Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (19 page)

“Frankly I don’t care what the answer is [with regard to whether or not you drank alcohol],” and I meant that. And I said, “But these are the things that I want you to know, and these are the things that I respect. If you want to know how to get more responsibility and privilege in your life, then this is
how the game’s set up
.”

With her mix of liberal and conservative attitudes, Jany Kippen articu- lates well the two approaches that American parents take to conflict with

their teenage children. The first stresses the importance of “letting go” of little things; the second stresses the necessity of “winning” the critical bat- tles. Jany disagrees with her son’s choice of clothes, but she has learned to respect his choices and keep her opinions to herself:

He’s into that baggy look. I hate it, but that’s getting better. He’s kind of outgrowing that phase. Actually, we don’t disagree that much. I have always been amazed at that, but it may be because we talk a lot. They are pretty free to talk to me, and I try to bite my tongue if I don’t like what they are saying and keep my opinions to myself until it’s time to give my opinions.

More often than not, Jany and her son resolve conflicts through a compro- mise. But Jany is not so affable on all matters. Like many American parents, Jany will tolerate baggy clothes and strange haircuts but draws the line at earrings or other forms of piercing. “I pick my battles and
there are certain battles I refuse to lose
.” What other battles might she refuse to lose?

There will be no smoking in my house. If I ever catch him smoking, he’s grounded and
dead meat
. Drugs will never be here. That is not a battle I will lose and, if it requires pulling him out and sending him to a military acad- emy, that’s what’ll happen. He knows those things. . . . He knows those are non-conditional rules. There’s no room for bargaining here. There’s no room for argument.

Like their American counterparts, Dutch middle-class parents say that ado- lescence is a period of heightened conflict in a family, at least theoretically, that is. In fact, there is a Dutch word specifically meant to describe the con- tentious teenage child, namely, the
puber
. The
puberteit
technically refers to the early teens when children go through puberty. In practice, however, the term
puber
is used mainly to refer to those teenage children who are espe- cially contentious, as in “real
pubers
.” The term can be applied to a person at any time during his or her youth—or even adulthood. Thus, sometimes a teenager is called a
puber
years after the physical changes of puberty have taken place. Parents may even speak of a twenty-year-old son or daughter who is being extraordinarily disagreeable or impulsive as going through a late
puberteit
.

Asked how one notices that a child is becoming a
puber
, Mieke Aalders says, “Well, that he simply does not listen to you anymore and wants to

follow his own mind. . . . To push through their will, that is of course
really
puber.” In the
puberteit
, children become “a bit more critical,” says Nienke Otten, “a bit more . . . insolent.”
Pubers
, Daphne Gelderblom explains, are more “difficult.” They have “a more clear own opinion, and at a cer- tain point they push off against you. They start to look at, ‘Where are your boundaries? Where are my boundaries? Where are your ideas and where are mine?’ And a child that is in the elementary school will do that in a more questioning manner, while a
puber
does that in a more postulating manner.” Mariette Kiers, a developmental psychologist, gives her profes- sionally informed take on the
puberteit
:

Around eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, you have a fairly egocentric period. That makes sense with all the changes in body and being and at that same time changing from elementary to secondary school. . . . Around fifteen, sixteen—if everything is all right—they are more or less back in balance. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen-year-olds are allowed to still be very unreasonable. [Children are] not taken totally seriously when they are in the
puberteit
.

Maybe because of this connotation of “not being taken totally seriously,” quite a few Dutch parents insist that neither they nor their children were ever “really
pubers
.” Helen de Beer “never really had
pubers
. Measured against what people describe as the
puberteit
, I don’t really have that—con- trary children, the revolution at home, I don’t have that at all.” Thinking back to his own adolescence, Karel Doorman does not recall having “a re- ally heavy
puberteit
,” nor does he see signs of such a development in his own children. Finally, Barbara Koning never saw her children “as
puber
in the sense of, ‘Oh, I have two
pubers
.’” Of course, “they did have that phase both of them, but it was not in that sense. Both boys were reasonably easy. So, even in the time when they started to develop and come into the
pu- berteit
, I never saw them as
pubers.”

If few Dutch middle-class parents will admit to having
puber
children themselves, many also have trouble naming any conflicts that have oc- curred in their family. Jolien Boskamp says she has “very few” disagree- ments with her daughter Natalie. Corrine van Zanden is also hard-pressed to recall disagreements she had with Petra when the latter was sixteen. And Ada Kaptein cannot think of any conflict: “No, absolutely not [any con- flicts]. No, knock on wood. No, I don’t believe that there are conflicts. No, we don’t really argue.” Even annoyances do not lead to arguments: “No, we really have a good household. . . . [Ours] is a very close-knit family. . . . We are really very close.”

Even those who talk about serious sources of conflict are quick to say conflicts are not
as bad as all that
. Marga Fenning mentions a variety of con- flicts in the course of the interview—over alcohol, sex, school—but when asked explicitly to talk about whether or not she had conflicts with her son, she says, “Thomas is an easygoing child. . . . Really, I did not have that many [conflicts] with Thomas.” Katinka Holt’s daughter Marlies drank excessively at least once and started smoking pot. But when asked what Katinka and Marlies disagreed about, Katinka says, “Well, about the time of coming home, I think. But beyond that, well it really has
not been as bad as all that
with her, I think.”

Of course, some Dutch parents do describe their children as “real
pu- bers
.” But when they do, parents tend to attribute their children’s
puber-like
behavior to unusual circumstances rather than to “natural” rebellion, as do their American counterparts. Han de Vries says that when his stepdaugh- ters were in their early and mid-teens, there was “an almost permanent conflict situation” about things like what time to come home. His wife, Mia Klant, responded to her daughter’s
puberteit
with a lot of anger. It was difficult, Mia explains, to “accept that they have their own opinion.” Han elaborates:

[When they are children] their opinion is our opinion and it almost has to be that way. In the
puberteit
, all that changes and children want parents to have their opinions and ideas. After that, you are again simply individuals who sometimes have the same opinion and sometimes different ones. . . . Now they have become more social, we can have fun together. . . . That is re- ally lucky because we could have just as easily killed them in the
puberteit
.

Looking back, Han believes his strong feelings of anger at the time were wrong. He says he and Mia reacted in “the wrong way” to the
puberteit
: “One could barely speak of any reason, from either side.” At the time, Han had just moved in with Mia. Unhappy about the new family configuration, his stepdaughters turned their
puberteit
“into a pretty aggressive attempt to get rid of me again.” Mia concurs, “Of course, we were also a bit in love, well a bit, very in love, and all such things. So we were also a bit guilty.” Han thinks Mia and he lost their sense of perspective during the conflicts. “In terms of behavior, there may not even have been such a difference be- tween them and us.” He thinks “maybe it is possible that [as a parent] you can be a
puber
at the same time that your children are.” His daughters have long left behind the
puberteit
. “Not that they don’t occasionally have
puber- like
tendencies,” Han adds. “But then again so do we.”

Han could tell the
puberteit
had passed when “we settled things in a normal manner through exchanging words back and forth, and that [our daughter] took account of our advice when she deliberated [about her own choices].” You can tell that a person has ceased to be a
puber
, Daphne Gelderblom explains, when parents and children find themselves more in the “sphere of consultation: it is no longer two opinions that can oppose one another, but it is more, ‘Gee, let’s move together in that direction.’” Her friend Margo Schutte concurs: “When children are
pubers
, as parents you make conscious compromises with them. After a while, you don’t feel anymore that they are compromises. No, then it is more a question of con- sulting with one another.”

To engage in consultations or
overleg
means to negotiate in a reasonable manner what one wants. But consultation goes beyond the American word negotiation; it requires also the aptitude to “take into account” the (some- times unarticulated) wishes of others. Moreover, both parties must be will- ing to stretch. When executed successfully, consultation proves to be a very effective method of soliciting compliance, so many Dutch parents indicate. Anne van Wijngaarden “consults” with her children. “So it gets discussed, ‘What time would you like to come home?’ What we decide is then accept- able to them, too, and then we average out.” Consequently, Anne explains, her children are always on time. Marlies de Ruiter also found consultation to be effective:

Really, [deciding what time the children must be home at night] happens in consultation. Sometimes we initially don’t agree with one another about the time of coming home. . . . But generally it goes fine, so that even if I initially disagree with the time, we can agree about the time in such a way that I think “Well, I would like it if it were an hour earlier.” [But] they do keep them- selves to that time even if they had to meet me halfway.

Unlike their American counterparts, Dutch parents do not talk about “curfews.” Few even use the word “rules.” Instead they speak of “agree- ments” (
afspraken
) which result from mutual consultations. Such agree- ments may regulate anything from the time a teenager goes to bed to the first vacation he or she takes alone. One the one hand, consultation can involve more external freedom of movement than most American middle- class parents are comfortable granting teenagers. For instance, when her fifteen-year-old daughter Fleur wanted to go to Spain on her own, Ria van Kampen “consulted” with her. They agreed that Fleur would go to Spain with an organization that provided a lot of guidance. This year, Ria and

Fleur agreed that she would be allowed to make the trip on her own and Ria is confident that Fleur will be able to “handle herself just fine.”

One the other hand, continuous consultation, whether spoken or un- spoken, requires a great deal of consensus-seeking and mutual regulation of a type that seems natural to Dutch middle-class parents but that is itself a formidable form of constraint. Among the most consensus-oriented are Hannie and Dirk de Groot. Hannie says with certainty that in “ninety-nine percent of the cases [of disagreement] we come to an agreement. It is really seldom the case that that does not happen. Maybe sometimes, a half a day goes by that it is not like that, but we always end up agreeing.” Moreover, far from “letting go” of the small things, consultation regulates them. The degree to which even mundane household matters were regulated in her host family dismayed the American exchange student who came to stay with Daphne Gelderblom:

We had agreements that people don’t just eat all day long whenever they feel like it. Very simple, that we assumed that you would eat breakfast to- gether and that you discuss things together, you look at what you want to do together. We were on holiday, and then that [kind of consultation] makes quite a difference in terms of your activities. So that it is not like everyone for himself and God for us all, but that when you are with a family, you do things differently.

In a family, you try to harmoniously solve disagreements, says Mari- ette Kiers. This is the so-called “harmony model,” which means “not to act as an authority figure who simply plucks a rule out of thin air.” Mariette explains:

We consult, we explain why—you know, try to demonstrate the reasonable- ness of our own point of view. . . . That is very Dutch. Yes, avoiding big con- flicts yes. “We’ll work it out together,” you know that slogan. Intuitively, it makes a lot of sense to me. It’s also a bit boring. I am not inclined to grab the emergency brake. I do, but only when [a child] has gone very far across the line of our agreements.

Like Mariette, Karel Doorman strives to find compromises with his daughter Heidi. He does so by adapting as a parent but also by requiring adaptation from Heidi herself. Having used that approach all along, Karel feels confident that he will continue to be able to regulate her behavior though consultation:

At this point, Heidi knows quite well what I will call [our] norms and values, what [my wife and I] want, what we find pleasant, what we find less pleas- ant. And well, sometimes, she still wants something different. Well, on those points, I think it is very pleasant if we can come to something with which we are both satisfied. And in general, that lies in the middle. Really forbidding things, that we only seldom do at the moment. And really we don’t need to.