Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (47 page)
Read Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex Online
Authors: Amy T. Schalet
CONCLUSION
Abma et al. 2010.
Unintentional pregnancies are not confined to teenagers. In 2001, eight in ten pregnancies among American women, ages fifteen to nineteen, were not intended. Among twenty to twenty-four-year-olds, six in ten pregnancies were unintended (Finer and Henshaw 2006). The extent to which having a child as a teenager has adverse economic consequences for poor women has been debated, given their al- ready bleak economic prospects (Furstenberg 2007).
UNAIDS 2008.
First romantic relationships increase conflicts between parents and daughters (Joyner and Udry 2000). For a discussion of strains in the parent–adolescent rela- tionship for non-heterosexual teens, see Diamond and Savin-Williams 2009 and Savin-Williams 2000.
Hamilton, Martin, and Ventura 2009; Garssen 2008.
Garssen 2008; van Lee et al. 2009; Kost et al. 2010. Among immigrant groups to the Netherlands there is a strong drop in teenage births between the first and sec- ond generation. Among Turkish and Moroccan immigrants, the teenage fertility rate among the second generation is now similar to that of girls of indigenous Dutch descent. In other groups, including Surinamese and Antillean immigrants, teenage fertility rates, while decreasing between first and second generations, remain two to three times as high as the national averages. While high for Dutch standards, in 2006 teen fertility rates among second-generation Surinamese and Antillean teenage women—14.4 and 17.2 per 1,000 respectively—were less than half those among all American teenage women and less than a third of those among nonwhite American teenage women—41.9 and 54.6, respectively (Garssen 2008; Kost et al. 2010).
UNAIDS 2008. As we saw in chapter 2, n. 16, comparing rates of other sexually transmitted diseases is complicated by different systems for tracking, treating, and reporting. But chlamydia prevalence studies suggest American youth have higher rates than their Dutch peers (Van Bergen et al. 2005; Miller et al. 2004; and Datta et al. 2007).
De Graaf et al. 2005.
See Singh et al. (2001) on the role socioeconomic disadvantage plays in shaping sex- ual health outcomes in the U.S. and Europe. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points toward poverty as the single most important predic- tor of HIV/AIDS in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2010). Dutch cities have neighborhoods with concentrations of low-income resi- dents (both minorities and indigenous Dutch), although “there are no residential areas equivalent to the urban ghettos of the United States or the
banlieus
of Paris” (Tonry and Bijlenveld 2007). However, in communities where socioeconomic dis- advantage approximates “American” conditions, adolescent sexual health outcomes are concomitantly a great deal poorer (Van Lee et al. 2009).Abortion is available free of cost and without parental consent to Dutch girls over fifteen. Dutch law does require a five-day waiting period, for women of all ages, between the first appointment and the performance of an abortion. In 2005, 87 percent of U.S. counties, in which more than a third of all women aged fifteen to forty-four live, did not have an abortion provider (Jones 2008). For international comparisons of contraceptive use among teenagers, see Currie et al. 2008; Godeau et al. 2008; Santelli, Sandfort, and Orr 2008; and Ferguson et al. 2008. For a dis- cussion of the factors promoting easy access to contraception among youth in the Netherlands, see Hardon 2003 and Ketting and Visser 1994. For a review of changes in sex education in the U.S., including the decline in education about contracep- tion, see Lindberg, Santelli, and Singh 2006.
Elliott’s (2010) qualitative study of sexual socialization among a group of socioeco- nomically and racially diverse American parents in the South corroborates many of the findings of my study. At the same time, there are important intranational cultural differences: studies have shown that African-American parents report sig- nificantly more communication with their teen children about sex and birth control than parents of any other race or ethnic group (Regnerus 2005).
Giordano, Longmore, and Manning (2006) also find that, counter to stereotypes, American boys are as emotionally invested in their romantic relationships as girls.
It is not surprising that the Dutch boys interviewed do not feel unique for having been in love. De Graaf et al. (2005) find that 90 percent of Dutch boys in their early teenage years say they have been in love.
This does not mean that all conflicts or inequalities can be easily seen or discussed. Class inequality is very difficult for Americans to recognize and discuss. For an ex- cellent discussion of how inequalities of class are often conflated with those of race and ethnicity and mapped onto adolescent sexuality, see Bettie 2000.
Kooij 1983.
See Kooij 1983; Jones et al. 1986; Ketting 1994, 1990; and Ketting and Visser 1994.
Smith’s review of attitudes toward sexuality among American adults shows very little change in attitudes toward homosexuality between the early 1970s and early 1990s (Smith 1994). However, the General Social Survey has found that between 1990 and 2006, the percentage of Americans who agreed that sex between two people of the same sex was “always wrong” dropped from 76 to 56 percent. The World Values Survey found an even more spectacular drop. In 1990, 57 percent of American re- spondents agreed that homosexuality was “never justified.” In 2000, that percentage had decreased to 32 percent (Inglehart et al. 2004).
Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez (2003) found Mexican-American mothers eager to provide
their daughters with better and more empowering sex education than they them- selves had received.
See Ross 2005; Mayes and Mguni 2009; Ip 2009; and Jiménez 2007.
Within the social sciences—especially psychology—and public health, there have been efforts in recent years to conceptualize adolescent sexuality in more positive terms, and to show how pleasure and connection factor into understanding and promoting adolescent sexual health (Russell 2005; Ott et al. 2006; Dennison and Russell 2005; Higgins and Hirsch 2007; Horne and Zimmer-Gembeck 2005; Impett and Tolman 2006; Tolman 2002).
See Michaud 2006.
In her study of sex education in three different American schools, Jessica Fields (2008) found that teachers do not have the leeway or training to effectively inter- vene during sex education courses. She argues that teachers must take (and be given the freedom to take) the responsibility of creating sex education classrooms free from the sexual harassment that often takes place. Likewise, Martin (1996) and Tol- man (2002) call on adult women to bolster girls’ sexual subjectivity by giving them the tools to recognize their internal bodily knowledge and deconstruct harmful me- dia messages and interpersonal dynamics.
See Pager et al. 2009.
For a review of the concepts of sexual “agency” and “subjectivity,” see Schalet 2009.
See also Horne and Zimmer-Gembeck 2005; Martin 1996; Hogarth and Ingham 2009; Tolman 2002; and Impett and Tolman 2006.
For the detrimental effect of masculinity norms on boys’ sexual and emotional well- being, see, for instance, Pleck, Sonnenstein and Ku 1993; Pascoe 2007; and Marcell, Raine, and Eyre 2003.
Several studies have found that greater commitment, more intimacy, and/or good communication in relationships increase pleasure, wantedness, and/or protective behavior at first intercourse (Sprecher et al. 1995; Smiler et al. 2005; Widman et al. 2006; Houts 2005; and Stone and Ingham 2002). At the same time, researchers have also found an association between being in longer relationships and poorer contra- ceptive use (Ford et al. 2001; Ku et al. 1994; Manlove et al. 2003).
See Bernat and Resnick 2009. In their mixed-methods study, developmental psy- chologist Jill Denner and colleagues (2001) found that Latina girls who are strongly integrated in families and communities through shared norms and social capital tend to have lower birth rates.
It is notable that in cross-national studies asking youth whether they find it easy to talk with their mothers or fathers about “things that really bother you,” American thirteen- and fifteen-year-olds consistently rank among those least comfortable talk- ing with parents of either gender, and their Dutch peers among those most comfort- able (Currie et al. 2008; Currie et al. 2004). For instance, while 63 percent of Dutch fifteen-year-old girls find it easy or very easy to talk to their fathers about things that bother them, only 43 percent of American girls feel that it would be easy or very easy (Currie, Gabhainn, and Godeau 2008, 27).
See Singh et al. 2001; Imamura et al. 2007; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2010.
METHODOLOGICAL APPENDIX
In 2000, a quarter of the American population identified themselves as belonging to a racial or ethnic minority (U.S. Census Bureau). The Dutch collect population
statistics based on immigration status and country of origin. Adults and children living in the Netherlands are categorized as
allochtoon
or “originating from another country” if either they or at least one of their parents were born outside the country. Using that definition, in 1996, almost one in eight Dutch children fourteen and under was categorized as a non-Western immigrant—typically Turkish, Moroccan, or Surinamese. By 2006, one in six children in the Netherlands was categorized as a non-Western immigrant (Garssen 2006).Gorski 2003; Goudsblom 1967; Lipset 1963; Motley 1855; and Engbersen et al. 1993.
Stephen Lucas (1998, 164) has argued that “of all the models available to Jefferson and the drafting committee, none provided as precise a template for the Declaration as did the Plakkaat van Verlatinge.”
According to Wouters (1998), in both countries commercial elites sought to estab- lish themselves as a type of aristocracy. Brinkgreve and van Stolk (1997) write that the Dutch nobility has played a less prominent part in shaping the nation than in almost any other European country. Their marginality was due to the dominant po- sition of the cities and their governments during the Dutch republic (late sixteenth through late eighteenth centuries). Also, the Protestant character and internal doc- trinal battles of the Dutch church did not permit a consolidation of aristocratic power, as the Catholic Church did in many other European nations.
Since surveys in the United States have shown that Jews tend to be considerably more liberal with regard to sexuality, I focus on the Christian and secular populations.
See Irvine (2002) for a description of the battles over sex education. Remnants of those were felt even when I did gain access to a school in Northern California: be- fore I addressed my first class of prospective interviewees, a teacher took me aside and told me there was a word I should never use: “condom.”
Fischer et al. 1996.
Like all the other names for research sites, and schools within those cites, Corona is a pseudonym, and has no relation to the actual city in Southern California, called Corona.
Especially in Corona, the American teenagers whose parents are not professionals often come from families in which divorce, substance abuse, and (mental) health problems are common. I think that one reason teenagers declined to have me ap- proach their parents is that they did not want to add to their burdens. Another reason that American teenagers, especially girls, declined to have me interview their parents is because the topics about which I had interviewed them—sex and alcohol—are cause for considerable conflict, and avoiding discussion about these topics is one way girls and parents manage these tensions.
In recent years, the proportion of Americans for whom “pro-family” (and sexually conservative) values are important has grown significantly (Brooks 2002). Since these Americans often join churches not explicitly affiliated with national organiza- tions, it is not surprising that their position is not as easy to detect.
Throughout the 2000s, three quarters of the Dutch population participated in “long vacations,” which lasted an average of twelve days. Most long vacations involve travel abroad. More than a third of the population also participated in a short vaca- tion away from home, which lasted, on average, three days (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek 2009).
In keeping with national trends, in such upper-middle-class Dutch families mothers were likely to work.
However, drawing on the parent and teenage data, a notable gender pattern did emerge in the United States, which is discussed in chapters 3 and 5.
Both Thompson (1995) and Martin (1996) talk about the difficulty of recruiting and interviewing boys. Indeed Thompson found the process so vexing that she switched to interviewing only girls. My experience was that it
was
indeed more dif- ficult to get boys to sign up for an interview, but once we were in conversation, boys seemed to me as comfortable and forthcoming as their female counterparts.Indeed, one or two boys and girls in each country come from what one might call “blue collar” families.
Thanks to Robert LeVine for suggesting that I pursue this strategy. 17. Alford 1998, 28.
The Norwood interviews, conducted in 1991/1992, informed the analyses of the American parent chapters and were used to calculate the numbers on American par- ents’ answers to the sleepover question, but the examples are drawn from the Corona and Tremont interviews, conducted in 1999 and 2000. The socio-demographic make-up of the Norwood sample was very similar to that of the Corona sample. For quotes from the Norwood interviewees, see Schalet 2000.
Geertz 1983.
Geertz 1973.
Abbing, Henriette D. C. Roscam. 1996. Adolescent Sexuality and Public Policy: A Human Rights Response.
Politics and the Life Sciences
15 (2): 314–16.
