Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (45 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

1. In the introduction to
   The Use of Pleasure
   , Foucault distinguishes sexual ethics from sexual codes. While the latter tell one what is forbidden and prescribed, the former tell one why, how, and to what end individuals are “urged to constitute themselves as subjects of moral conduct” (1985, 28).
   

2. In making use of these four questions to deepen my analysis, I largely use my own words rather than Foucault’s. For instance, rather than use the term “ethical sub- stance” to refer to the aspect of sexuality that is of concern, as Foucault does, I refer to that which is considered problematic about adolescent sexuality.
   

3. Foucault 1985, 26.
   

4. Not just hormones are blamed for sexual acts and their unintended consequences. In the mid-1990s, more than half of the teenagers surveyed by the Kaiser Family Foundation said that unplanned pregnancies happen because teens have sex when they are drunk or on drugs (Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation 1996).
   

5. In fact, 64 percent of Dutch girls and young women, ages twelve through twenty four, said they were using the pill at the time of their first intercourse (de Graaf et al. 2005, 74).
   

6. In segments of the first volume of
   The History of Sexuality
   , where Foucault discusses how the upper middle class uses sexuality—its “repression” and liberation of “re- pression” as a mode of distinction vis-à-vis other classes—he places greater empha- sis on the ways individuals can exercise agency with regard to sexuality.
   

7. Foucault 1978, 86.
   

8. De Hart (1992) also found a lack of overt conflict and power between parents and older teenagers.
   

9. Singh et al. 2001. It is not just American high schoolers who often fail to use contra- ceptives effectively. American adults have also been poor contraceptive users (Glei 1999). Indeed, almost half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned (Finer and Henshaw 2006). A recent report found that magical thinking, mispercep- tions, and ambivalences contribute to poor contraceptive use among young adults (Kaye et al. 2009).
   

10. For a discussion of teenage sex outside of monogamous romantic relationships in the two countries, see chapter 4, n. 2. By age eighteen, the majority of Dutch and American youth have experienced vaginal intercourse. But sexually experi- enced American teenaged men and women are more likely to have had multiple
    

    partners: among American women, ages eighteen and nineteen, who have experi- enced vaginal intercourse, 37 percent have done so with four or more men. Among Dutch women, ages eighteen to
    twenty
    , who have experience with vaginal and/or anal intercourse, 26 percent have had four or more partners. Likewise, 42 percent of American eighteen- and nineteen-year-old men, who have had heterosexual in- tercourse, have had four or more female partners, while 34 percent of Dutch men, eighteen to
    twenty
    , who have had vaginal and/or anal intercourse, have had four or more partners (of either sex). Among eighteen- to twenty-year-olds, two-thirds of Dutch women and half of Dutch men are in steady relationships, lasting on average over a year (Mosher, Chandra, and Jones 2005; de Graaf et al. 2005; Abma, Marti- nez, and Copen 2010).
    

11. Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan (1981) coined the term “management by nego- tiation” to describe the form of behavior regulation in which previously unequal parties negotiate their needs and come to mutual agreements based on relatively equal terms with the exercise of mutual self-restraint and consideration.
    

12. Indeed, the desire for and the fulfillment of human connection—between parents and children, between lovers, between citizens—does not seem to factor into Fou- cault’s analysis of sexuality and subjectivity.
    

13. It is notable that while Foucault gives attention to issues of what we might call “meaning” and “agency” in his work on sexual ethics, these are not foci of his earlier work on discourses of sexuality and power.
    

14. In their study of sexuality and relationships in a mixed-class public university, Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth Armstrong (2009) find that middle- and upper-middle- class students see hook-ups as more consistent with their class-based notions of independence than are “traditional” romantic relationships.
    

15. Lijphart 1975.
    

16. See Bosch 2009; Green-Pedersen, van Kersenbergen, and Hemerijck 2001; Hemerijck and Visser 1999; and Freeman 1998. One significant feature of the Dutch collective labor agreements is that they tend to be “inclusive”: they cover workers within a given sector, regardless of whether they are members of the unions who negotiate the agreement (Bosch 2009).
    

17. For a discussion of the consultative approach to immigration, see Soysal 1994.
    

18. Rogers and Streeck 1994.
    

19. Hemerijck and Visser (1999) argue, for instance, that the “voluntary pay restraint” on the part of representatives of labor throughout the 1980s was a critical compo- nent in creating the so-called “Dutch Miracle,” the remarkable rebound and growth of the Dutch economy in the late 1980s and 1990s.
    

20. Just as in the family, consultation in politics has costs and benefits. For an argu- ment about how the consultation and compromise approach of the Dutch govern- ment depoliticized gay activism, see Duyvendak 1996. For a critique of the effects of accommodation politics on the gay movement in the Netherlands, see Hekma 2004a and b. For an argument about how the compromise character of the Dutch welfare state appeased feminists’ concerns
    and
    kept women with children effectively relegated to the domestic sphere throughout the 1970s and 1980s, see Knijn 1994. More recently Kremer has argued that the “sharing” policy ideal—in which men and women both combine part-time work and childcare—pursued by Dutch policy- makers has, in practice, resulted in women doing most of the sharing: Dutch men, especially upper-middle-class men, work fewer hours than their peers elsewhere, but Dutch women still do most of the part-time work
    and
    childcare work. While
    

    this arrangement appears in keeping with women’s stated preferences, Kremer ar- gues that it puts them at a financial disadvantage (Kremer 2007).
    

21. See Esping-Anderson 1990; Goodin et al. 2000; Knijn 1994a; and Kremer 2007.
    

22. See Engbersen et al. 1993; De Graaf and Ganzenboom 1993; Goodin et al. 2000; and Kremer 2007. The National Assistance Act of 1965 made receipt of benefits to cover basic life needs (housing, food, clothing) a right rather than a privilege. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, this law was repeatedly revised to curtail benefits and tie them more closely to work (or for youth, to education). Renamed “Law Work and Assistance” (
    Wet Werk en Bijstand
    ) in 2004, this law still “guarantees a minimum income for people who are not able, without the help of others, to pro- vide for their livelihood. . . . The Dutch system of assistance is based on the prin- ciples that citizens should be able to provide for their own livelihood without the help of others. Those who cannot do so receive income supports and help in find- ing work as long as that is necessary” (Blommesteijn and Mallee 2009, 4). When combined with supplemental benefits, receiving assistance benefits theoretically prevents people from being categorized as poor. But in 2009, between one fifth and one third of people who lived on some type of social benefits were categorized as poor, in part, it has been speculated, because they do not know about and fully uti- lize the available supplemental benefits (Blommesteijn and Mallee 2009).
    

23. Engbersen et al. 1993; OECD 2009.
    

24. Although the Netherlands has moved towards a more punitive legal climate, in- cluding increased sentences, legal scholar Peter Tak (2003, 13) writes: “The relative mildness of the Dutch criminal justice system is built into the system itself as a core element of Dutch criminal policy.”
    

25. Since 1976, the Dutch government has followed a policy of “decriminalizing” the use and sale of cannabis products such as marijuana and hashish (Buruma 2007). While the Netherlands has long been known for its famous red-light districts, run- ning a brothel—and profiting from others’ prostitution—was not legalized until 2000. Interestingly, one of the clearest examples of the principles of
    gezelligheid
    in- forming policies around prostitution comes from the time when prostitution was legal but brothels were not. In her international comparative study of prostitution, Bernstein describes how the drop-in center of a zone for street prostitution, de- signed by the Dutch government in 1997, is called a
    huiskamer
    (living room); this “seems to bespeak the government’s attempt to normalize and domesticate com- mercial sexual exchange: open from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., the
    huiskamer
    provides all variety of medical and social services to street workers, including free coffee and tea, affordably priced condoms and sandwiches” (Bernstein 2007, 156–57).
    

26. This combination of discipline and social support on the part of authorities has a historical antecedent in Dutch society. In his analysis of the “disciplinary revolu- tion” in the early modern Netherlands, Philip Gorski describes how local Calvinist consistories imposed social and moral order: “In their campaigns to achieve congre- gational purity, the elders often went beyond their formal roles as moral policemen. In their efforts to enforce sexual morality, for example, they sometimes found them- selves attempting to reunite married couples, reform abusive husbands, or locate missing fathers. Similarly, in their attempts to maintain social order, they might seek to counsel and rehabilitate alcoholics, reconcile estranged friends and relatives, mediate disputes between employers and workers. . . . They served a preventative as well as punitive function and often behaved more like modern day social workers than early modern policemen” (Gorski 2003, 58).
    

27. This is where an analysis inspired by the work of Norbert Elias is more satisfying than a Foucauldian one, because the former makes space for people’s capacity to exercise control over their actions under favorable conditions (Smith 1999).
    

28. The authors note broad support not only for a national welfare state but also for transnational welfare. They believe the welfare state may embody a “biblical and secular ideal: a Dutch, a Western, and a global symbol of solidarity between strang- ers” (Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau 1998, 117). Even after a decade of privatiza- tion and cutbacks, two-thirds of the Dutch surveyed in the 2000 European Values Survey expressed considerable confidence in their system of social security (Ingle- hart et al. 2004). Official government rhetoric has also maintained a language of care and connection, even as it has incorporated a greater emphasis on incentives and individual responsibility. A 2006 report, issued by the scientific counsel for gov- ernment policy (WWR), for instance, describes the functions of the welfare state— which is called the “care state” or
    verzorgingsstaat—
    as to care, to insure, to elevate, and to connect (WRR 2006).
    

29. See Glendon 1991.
    

30. See Weir 1995.
    

31. For statistics and arguments on the differences in wages, job security, and the role of wage-setting institutions in the United States and Europe, see Freeman 1994, 1998; and Bosch 2009. In the mid-2000s, the wage of a full-time low-wage worker in the United States was about a third of that of the average full-time worker, but almost half in the Netherlands (Bosch 2009, 345).
    

32. See Esping-Anderson 1990; Goodin et al. 2000; Fischer et al. 1996; Quadagno 1994; Howard 1993; and Misra, Moller, and Budig 2007.
    

33. In the mid-2000s, the percentage of the American population whose income was less than 40 percent of the median income in the United States was 11 percent (versus 4 percent in the Netherlands and a little over 5 percent in all the OECD countries) (Source: OECD.StatExtracts). Goodin and colleagues (2000) point out that many Americans live in intense poverty over longer periods of time. See also Rank 2003.
    

34. The term “falling from grace” comes from Newman 1999. And indeed many fami- lies do fall from grace: two-thirds of all Americans spend at least one year in poverty or near poverty by the time they reach the age of seventy five (Rank 2003).
    

35. The Dutch have long subsidized the social and cultural activities of religious and ethnic minorities, and have recognized their rights to sovereignty within their own circles, which followed from the Dutch system of pillarization (
    verzuiling
    ); see also chapter 4, n. 17. For instance, the Dutch state supports religious schools, including Islamic schools, and it subsidizes broadcasting companies with religious (including Muslim and Hindu) affiliations. At the same time, there has been an expectation that ethnic minorities integrate into Dutch society. When it became apparent that, among certain segments of ethnic minorities, the desired integration was not occur- ring, several laws were introduced to make integration mandatory. Evelyn Ersanilli (2007, 8–9) concludes: “It is clear that there is a consensus on forced integration that was unimaginable ten or fifteen years ago. . . . There is now an almost parlia- mentary-wide consensus that immigrants can—and should—be obligated to learn Dutch and accept certain liberal-democratic values.” Indeed, the Dutch government now requires new immigrants and some noncitizen residents to take a civic integra- tion exam.
    

36. On drug policy, see Bewley-Taylor 1999 and Reinarman, Cohen, and Kaal 2004. On prostitution policy, see Bernstein 2007.
    

37. See Garland 2001 and Western and Pettit 2002.
    

38. Many high schools prohibit and punish “displays of affection” between teenagers. Bringing police officers into school to enforce order is common and was being con- sidered even in small-town Tremont.
    

39. In my own data, I saw the connection between financial insecurity and sexual con- trol most clearly in my interview with the Woods, who say multiple times through- out the interview that they are counting on their daughter’s professional success to help them through the retirement years. The Woods are also among the most anxious about their daughter’s virginity. For other arguments on the relationship between economic insecurity and concerns about sexuality, see Ehrenreich 1989.