Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (17 page)

The Dutch parents view the wish to participate in
gezelligheid
through drinking alcohol as a legitimate and respectable motivation for adolescents as well as for adults. Since drinking is legal at age sixteen while driving is illegal until age eighteen, Dutch parents have fewer acute dangers to worry about than do their American counterparts. Still, it is striking that few worry about the dangers of drinking. Marlies de Ruiter says alcohol has become “so much part of our society. . . . They see it at home, and then I think that as a sixteen-year-old, you are allowed to participate in that. I would hope though that as a sixteen-year-old, that they mainly drink at home and now and then when they go out.” Christien Leufkens uses a similar line of reasoning. It is perfectly reasonable to offer sixteen-year-olds something to drink at home, Christien says, since “for us, having a glass of wine at din- ner on the weekend is part of the culture. . . . Also [it is all right for them to drink outside the home], given that they want to partake in the nightlife.”

In addition to validating their teenage children’s wish to partake in so- ciability, Dutch parents express confidence that their children will moderate their alcohol intake. Jolien Boskamp, who expressed complete confidence in her daughter’s capacity for sexual self-regulation, “just know[s Natalie]

will also drink in moderation: She will drink one, two, maybe once she’ll drink three beers, but then that will be enough.” Similarly, echoing his confidence in his sixteen-year-old daughter’s ability to use contraception effectively, Karel Doorman is comfortable with the fact that his daughter Heidi drinks a glass of wine “now and then.” She is “ready for that,” Karel explains: “Because she has [drunk] herself, and I know that she is very mod- erate in how she drinks. So given the way she drinks, she is really ready.” Ria van Kampen also never “had problems” with Fleur drinking alcohol from time to time because “she is such a smart gal.”

Not all Dutch parents express that level of confidence in their chil- dren’s self-regulatory capacity. Parents of boys express more concern about too much drinking. Nevertheless, Dutch parents expect their sons also to learn to drink with acceptable levels of self-restraint. Karin Meier says her son Berend is ready to drink because “he wants to live a healthy life and drinking too much is not part of that [kind of life].” Jan Gaaij believes his son is old enough to drink now and then “in moderation” since Jan him- self also drinks in moderation. Nienke Otten expresses more concern than most Dutch parents about teenage drinking, and she admits she would rather not have her seventeen-year-old son drink. Still, she does not take a hard line:

If they really want to, you cannot keep them from the beers, but sometimes it goes of course beyond just one, that is the problem. [I won’t say,] “Never do it.” After all, they have to experience it. So I think even if they drink at six- teen, they need to have that experience. [They need to figure out answers to questions like,] How far do I want to go? Do I want to go along? They want to be together.

Like Nienke Otten, most Dutch parents believe learning to moderate one- self is something that young people need to and will learn, be it with a mistake here and there.

Hannie de Groot’s son once drank too much. But “it is not like I thought ‘now I really need to watch him.’ No, I more or less trusted that it would turn out all right.” Her husband Dirk agrees: “Because you had that experi- ence yourself once too—that you drank and then the next day you thought, ‘never again.’” By the time a person turns sixteen, he or she should have gained the ability to drink sensibly, Mariette Kiers believes: “At fourteen, you start tasting it secretively, you learn from that. By the time you’re six- teen you should be able to sensibly drink a beer. . . . If you don’t [drink],

you can’t know what it is.” Corrine van Zanden also does not worry about her teenage children:

I think they will discover that themselves [how far they can go]. I am not afraid of that. I think they can find those limits themselves. And they must experience it themselves once anyway, I say. If it ever happens, then I guess they must have that experience. I don’t worry about that. [Laughing] And if they go too far one time, as long as they clean up the mess themselves if they are going to throw up.

Even when Dutch parents are confronted with evidence of excessive be- havior, they still resort to the self-regulatory model for teaching about how to control it. When Marga Fenning’s son came home drunk at age fifteen, she was angry but she did not tell him, no alcohol: “It’s ridiculous to forbid it; it’s not like he needs to drink soda all night. [But] I told him, ‘It is fine if you drink something but at a certain point, you have to stop.’” It worked, she says, “After that it never happened again.” When her fourteen-year-old son told his father that he recently drank ten beers while socializing at the club where he plays sports, Ria van Kampen was taken aback, but not alarmed:
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We don’t say, “You are not allowed to do that.” Instead we say, “Wow, that takes us by surprise that you are so far [along]. We didn’t think you were that far.” [I think that a person] has to experiment [with alcohol]. So you get sick once or you need to throw up the next day. . . . It is kind of funny if that hap- pens once.

There are no two ways about it. To be an adult, you need to be earning your own living, American middle-class parents across the political spec- trum agree. To be an adult, earning a living is “very important, a major criteria,” says Jennifer Reed, a social conservative. “That’s the goal you would shoot for.” She expects her son to “be a responsible citizen and self- sufficient.” Cheryl Tober’s daughter Stephanie will be an adult “when she’s self-sufficient. When she’s able to take care of herself and go out there and be on her own, pay her own way.” Dierdre Mears, the self-described ex- hippie, will consider her son an adult “when he graduates from college and is off our medical plan. And, that’s not that I’m trying to get rid of him,

but the point at which he becomes substantially self-sufficient, that’s the criterion.” Asked to explain what she means by “substantially,” she says, “financially, emotionally, and psychologically self-sufficient.”

According to American parents, not being dependent anymore on other people, especially one’s parents, is key to being and feeling like an adult.
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To “feel like an adult sometimes you have to have some money of your own, and if you don’t feel like an adult, you don’t act like one either,” believes Jany Kippen. Alicia Groto concurs, “You never feel completely in- dependent until your parents are no longer supporting you.” Nancy Beard will consider her children adults when “they seem to be able to handle their own problems, to be financially independent [and] stand on their own two feet.” Depending on parents financially is not being really free, Doreen Lawton explains:

If you look at kids who can’t quite make it every month, and they still have to ask Mom and Dad for money, they’re not adults because they’re still tied to having to have financial access, and when you have the financial access, unfortunately, there’s usually strings attached, so you’re not free to be your own person. So you need to be financially independent of your parents.

One of the most passionate articulations of the belief that adult inde- pendence requires a radical break from the “ties that bind” comes from Pamela and Brad Fagan, well-to-do business owners who themselves grew up in modest middle-class families. Pamela will consider her daughter, a freshman in college, an adult when she is “a completely independent, self- contained adult . . . when she has graduated from college and is supporting herself.” Brad explains: “Sara still needs us and uses us as her emotional sounding board, wants to come home. [Right now, it’s] sort of like, leaving the nest but coming back to get recharged and then going out again, and the gaps are getting longer, and I think for Sara probably in another year or two, she’ll quit needing us that way.”

Although they are well-off, Pamela and Brad have been very clear about the limits of the financial support that their children will be receiving. “The kids are real clear,” Pamela says. “They know that this is our feeling. We will support them through college. We want them to get a college educa- tion. That’s their goals too, but they know that, ‘Hey kids, it’s up to you. You need to make your own way in the world and that’s how you learn and feel good about yourself and figure out who you are and what you’re doing and what you’d like to do.’” Brad explains that healthy maturation requires being forced to weather hardship and obstacles on one’s own. As a parent

he might choose to support his adult children at times, but he is under no obligation to do so:

I think the analogy is—I heard this—that in Australia there’s corals outside the Great Barrier Reef that aren’t protected and they’re very healthy and vi- brant and they grow very rapidly. And then there are corals that live inside where the waves can’t hit them and they’re not as challenged and it’s sort of stunted coral. And that’s the way I think life is. It’s the challenges and adver- sity that gives us our character and our uniqueness and that ultimately peo- ple thrive on. . . . [My daughters] are going to be on their own. There’s going to be a point where, in a catastrophe, they could move back, but there will be a clear message: “You are on your own. And you are to make your way in the world, and I don’t participate in giving you money unless I choose to, and you have to make your own way.”

American middle-class parents like to see evidence of their children’s outward push away from the home, even before they are able to financially support themselves. They are relieved when their children want to go away to college far away from home. Cheryl Tober really hopes both her chil- dren will “go away” to college: “I think that they grow up a lot faster when they are away.” Jennifer Reed wants her son “to go somewhere else” for college. “That sounded bad. Didn’t it?” she adds. Her son is a homebody, and she expects him to go to college in-state, somewhere within driving distance but “hopefully a couple of hours away.” Rhonda Fursman is de- lighted that her daughter Kelly “wants to explore. She is ready to go all the way to the East Coast. . . . She is ready to go.” Her son might “be a little more problematic.” Unlike her daughter, Sam is a popular and social child. “Because of his attachment to the local community and his friends, he might decide he wants to spend two years at a junior college.” But Rhonda says:

I would like the kids to be gone. I really think they should go away, if it is at all possible, just because Corona is a small town. And it is not the center of the universe. And I think they need to go see other places and see other people. . . . I might kick [Sam] out anyway, because he needs to go.

Although financial self-sufficiency remains for most American parents the ultimate criterion for independence, moving out is a good first step. For middle-class children, many of whom will be financially dependent until their early twenties, demonstrating readiness “to go” is an important

marker. Brad Fagan, who spoke so eloquently about the crucial role of fi- nancial self-sufficiency in achieving healthy adulthood, conceptualizes his daughter’s move to college in similarly dramatic terms. He is not sure whether she will be ready to move out when that moment comes. How- ever, he believes, children “need to move out when they’re eighteen. It’s sort of a
trial by fire
. I mean, ready or not, there it comes because they need to catch up with the real world.”
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In sharp contrast to their American counterparts, Dutch middle-class par- ents do not believe that earning a living is necessary to becoming an adult.
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“Being an adult does not have to do with money,” says Ada Kaptein. Money “does play a large role [in society] these days. But it has nothing to do with being an adult. No.” Trudie van Vliet agrees. Being an adult has to do with “how you are mentally, how you deal with the normal situations of life but not whether you make money or not.” Both Ada Kaptein and Trudie van Vliet are full-time homemakers. But Jos de Vries, a self-employed business man, also says, “I don’t think [working] has anything to do with being an adult.”

It is not that earning one’s own living is not important eventually, be- cause it is. But it does not constitute the defining feature of adulthood. Karin Meier thinks earning money is important in adulthood, but her son, Berend, will be an adult before he is financially self-sufficient: “Going to university I see as a sort of work. He gets money for that,” referring to the student stipend Berend will receive from the government when he starts going to college. A couple of parents stress that they want their children to work rather than rely on government benefits as a long-term way of life: “We don’t give [our children] that attitude,” says Jacqueline Starring. Her husband Piet adds, “No, I do think that they must work.” However, Piet would regard his son as an adult in college even if he were not able to contribute financially since, “Yes, studying is like working.” Likewise, Loek Herder believes earning an income “eventually is important,” but:

[Earning one’s own income] does not need to happen very early on. You know, if they are in college [they don’t earn their own income]. . . . I do hope [my son] will earn his own money, certainly. [I hope] that he would not be- come unemployed or go on disability benefits or whatever. . . . But it is not like he would not be able to be an adult [just] because [he relies on govern- ment benefits], that is another story.

If not earning an income, what then defines adulthood in the Nether- lands? Taking care of oneself, say Dutch parents. Though earning a living through employment is not the yardstick, “taking care of oneself”
is
critical to being, and being considered, an adult. Dutch parents articulate a con- cept of “self-care” which revolves around being able to sensibly regulate one’s everyday affairs. Jolien Boskamp says an adult is “someone who can think sensibly. I think that is the most important thing for adulthood— being able to think and act in a sensible manner.” Adulthood, Corrine van Zanden explains, is when people “can organize matters well. They can say ‘I have time for this then, and time for that then. I do this thing this way and I do the other thing that way.’” Apparently exasperated at being asked to explain what she regards as self-evident, Corinne repeats, “[Be- ing an adult means] being able to organize everything well and regulate everything well.” Ria van Kampen articulates precisely what “taking care of oneself” means to her: