Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (21 page)

One area in which Michael wanted nothing at all to do with his parents was sex. He got information about sex from his friends. “I never talked to my parents about all that. . . . God, [it] grosses me out, talking to your parents about sex.” Asked whether his parents ever discussed contraception with him, Michael responds, “Not a word was said about it. . . . Actually, they just said, ‘Don’t ever get a girl pregnant,’ is the only thing my mom’s ever said about that. My dad, he’s never said a word to me.” When Michael started having sex with his girlfriend during his sophomore year, he first kept it secret:

It was more about sneaking around type of thing. . . . Because you’re still not quite sure how your parents feel about you having a girlfriend. Like I didn’t know if they thought I was too young to have a girlfriend. Basically, I just didn’t really even want them to know. Just didn’t even want them to be in my life.

Not a big fan of “commitment,” Michael’s ideal is “to have the type of people you can kind of hook up, but not be boyfriend and girlfriend. . . . Like more than one girl, basically.” Generally, he does not like to have steady girlfriends because he hates “that lovey dovey stuff” that most girls do: “Where you’re holding hands. I hate holding hands in public. They love that stuff: being all close all the time.” But Michael is very happy with his current girlfriend. Michael looks forward to having sex with her. “She’s never had sex before, so it’s a good thing. . . . Because it’s better that way, for the guys, it’s cool to be the first one. . . . [And] it probably just feels bet- ter physically too.”

Michael’s communication with his parents about girlfriends and sex remained largely wordless. As he grew older, without any further words spoken, Michael shifted from being secretive about his girlfriends to being lackadaisical about the evidence of his sexual activity. “I don’t try to hide the condom or nothing. Plus [when they see the condom] they know that I’m being responsible and stuff.” Now eighteen years old, Michael simply informs his parents that his girlfriend will be staying the night: “They’ll be like ‘Okay,’” he says, “Usually, they’re in bed by the time we get home”:

I don’t think they really want her to sleep over in the same bed or anything, but she’s allowed to sleep over, like after prom, she slept over and stuff. And they have no problem with it, because they trust me. It goes back to having a good relationship. . . . They trust me to be responsible and so far I’ve been responsible.

At first sight, Kimberley and Michael tell very different tales about teenage sexuality—she must hide any evidence of her sexual activity even though it occurs in a loving, long-term relationship, and she will not be allowed a sleepover at home until she is married, while he, at eighteen, having sneaked around in his mid-teens, informs his parents that his girlfriend is spending the night and flaunts his condoms at home as evidence of his responsibility. What these narratives—and those of many other American girls and boys—have in common, however, is the notion that to explore sexuality, young people must break away from their families and from the rules imposed on them. Most boys and girls are taught that sex is danger- ous. And those who remain sexually inexperienced often view the dangers as prohibitive to exploration. But those who venture into the wild do so determined to claim their right to pursue their freedom.
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In the following sections, we first explore how the management of sexu- ality induces in both American girls and boys a psychology of separation from adult society, and a bifurcation of sexual self and family life. We will see that the toll this process takes is gender-specific, for many American girls have been taught, as Kimberley was at home, that they are not entitled to pursue sexual exploration or intimacy during their adolescence.
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Even when parents accept that their daughters explore their sexuality elsewhere, American girls fear that should evidence of their sexual activity present it- self at home, they could lose their claim to good daughterhood. Expected to be “bad” by nature of their boyhood, American boys do not confront the same taboo that makes their sexuality a potential affront to the par- ent-child relationship. Even so, they too are taught that sexuality requires “breaking away” from home, psychically if not physically.

Indeed, we will see how sexuality is part of a larger cultural script about coming of age in white, middle-class America. While most of the middle- class girls and boys start adolescence following the rules, when they enter their mid-teens many learn that romance and sexuality, as well as alcohol and drugs, are experiences that one is better off hiding from one’s parents. And although they often describe their relationship with their parents as good, the vast majority of American teenagers find that sooner or later they begin “sneaking around” and breaking the rules in order to pursue the truth of their “own person.” They may feel sorrow, as does Kimberley, or relief, as does Michael, about the intimacy with parents lost in this process of “sneaking around.” But they do not doubt that the loss is a necessary

part of growing up. For the process of separation to be complete, however, and for all parties to play their part in it, one more act must follow: “get- ting caught.”

Indeed, the narrative of adversarial individualism becomes psycho- logically encoded in adolescents when children lose connection with their parents during their teen years and then experience the reestablishment of connection through the exercise of parental control. With sex and drinking among peers forbidden or only tacitly tolerated, many American teenagers often have no choice but to engage in them furtively. Thus, they tend to confront, in exploring these activities, a more profound disruption and dis- connection in their relationship with parents than do their Dutch counter- parts, even though many enjoyed closeness with their parents as children. One way that the parent-teenager connection is reestablished is for teenag- ers to get caught. That connection is precarious, since adolescent sexual exploration and alcohol consumption are subject to cultural censure and legal sanction, leaving parents few options other than “not knowing” or adopting the role of the disapproving authority.

Like Kimberley, many of the American girls I interviewed experience a con- flict between their role as good daughters and their sexual selves. How par- ents and girls approach this conflict ranges. At one end of the continuum are families such as Kimberley’s, where parents try to avoid even talking about the possibility that a daughter might have sexual intercourse dur- ing her teenage years: Kimberley’s experience of not having addressed birth control with her parents at all is shared by half of the American girls. Ash- ley says her mother never talked about contraception “because I am not like
that
.” She explains what “
that
” is: “Well I’m just not . . . I won’t have sex until I’m married. So it’s never an issue. We’re all brought up that way and none of us would.” Fiona’s mother told her, “if you ever have a ques- tion come talk to me,” which Fiona has done “many times.” Asked whether they have ever discussed contraception, Fiona responds:

A lot is said without words. She’s against anybody experimenting with sex before they are married and she grew up with that and so she passes it along to us, just as that is what she thinks, but she lets us think pretty much what we want to, but I know it would be suicide if I ever got pregnant.
I would be dead, literally dead
, cast out of the family kind of thing. But at the same time,

I know that my parents would be by me and make sure I got through it. But I don’t even want to try.

At the other end of the continuum are American girls like Caroline, who says: “[My parents and I] have always had a completely open communica- tion [about the topic of sex], always.” Her mother had made clear that “ab- stinence is the best way to go but . . . she tells me about birth control and all that stuff.” About her parents, Caroline says: “They respect my decisions. They know I’m most likely going to make the right decisions.” But when Caroline told her mother that she wanted to go on birth control, “She was like, ‘Oh wow, I need a cigarette.’ . . . She was happy that I told her. . . . At least I’m honest with her and feel comfortable enough to tell my mom.” But asked about a potential sleepover, Caroline responds: “No, my parents would kill me.” Caroline did spend the night at her boyfriend’s house a few times: “My parents don’t know about this. Actually they know about one time and they got kind of mad. . . . I told them I was sorry and that I wouldn’t do it again.” Caroline can sympathize with her parents’ reactions:

They don’t want to know that I’m doing it. It’s kind of like, “Oh, my god, my little girl is having sex kind of thing.” . . . It’s just really overwhelming to them to know that their little girl is in their house having sex with a guy. That’s just scary to them. . . . [They] won’t let me have a guy in my room without the door open.

Indeed, it is among the more socially liberal American households that one bumps up against the limits of what is possible: unlike Kimberley’s parents, the more liberal American parents may come to accept their daugh- ter’s sexual experiences even if those experiences tend to compromise their ideals. Seventeen-year-old Michelle is unique among the American girls interviewed in that her boyfriend may spend the night in her room. Still, Michelle knows that not being “like this perfect little girl,” for instance by having become sexually active, is a source of disappointment to her mother. And like her nineteen-year-old sister’s boyfriend, Michelle’s boyfriend must sleep on the floor next to her bed rather than with her in it. Explaining the sleeping arrangement, Michelle makes clear that hers is the exception that confirms the rule: “It’s just out of respect for my parents. We don’t have our boyfriends sleep in our bed.” Were they to share the bed, Michelle explains, “All [my parents] think we’d probably do is have sex.”

In between are families in which parents, especially mothers, have given

some sex education, frequently offering to help girls obtain birth control should the need arise, but where girls do not want to share. Margaret’s mother does not know that she has had sex: “[My mother] hasn’t asked me and I haven’t told her.” This suits Margaret: “I’d rather her not ask me straight out.” Jill and Laura, both sexually inexperienced “good girls” with close relationships to their parents, do not believe they will take up their mothers’ offer to help get on birth control. “We have such a close relation- ship with other things, not like that,” says Jill. “It is just uncomfortable to talk with her about that kind of thing.” Laura also describes a close rela- tionship with her parents and thinks “it would be a disappointment” for her parents if she were to have sex as a teenager. If she became pregnant, she would tell her parents, but “unless I
had
to, I probably wouldn’t.”

Regardless of where the American girls and their parents fall along the communication spectrum, girls’ (potential) sexuality appears difficult to integrate for parents and daughters. Girls who imagine their sexual trajec- tory unfolding in accordance with their parents’ wishes—that is, in close conjunction with marriage, in some families, or after having moved out, in others—do not describe conflict between their relationship with their par- ents and their sexuality. But girls who have had sex or imagine doing so say that such sex, if acknowledged, threatens their parents’ image of them as good daughters and could diminish the preexisting closeness between them. They describe two different strategies. One is to avoid disclosure and psychologically separate their relationships with parents from their sexual lives. Another is to disclose but spatially bifurcate outside the home, where girls can exercise a measure of sexual autonomy, and inside the home, where girls respect their parents’ rules and uphold the image of “their little girl.”

If for girls sexuality brings to the fore the exacting standard of the “good girl,” for boys sexuality brings to the fore the cultural expectations and fears of the “bad boy.” Few boys live up to those expectations of the “bad boy” with such gusto as Michael, though many American boys I inter- viewed have dabbled in some “bad” behavior. Yet, even when boys seem not to be particularly “bad,” the primary message they receive about their sexuality is that it could cause them “big trouble” if they do not look out. Andy’s mother told him not to have sex and that “it’s scary now to have un- protected sex with diseases and everything.” Marc describes the lecture he receives from his mother every six months: “‘[Use] protection. Don’t do it. Don’t trust the girl saying she has [protection]. . . . Always carry condoms

and that kind of thing.’ She just does the drugs, alcohol, sex thing. . . . [It is] just like the triple threat and I am just like, ‘God, go away.’”

Many boys have been told, as Michael was: “Don’t ever get a girl preg- nant!” Daniel’s mother made it clear to him that he must do “everything possible to stop pregnancy because that would be the worst thing right now, having to take care of a kid [when] you’re in high school. No more sports if that happens. You have to get a job and that’d just be the worst.” When Jesse’s mother asked him whether he was having sex, she was not happy with his answer: “She’s really nervous about the fact that sex is something that I do.” He understands why: “[Sex] is a really dangerous thing. It’s pretty dumb that I do have sex because I am not ready to become a father right now. That’s probably like the worst thing that could happen to me right now.” Phillip’s parents also treat the possibility of sex with fore- boding: “Make sure you’re ready for it, in case, for some reason, birth con- trol doesn’t work,” they warned him. He explains what being ready for “it” means:

“If the birth control isn’t working, you’re going to have a kid. It’s going to be your responsibility.” So that kind of conversation happened. . . . They’ve basically gone over that once, and they’ve really never brought it up again. And I think they felt better knowing that they got the message across. They feel they don’t have anything else to worry about. They hope.