Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (8 page)

Normal sexuality dictates that parents accept their children’s sexual re- lationships. Parents are wise to adjust themselves to their children’s pace of development, so a common line or reasoning goes, lest they lose touch with the reality of their children’s lives. Corinne van Zanden says she hopes her children’s relationships progress gradually, but “it is going to happen any- way at some point. We’re pretty open about that.” And even Ada Kaptein, who told her daughter not to treat the pill as a contraceptive method too early, believes that “you can’t forbid it. Then they will start to do it
stiekem
. We used to do it
stiekem
.” That kind of secretiveness Ada wants “to avoid that at any cost.” Should her son Laurens request to sleep together with a

girlfriend at home, Christien Leufkens says she would definitely acquiesce. “I’d rather have them do it here,” she explains, “when I am here, than that they do it
stiekem
. Because when you start to forbid, it doesn’t mean that they don’t do it. It just means that they don’t do it under your eyes.”

At the heart of the relationship-based conception of adolescent sexuality lies the assumption, taken for granted by all Dutch parents, that teenagers can be in love. Unlike the American concept of “falling in love,” which is usually thought of as distinct from “sexual attraction,” the Dutch concept of
verliefd zijn
, which means “being in love,” blurs, rather than sharpens, the line between love and lust.
Houden van
, in turn, describes the more sta- ble and long-term love for romantic partners, parents, siblings, and friends. Dutch parents communicate this relationship-based view of teenage sexu- ality by the words they use to describe their children’s feelings and attach- ments. Like Jolien Boskamp, parents typically refer to romantic relation- ships as
verkering
(courtship). And they describe their children, even young teens, as capable of experiencing being “in love.”

Loek Herder remembers that her son was “interested in girlfriends at a very early age and then he was also often intensely in love.” Helen de Beer says her daughter is ready to have a boyfriend, for after all a person “is never too young for romantic love.” Mariette Kiers, the
only
Dutch parent to mention the role of hormones in relation to adolescent sexuality, synchro- nizes rather than opposes physicality and emotionality. Considering what makes a person ready for sex, Mariette Kiers says: “At a certain moment those hormones begin to rage and, who knows, it may be the love of your life.” In other words, hormones may rage but love lights the fire. Notable amidst Mariette’s description of the interweaving of biology and emotion- ality is her recognition of female sexual pleasure:

Look hormones start raging, that starts at age ten. . . . At a certain point, a person becomes more adult and then sexuality also acquires a more adult character. . . . Yes, and then you don’t just kiss. But something
happens
to you. I mean [something happens] with your emotions too. . . . There is a biologi- cal component, of course: it starts with kissing, that is preparation and then if you are making love the right way, then you become wet . . . that is biological yes. But in addition to [the biological] there is something very emotional. . . . Of course, at sixteen you can . . . you do really love. Of course, you can [love] when you are ten years old.

Outside the family, the frame of relationship-based sexuality and the language of love also prevail. One popular sex education curriculum is, for instance, entitled “Long Live Love,” which conveys the notion that teen- agers can fall in love and that sex is (ideally) about love. Government- sponsored safe-sex campaigns have also built on a relationship-based model of sexuality. One such campaign dictates, for instance: (1) you fall in love; (2) she feels the same; (3) you kiss; (4) you use a condom.
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In sex education, relationship-based sexuality translates into a general emphasis on relationship skills. The Dutch government delegates decisions about the specific content of sex education to local civil society groups. It does how- ever dictate “target goals,” including teaching students “that they can apply their own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings and make them clear to others, and that they can empathize with the feelings, attitudes, and situations of others.”
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Among the interviewees, a subtle but significant intra-class difference emerges in how parents discuss their wishes that teens develop their sex- uality in an emotional and relational context. Lower-middle-class Dutch parents are particularly eager to see their children form monogamous and long-lasting relationships. Hannie de Groot and her husband believe that “you have sex with someone when, in any case, you know that person quite well. We hope that it isn’t when you meet someone in a disco that you go to bed with him the same evening.” But Hannie won’t quantify “knowing quite well” because, she says “it also has to do with the [kind of] being in love. Is it superficial or are you totally crazy about the person.” Loek Herder thinks neither of her sons has had intercourse. She hopes that when the time comes, it will be “more than only that.” If it were “like in a brief con- tact with a girl or boy, then that would trouble me. Because I hope that for them it means more than a brief fling, that it is more than that. But if they really have something special with someone and then it happens, well then who am I?”

Parents who belong to the upper-middle class typically draw distinc- tions based on the
quality
of the interaction between partners rather than on the duration of the relationship. In fact, as we will see later on, some professionally employed mothers have misgivings about relationships that are too steady. Daphne Gelderblom supports sex education at school as long as it is about relationships and not “sex pure . . . I think the relation- ships—learning to interact with each other, learning to understand each other—that I think is excellent.” Christien Leufkens is more liberal than most: had her son or daughter wanted to start such experimenting in their mid-teens, Christien would have let them “as long as they think that they

can do it in a good way.” She explains that a “good way” means: “You are careful with each other. That is really important, that they simply take each other into account, and that it is not the case that one of them has a pain- ful experience.”

“A good way” of relating not only determines whether parents approve of their children’s sexual activities. It also determines whether or not they will permit the sleepover. Granting her daughter such permission depends, Corinne van Zanden says, on “who it is and what [the relationship] is and how he is. Where he comes from doesn’t matter a bit to me.” What does matter to her is “how they behave toward one another.” Notably, like Marga Fenning at the start of the chapter, several mothers apply the same criteria of relationship-based sexuality to their sons: Jacquelien Starring would have serious objections if her son Hans were to “do it with that one and then that one and. . . . But if it is a girlfriend that he has known a bit longer . . . and she comes over to our house, and she sleeps over. I don’t think I would have problems with that.” Nienke Otten experiences the sleepover as a bit of a stretch, but she explains “you permit it when you see that they really care about each other, that it isn’t just a passing fancy.”

But while parents like Nienke Otten are heartened to see their children form relationships which are not just “passing fancies,” they do not neces- sarily expect those relationships to last forever. Dutch parents do not want to see teenagers form “mini marriages.” They want to see sex embedded in connections that are mutually nourishing. And before permitting the sleepover, most want to have formed a relationship with the partner in question. But they recognize that young people often learn to relate well through a succession of romantic relationships before they are ready to settle into a life-long romantic attachment.

A third frame that recurs through the Dutch interviews is that of self- regulation. Parents describe their teenage children as capable of being self- regulating sexual actors. They illustrate this confidence in their children’s capacity for self-regulation with their use of the term
er aan toe zijn
, which translates as “being ready.” Their use of the term demonstrates an assump- tion that young people are the best judges of when they are ready, although it is the job of parents to remind their children, especially daughters, not to do anything before they
feel
ready as well as to take the precautions neces- sary to
be
ready.

Katinka Holt believes being ready is “whenever they feel it themselves, ‘I am
er aan toe
.’ And really feel ‘Now I dare do it.’” She told her sixteen-year- old daughter Marlies not to do it because “the other person wants it, but because you want it yourself.” For a while, Marlies was very insecure about her body. She told her mother, “I dare to show my breasts but down there, I don’t want them to touch it.” Katinka’s response was, “Well, Marlies, if that is the case, then you are not yet
er aan toe
. And then you should not do it.” Han de Vries believes his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter was ready because “she herself indicated that she was ready.” Illustrating how he recognizes what scholars call “sexual subjectivity” in his daughters, Han recounts hav- ing told them:

I will never have any objection to [a sexual relationship] when they—really out of their own free will, and never because they have to do it or because of coercion or because they feel that they have to belong, or because otherwise the boyfriend won’t like them anymore—but only when they themselves feel the desire for it, and when they are themselves ready for it. And when that is, I don’t know.

As Karel Doorman suggested in the book’s first chapter, the premise of self-regulated sexuality also applies to same-sex adolescent sexuality. With the interview questions about sexuality framed in a gender-neutral lan- guage, four Dutch parents volunteered that their son or daughter might de- sire a same-sex partner.
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About that possibility, Karel says: “You are choos- ing the harder route. I still think that is true. It is not like thirty years ago, but it remains the harder route.” Were Heidi to be a lesbian, Karel says, “Yes well . . . then let it be so. I do not believe that you can change their [sexual] orientation by talking it through with them. . . . You cannot persuade a person with regard to [their sexual orientation]. So, I think that you will come to accept it.”

Yet, even as many parents describe becoming
er aan toe
as a self- generated process, they suggest also that it occurs not in isolation but in the context of specific attachments. Being
er aan toe
is for many parents the product of a particular relational or emotional configuration. Piet Starring expects he will start to notice that his “sons are becoming ready when they bring home girls regularly.” “Yes, when they start getting a bit of a court- ship,” his wife adds. Karin Meier believes a child is ready as soon as that child is “him- or herself curious about it.” Yet Karin does not value “sex for sex’s sake.” She believes sex “has a value within a communication, within a

relationship.” Christien leaves her children free to explore. As long as “they relate to one another with respect, that is so important. If they both want it, then it does not concern me in the least.”

Being
er aan toe
is not just a matter of feeling ready and relating well. It requires taking precautions against the potential dangers of sex. Parents play a crucial role in solidifying this capacity in their children. Hannie and Dirk de Groot believe it is “stupid” to try to avoid giving teenagers opportu- nities to have sex. “They need to determine it themselves,” says Dirk. “They can do that. They can [be in charge], provided that you have spoken about it with them, and that you pointed out the dangers and the consequences to them. And if they know all that, they can handle it well.” Concerned about AIDS, Marga Fenning has warned her son repeatedly about using condoms. “Now he makes a joke . . . if I say something [about condoms]. Right now I really don’t need to tell him, ‘You’ve got to be careful.’ He cer- tainly knows where Abram gets the mustard [how it works]. I don’t need to say anything anymore. That would sound really silly.”

In urging their children to use contraception, Dutch middle-class par- ents are bolstered by education and health policies that strongly support educating teenagers about contraception and giving them easy and stigma- free access to birth control. “The approach in the Dutch [sex education] ma- terials,” write sociologists Jane Lewis and Trudie Knijn, “is to encourage the student to think about what he or she wants before the situation arises and then to act responsibility.” In other words, acquiring self-regulation means developing not just the capacity for sexual self-knowledge—knowing what one wants and does not—but also exercising foresight and engaging in planning. Knowing one’s responsibilities, a Dutch expression, means car- rying condoms and making timely appointments to see the family doctors, who provide the bulk of primary care in the Netherlands, and who, as a matter of policy, provide contraception to adolescents.
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Even when teenagers have all the pieces of being ready in place—they recognize the desire for sex inside themselves, have established the right relational context, and have taken the right preventative action—parents require a fourth component to permit the sleepover. Parents say they them- selves need to be ready. What enables adolescent sexuality to become “nor- mal” in the sense of being non-emotionally disruptive seems to be less a matter of age, or any other absolute criterion, than a matter of proper pro- cess. For parents to trust that a child is
er aan toe
, they say they need to witness the gradual progression of his or her desires and attachments. Loek describes the process that she thinks will enable her to become ready to recognize when her children are ready: “When they get a relationship . . . I