Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (20 page)

Karel Doorman intimates, however, that beneath the “harmony model” runs an undercurrent of tension. He talks about how Heidi would like to work in a job between the last day of school and the vacation they will be taking as a family. However, Karel and his wife think that would be too busy. They may say, “That is not going to happen.” But that kind of con- frontation is rare, Karel says: “[Heidi] feels how strong we are in [some of our opinions]. She no longer looks for those boundaries because she knows that she won’t make it. . . . She is getting to know us well. She knows that it is not going to happen without us having to explicitly say, ‘It won’t happen,’ she realizes that.” In other words, with the train on certain tracks, grabbing “the emergency brake” is unnecessary.

This chapter has examined the two distinct individualisms that took shape in post-1960s American and Dutch middle-class families and other insti- tutions. Built on longstanding cultural traditions, the two cultures of in- dividualism forged nationally specific interpretations and experiences of the challenges to traditional sexual, gender, and authority relations. In the United States, the individualism of the post-1960s era built on a tradition of viewing the self as autonomous from others and social ties as matters of choice rather than necessity. Yet, these concepts of self and the social also made self-restraint and social bonds seem fragile when the institu- tions that had instilled order were changing. In the Netherlands, by con- trast, lay individuals, scholars, and commentators could embrace growing self-determination because they still conceived of the self as embedded in a sociality where mutual attunement instills individual and societal order.

The Dutch and American parents who came of age during the 1960s and ’70s illuminate these
adversarial
and
interdependent
individualisms that are products of the confluence of change and continuity. They use these different models of individualism and control to explain how they respond to a teenager who drinks alcohol, how they decide when it is time to treat an adolescent like an adult, how some transgressions make a child “dead

meat,” or how grabbing the “the emergency brake” is usually not really necessary. Each model has an internal logic. It makes sense to occasionally use blatant unilateral parental force if adolescents are impulsive by nature and autonomy can only come from having to struggle. And it makes sense to resolve conflict through consultation—even about small things—requir- ing all parties to engage in social attunement and self-regulation, when adolescents, like adults, are social by nature and autonomy equals sensible self-regulation and self-expression within a larger sociality.

Insight into these internal cultural dynamics sheds new light on several areas of cross-national variation that have puzzled researchers and social commentators: Americans of the post 1960s-era are in many ways deeply individualistic. Yet they remained more attached to the ideal of marriage, more devout in their religiosity, and more supportive of measures of harsh justice, for instance, than many of their European counterparts, including the Dutch. But the juxtaposition of these different values and attachments are not matters of contradiction, as often assumed: without a concept of self as intrinsically embedded in social relationships and institutions that support them and require restraint from them, Americans may be more inclined to embrace institutions and practices that exert a clearly external control over individuals and their impulses—whether in the form of mar- riage contracts, religious dictates, or the legal system.

The two models of individualism also make the American and Dutch parents’ interpretations and management of adolescent sexuality common- sensical: it makes sense that American parents view teenage sexuality as a potential drama if teenagers are so impulsive that strong external stimula- tion has the effect of “gasoline on a bonfire.” Moreover, if becoming an individual requires struggle, then bonds of love that are forged too early can threaten one’s personhood, while the battle of the sexes is just one of many arenas in which a teenager fights for the right—or loses it—to be his or her own person. If healthy adult autonomy is predicated on the eradica- tion of emotional and financial dependencies on others, one’s parents in particular, then a sleepover at home—which domesticates new ties before old dependencies have been severed—violates the emotional trajectory re- quired for attaining adulthood. Finally, if parental authority is contingent upon winning the critical battles, then it makes sense that parents force- fully forbid sexual activity they deem wrong rather than negotiate a place for it at home.

Similarly, the Dutch model of modern interdependent individualism makes the normalization of adolescent sexuality possible and plausible. If teenagers learn self-control through their participation in regular social

intercourse, then adolescent sexuality, mediated as it is through relation- ships, need not to be feared for its dangerous consequences. If individuals can reach full adulthood within the social fabric of which they are part, teenage love can coexist with maturation. When adulthood is contingent on self-regulation in the context of ongoing relationships rather than on self-sufficiency, and control is exerted through implicit or explicit consul- tation rather than use of overt power, then it makes sense for parents to negotiate teenage sexuality in the home and to regard the sleepover not as a threat to the authority of parents nor the autonomy of children.

The two models of individualism not only interpret the behavior of teen- agers; they also constitute and control it—though, as we will see shortly, by no means entirely. Each version of individualism permits its own freedoms and calls for its own restraints. The freedom that Dutch teenagers receive to drink and to have sex when they are ready is predicated upon the con- dition that they behave like the socially oriented and internally regulated individuals that their parents describe them to be. Their freedom not to be subjected to unilateral parental force is predicated upon the expecta- tion that they behave “reasonably” and “take into account” their parents’ wishes, of their own doing. That Dutch parents believe neither autonomy nor authority necessitates conflict suggests an expectation and a wish that their children will not be different from them.
41
It is no wonder that Dutch teenagers want to be but also sometimes resist being “normal.”

American parents, by contrast, expect and encourage their children to be “different.”
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The centrifugal tendencies which parents hope will take their children, as adults, into the great unknown also induce anxiety and do not give them faith in teenagers’ self-regulating capacities. Believing that autonomy requires a radical emotional and financial break between their children and themselves, American parents lack the trust of their Dutch counterparts in the essential similarity and continuity between parents and children. Having neither expected nor instilled the self-regulation and so- cial attunement that Dutch parents require from their children, American parents use more overt forms of power. Yet, even as they insist on winning the important battles—and sexuality is one of those—with force if neces- sary, parents expect their children to evade and break the rules. No wonder then, that American teenagers spend a great deal of time hiding their sexual and drinking activities—and also getting caught.

FIVE

“I Didn’t Even Want Them to Know”

Connection through Control

“If there is a heaven, I’m sure it was just like my childhood,” says sixteen- year-old Kimberley. As the youngest of four, in a close upper-middle-class family, Kimberley counts her blessings. “I think a lot about what a wonder- ful job my family, and the society that I was exposed to, did of keeping me a kid, and unaware of all the horrible things that happen [in the world]. [I experienced] total happiness as a kid.” Her parents still try to shelter her. “I have curfews, and I have to always let my parents know where I am. They have to feel comfortable with everything that I am doing.” At the same time, Kimberley is getting “some privileges handed that you would as an adult,” like driving:

I’m beginning to get to do things on my own and start to have my own pri- vate life away from my family. Sometimes . . . I think my parents have too much control, or they think they should have a lot of license into my per- sonal life, which I really do not agree with. . . . I want to choose things for myself, be my own person.

“Sex is the main thing,” says Kimberley when asked about what kind of things she and her parents disagree. “They have different ideas. I mean, I don’t know if they disagree with me so much, it’s just that they don’t want me to do anything.” It is not that Kimberley is against all her parents’ rules. She thinks rules are important in a family because “it draws a line and when you cross that line, you know you’re doing something that hurts an- other person.” And she keeps to the twelve o’clock curfew her parents give her on the weekends because she does not want to worry them. But she has a different attitude toward the rule that she is not allowed to be in a house

alone with her boyfriend. “I don’t follow that one,” she says. “I mean you can make [rules for sex], but you can’t always expect them to be followed, if you want to have like an independent kid.”

Kimberley has been very independent. When she and her boyfriend had been together for four months, they decided together that they wanted to start having sex. She believes “you have to keep yourself safe and protected and do everything you can to not come across any problems. In my opin- ion, if you love someone, it’s okay to have sex. That’s my morals. I’ve always thought that since I was little and it’s come time, I guess.” And when that time came, Kimberley took herself to “the clinic to get on the birth control pill.” She regards herself lucky that she received a great deal of sex educa- tion in school. Her parents never talked to her about sex since, “God no, oh no, it’s not going to happen, you know.” But at school, “from the time I was like in fourth grade, and we started to get curious,” teachers were forth- coming. “They gave us [sex education], and I thought that was great because you’re not like running around to try and find out that information.”

Sex happens at Kimberley’s boyfriend’s house when his parents are not home. His parents “wouldn’t want it,” she says. “But I’m sure they know. Maybe his dad doesn’t condone it, but he doesn’t say anything against it either, and I think his mom’s the same way, just kind of, lets us do our own thing and trusts us.” Kimberley cannot imagine her own parents ever giv- ing her the kind of tacit permission to explore sexuality that her boyfriend’s parents give him. Nor could she imagine ever being permitted to spend the night with her boyfriend in their home. “Even if I was like twenty-five, it wouldn’t happen. . . . Unless you’re married, forget it.” Her older brothers have been allowed to spend the night with a fiancé, but not with a girl- friend. Not that Kimberley would want her boyfriend spending the night at her parents’ house. “I wouldn’t want him to stay in my house . . . because that is not something I want to share with my parents.”

What Kimberley does mind is that she hides parts of her life from her parents. “I’m not completely open,” she says. “I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work.” When she and her boyfriend first went out, “it was very bad.” There were “lots of rules like about not being in his room and always having a parent around. Lots of control issues. Trying to make sure nothing hap- pened they did not approve of. It got really nasty for a while.” When her mother found a letter suggesting Kimberley had lost her virginity, “we had a big fight and she said I was not allowed to see him anymore. I told them I didn’t do it and [the letter] was a joke. They finally believed me. But they said, ‘It’s our business just as much as it’s yours until you’re an adult.’” Things have calmed down since then:

They’ve learned a little bit to accept it more and I’ve learned a little bit how to hide what I’m doing better. Before I wanted to share everything with my parents, but I realized that doesn’t really work. For them, it’s just easier not to know. So, now I just do my own thing and . . . [just] let them see what makes them happy.

Sex is not the only thing that would make Kimberley’s parents unhappy. Kimberley occasionally smokes marijuana. Were her mother to discover the smoking, that “would shatter her image of me as a little princess: ‘Do everything right. Just get the A’s.’ But if it makes her happy, I’m willing to do whatever I can to uphold it.” Hoping that “nothing blows up before I’m out of the house, so I don’t get caught,” Kimberley does not want her parents to be interviewed: “I don’t want to start them thinking about sex.

. . . They’re doing a very good job of being oblivious. . . . I’m not a liar. If they ask me, I can’t lie.” Still, Kimberley thinks things could be a lot worse. “I have a good relationship with both my parents, in every way except for the fact that I have to hide a few things because I’m the baby, and the baby has to be a certain way.”

Michael liked turning sixteen. “That is the year that you get a lot of free- dom.” His parents had only a couple of rules: “Grades were a big thing.” But being a star athlete—playing football, baseball, and soccer—in a fam- ily of outdoorsmen and physical education teachers, Michael was not ex- pected to earn perfect grades. Getting “C’s or better, and in P.E. (Physical Education) like A’s,” was good enough for them. On the weekends, Michael would go out and drink heavily, get “a little rowdy,” and come home “look- ing like crap.” After trying to punish him to no avail, his parents switched gears. “Just don’t get into trouble. Just don’t get arrested,” they told him. The deal was, as long as his grades were okay, “they can’t really complain about what I’m doing on the weekend.” Still, there was tension between his parents and his quest for freedom:

When you’re sixteen, they still want to be a big part of your life. You’re trying to get out and have more freedom, and they’re probably not ready to let you have all the freedom that you’d like. So, they’re trying to be a big part, your family. But you are kind of shutting them out. . . . You’re kind of like, “Oh well, I’m sixteen now, I’ve got a lot more freedom. I want to be my own person.”