this culture, as this culture is now, no.”
The standard Dutch beer glasses are about half the size of the pint-sized mugs that have become popular in American bars and restaurants.
Several American parents acknowledge that a person who is unemployed or a homemaker might not be financially self-sufficient for a period, but they tend to view these situations as exceptional.
In
Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
, Robert Bel- lah and colleagues argue that “breaking away” from the parental home is critical to American understandings of individualism and independence, and that parents ac- tively encourage children to indeed “break away.” They write: “While it sometimes appears to be a pitched battle only the heroic or rebellious wage against the paren- tal order, more often the drive to get out in the world on your own is part of the self-conception Americans teach their children.” The adults the authors interviewed “describe their coming of age in terms of breaking away from dependency on par- ents and relying on themselves, though in many cases, they continue to have close relations with their parents” (Bellah et al. 1985, 57). The sociologist Derek Phillips (1985) was also struck by how Americans viewed their children’s leaving home as a radical break.
For a similar finding among parents of Dutch college students in the 1980s, see de Regt 1988.
Dutch university students who do not live with their parents typically inhabit “rooms”: they eat, sleep, study, and entertain in a room that is part of a house or apartment which they share with other students. Such living arrangements lack the supervision or structures for eating and socializing that typically characterize dormi- tory life at American colleges.
Indeed, when I told a Dutch psychologist that American parents expect their children to be different, she looked astonished. No, she said, Dutch parents really don’t want their children to be different; they want them to be normal.
French anthropologist Hervé Varenne (1977) notes that American children are taught by educators, and especially by their parents, to differentiate themselves.