Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (34 page)

Normalization involves the opposite psychological process. Rather than being compelled to hide, Dutch teenagers are exhorted not to behave
stiekem
or secretively. They are expected to let their parents get to know their romantic partners and to inform them of the development of their re- lationships. If dramatization encourages teenagers to establish a barrier be- tween their roles as family members and their sexual selves, normalization encourages teenagers to accomplish a harmonious internal integration.

Moreover, normalization calls on teenagers to practice a deeply regu- lated sexuality. American teenagers can attribute not having prepared for, or consciously directed, their sexual activities to having been carried away by their hormones.
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But Dutch teenagers are expected to use their hearts
and
their heads to recognize internally when they are becoming ready, plan for sex, and then, it goes without saying, use contraceptives.

In both countries, the ethical work is unequally divided among boys and girls: Many American middle-class boys are encourged not to become sexually active in high school, and to hide their sexual activities if they do. But it is girls on whom the burden of the nonsexual “good girl” im- age weighs most heavily. Whether they struggle to maintain their parents’ image of themselves, carefully keeping signs of their sexual exploration and other “bad” activities out of sight, or whether they risk shattering it, sexuality is especially fraught for girls with close relationships with their parents. The burden of self-regulation also weighs more heavily on Dutch girls than on boys, given that girls are ultimately the ones who, especially

within long-term relationships, must do the work of preventing pregnancy. Indeed, neither Dutch parents nor Dutch teens tend to question whether teenage girls can or should use oral contraceptives effectively.
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Parents too must perform ethical work: even as Dutch parents ask their children to self-regulate, they too must control their impulses to forbid or to surrender to their fears. After all, as one of the Dutch mothers puts it, per- mitting a sleepover does not mean that she is “jumping up and down with joy outside the bedroom door either.” Still, just as Dutch parents ask their teenage children to take into account the needs of the household, they also ask themselves to adjust to, and take into account, their children’s sexual maturation and relationships, even when they feel discomfort or wish things were otherwise. Likewise, American parents must hide and separate from their teenage children in much the same way as the latter do from them. They must hide the knowledge they have of their children’s sexual activity and separate psychologically by treating their children’s sexuality as belong- ing to physical and psychological spaces into which they are not to intrude.

Why do Dutch parents permit a sleepover that some might rather forbid? Why do American parents stand fast against a sleepover when many know their children are sexually active elsewhere? They do so in service of cultur- ally ideal states of being. Normalization and dramatization valorize differ- ent ideal states, neither of which are realistic in the sense of attainability, yet both have tremendous cultural power. The ideal mode of being at the center of the dramatization of adolescent sexuality is total and complete freedom. This is the freedom of total autonomy from others, where one lives by one’s own will only, free from the demands of social ties other than those of one’s choosing. The ideal mode of being that is at the center of normalization is
gezelligheid
. It denotes freedom of a different kind: not the freedom to do whatever one wants but rather to develop one’s individual self within a sociality made up of different parties, essentially benign in nature, that are neither intractably conflicted nor evidently unequal.

American dramatization Dutch normalization What is problematic? Hormone-driven self New attachments

How and why is it regulated?

Prohibition and expulsion due to non-adult status

Negotiation and incorporation due to family member status

What self-work regulates the problem?

Separation and hiding Self-regulation and speaking

What ideal state and individual result?

“Total freedom” and

self-sufficient individual

Gezelligheid
and self-regulated individual

These visions of the ideal state of being suffuse conceptions of adult- hood and of the vision of autonomy it represents. American parents de- scribe adulthood as characterized by full financial and emotional self- sufficiency. American teenagers speak longingly of the moment that they will turn eighteen and have access to such “complete freedom,” which they too describe as the freedom from parental restrictions to do whatever they want. In the Netherlands, parents do not talk about adulthood as charac- terized by the financial or emotional self-sufficiency that begets the free- dom to do whatever one wants. While autonomy is critical, ultimately, freedom remains bounded, since adults, as teenagers, remain part of a soci- ality which is essential to humanity. “Why would anyone want to live with- out
gezelligheid?”
parents and teenagers ask. Hence, the ideal of
gezelligheid
makes it possible to produce order not by extraordinary commitment or by force but by daily acts of mutual adjustment in which individuals freely participate.

In sum, American white middle-class parents problematize the im- pulsive self. They seek to cultivate and contain their children’s individual passions through a dual strategy of prohibition at home and partial per- mission elsewhere. In the process, they develop in their children and in themselves a psychological capacity to segment and separate. The ethical work serves the ideal of total freedom and of the self-sufficient individual. Dutch parents problematize their children’s attachments. By using mutual consultations to talk about sexuality and reach agreements that regulate these new attachments, they cultivate in their children and in themselves the inclination not to hide or behave secretively and the capacity to self- regulate deep emotional impulses. This ethical work stands in service of
gezelligheid
: collectivities free from conflict and explicit use of power where self-regulating and socially attuned individuals peacefully coexist.

While Foucault’s second volume in
The History of Sexuality
focused on sexual ethics as a source of meaning and agency, his better-known first volume focuses on the ways in which sexuality in the modern era has be- come a source of disempowerment.
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Indeed, discourses and disciplinary practices—including the categories that divide individuals according to sexual identities, the restrictions placed on adolescents, the focus on the reproductive lives of couples, and the sexual self-revelations many institu- tions encourage—all make people easier to govern by public authorities, Foucault argues. Such governance, however, unlike the governance in the

premodern era, is not based in hierarchy or blatant show of force. Indeed, modern power is effective because it is hidden, and “tolerable only on the conditions that it masks a substantial part of itself.”
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The regulation of adolescent sexuality in Dutch middle-class families approximates Foucault’s conception of modern power more closely than the regulation of adolescent sexuality in American middle-class families. The admonishment to “say it honestly” and “go on the pill,” for instance, incites girls to be forthcoming about their desires and conform to a form of governance that is apparently egalitarian. Indeed, control is generally more hidden: when Dutch teenagers use the language of consultation, agreements, and
gezelligheid
, they participate in the process of obscuring the inequality between parents and teenagers. This does not mean they are oblivious to their parents’ power, and when probed, the more adventurous and strong-headed admit to hiding and rule-breaking. For the most part, however, Dutch teenagers are as eager as their parents to view family life as relatively free from conflict and to see themselves as offering consent to household rules rather than being forced to obey against their will.
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In American families power is more apparent. Just as American par- ents are not bashful about stating that they must “win important battles,” American teenagers admit without shame to having no choice but to sub- mit to rules they dislike. All but the most timid of American teenagers re- sist complete submission: they hide their “bad” behavior, “sneak out” of the house to be “bad,” and accept punishments when they “get caught.” But even as they are being “bad,” American teenagers often accept the premise that adult authority is necessary to keep youth on the right track. At the same time, they experience a sense of agency and autonomy by evading or opposing that adult authority. The unspoken contract between American parents and their teenagers is that the former have the duty to be rule-enforcers, while the latter have the right to be rule-evaders and rule- breakers who may hide what they need to and try to get away with what they can.

The sexual behavior of teenagers suggests that “soft” power is more ef- fective. Compared to their American peers, Dutch teenagers, particularly girls, engage in sexual behavior that is more rationalized and in keeping with the stated social norms: unintentional pregnancies and childbear- ing are not uncommon even for college-bound teenage girls in the United States, while they are extremely rare among Dutch girls on similar trajec- tories, in large part because of the latter’s daily use of oral contraception.
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And while promiscuity is frowned on in both countries, American teenag- ers appear more prone to having sex outside of monogamous romantic re-

lationships than Dutch teenagers. Finally, while both Dutch and American adolescents typically initiate sexual contact before they leave their teenage years behind, sexually experienced American adolescents are more likely to have had multiple partners than are their Dutch peers.
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When viewed as different forms of power, the normalization and dra- matization of adolescent sexuality seem to confirm Foucault’s argument that discipline and the encouragement to speak control subordinates more effectively than does hierarchical rule. The normalization of teenage sexu- ality produces youth who cause less “trouble” in the form of unintended reproductive outcomes or in the form of rebellion against authority. Dra- matization, by contrast, involves techniques of control—prohibitions and expulsions based in a hierarchy—which seem to inspire, rather than quell, going against the grain. But to understand why management by consulta- tion works in Dutch households and why prohibitions and silence around adolescent sexuality still have such currency in American ones, we must look beyond social control per se.
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We must look at the ideals these forms of control invoke and the types of connection and agency they make possible.