Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (44 page)
Read Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex Online
Authors: Amy T. Schalet
CHAPTER FIVE
The expression “into the wild” comes from Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction book by the same title about a college graduate who undertakes an extended and ultimately fatal trek into the wilderness.
There is an extensive qualitative literature documenting and theorizing the ways in which institutions such as schools, the media, and the medical establishment have denied sexual subjectivity to girls in the United States. See for instance Fine 1988; Fine and McClelland 2006; Nathanson 1991; and Tolman 2002.
Psychological research has found that American teenagers typically deal with con- flicts with their parents by disengaging or giving in (Smetana, Campione-Barre, and Metzger 2006).
The positive effects of Jesse’s relationship on his well-being may be part of a larger pattern. There is evidence that adolescent love relationships reduce the likelihood that those with criminal records offend again (McCarthy and Casey 2008).
International studies have shown that American teenagers are among the least likely to feel they can talk to either parent about something that is really bothering them (Currie et al. 2008 and Currie et al. 2004).
I am indebted to Greggor Mattson for suggesting this metaphor.
In an international comparative analysis based on data from the mid-1990s, Singh and colleagues (2001) found that even young American women (ages twenty to twenty-four) with medium and high levels of education were more likely than their similarly educated peers in other developed countries to have given birth before age twenty. And middle- and upper-income American teenage women (ages fifteen to nineteen) were less likely than their counterparts in Great Britain to not have used contraception at last sex. Since the mid-1990s, the contraceptive use of Ameri- can teenagers has improved considerably, an improvement which accounts for a large proportion of the decrease in teen pregnancies (Santelli et al. 2007). However, even with contraceptive use greatly improved, in 2006–8, American women, ages fifteen to twenty-four, whose mother had attained some college or more (an indica- tor of middle-class status) still had a one in ten chance of giving birth by age twenty (Abma, Martinez, and Copen 2010).
See Garland 2001.
CHAPTER SIX
As we saw in the introduction, Ravesloot (1997) also did not find strong differ- ences by gender. Girls and boys were equally likely to feel controlled by their parents. Also, a national survey by the Central Bureau voor de Statistiek (2003) found girls and boys as likely to be permitted a sleepover with a steady girl- or boyfriend.
International comparative research that shows that Dutch teenagers are among those most likely to feel comfortable discussing something that troubles them with their fathers and mothers, indicating that most Dutch teenagers do indeed feel rela- tively well connected with their parents (Currie et al. 2008; Currie et al. 2004).
This logic of argumentation mirrors the one that historian James C. Kennedy found among Dutch elites in the 1960s. He argues that one reason Dutch politicians, un- like their American counterparts, acquiesced and actively contributed to the chang- ing of the guard is that they interpreted these changes as part of an inevitable pro- cess of modernization. Asserting that “one cannot, no one should not, go against the times,” the Dutch elites of the 1960s took on a flexible, consensus-oriented, and “anticipating” approach to change (Kennedy 1995; 1997).
Research by Joep de Hart (1992) also finds that Dutch boys experience fewer con- flicts with their parents over sexuality than do Dutch girls. And Ravesloot (1997) finds that although girls and boys are equally likely to feel controlled by their par- ents with regard to sexuality, the former experience greater pressure from parents than the latter to only have sex in the context of relationships.
The proportion of Dutch girls interviewed who have talked with their parents about contraception is in keeping with other research. A national survey found that 71 per- cent of Dutch girls have talked to their parents about pregnancy and contraception before age sixteen (de Graaf et al. 2005).
This is a play on the title of Jane Collier’s
From Duty to Desire
(1997).This difference between the countries is corroborated by large-scale survey research: 91 percent of Dutch fifteen-year-old boys, versus 68 percent of American boys, find it easy or very easy to talk to their mothers about things that really bother them; 83 percent of Dutch boys, versus 60 percent of American boys, say they find it easy to talk to their fathers (Currie et al. 2008).
While many of the Dutch teenagers I interviewed emphasize their lack of conflict with their own parents, they often note that many other teenagers have conflicted relationships with theirs. This suggests that, like their parents, Dutch teenagers are eager to see themselves as having a harmonious parent-teenager relationship, and even that it may serve as a source of pride and distinction, much as not being “old fashioned” does for their parents.
Of these three teenagers, two live in lower-middle-class families. Research in both countries shows that working- and lower-middle class parents are more likely to embrace more hierarchical relationships with their children (du Bois-Reymond 1992; Rispens, Hermanns, and Meeus 1996; and Lareau 2003).
Godeau et al. 2008, and Ferguson, Vanwesenbeeck and Knijn 2008.
Hard drug use is rare among Dutch youth. The 2001/2002 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children Survey found that about a quarter of Dutch fifteen-year-olds versus a little over a third of American fifteen-year-olds had ever used cannabis. The percentages of fifteen-year-olds who have been drunk more than twice are similar in the two countries: one in five girls and about one in three boys (35.3 percent of Dutch boys and 30.4 percent of American boys). But American boys have their first drunken episode substantially earlier than Dutch boys: right before turning thirteen versus right before turning fourteen. For girls, first drunkenness occurs, on average, right after turning fourteen in the Netherlands and right before turning fourteen in the United States (Currie et al. 2004).
CHAPTER SEVEN
Classic works on the pleasure/danger nexus in women and girls’ experiences of sex- uality include Fine 1988 and Vance 1984. For a review of how such themes have been taken up in more recent scholarship, see Schalet 2009.
For discussion of how girls and young women navigate the potential threat of being
called a slut, see for instance Armstrong, Hamilton, and Sweeney 2006; England, Shafer, and Fogarty 2007; Martin 1996; and Tolman 2002.
Interview and ethnographic studies have suggested that boys are subject to pressures to gain early sexual experience and to avoid or disown emotional at- tachments to their sexual partners; see Carpenter 2005; Martin 1996; and Pascoe 2007. However, several studies have found that boys are more emotionally in- vested in relationships than assumed; see Giordano, Longmore, and Manning 2006 and Tolman et al. 2004. Indeed, Dutch boys in their mid-teens have typi- cally been in love and in a relationship. In a recent national survey of Dutch youth, 92 percent of boys ages fifteen to seventeen said they had been in love. Seventy- eight percent had experience with being in a “courtship”
(verkering)
(de Graaf et al. 2005).One source of convergence may be their shared exposure to American popular cul- ture, which has become increasingly prevalent in Dutch media since the introduc- tion of commercial television in the 1990s.
On the history of how the medical discourse of sexual risk became appropriated by the abstinence-only movement, see Irvine 2002.
About half of the teenagers surveyed by Kaiser said they needed more basic informa- tion on birth control. A similar percentage did not know that minors can get the pill without parental permission or that emergency contraception is an option. Three- quarters of the surveyed teens said they talked with their parents about sex, but less than half had talked about contraception. Of those who are already sexually active, about one-third still need to learn more about how to use birth control and where to get it (Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation 1996). The 2002 NSFG found that by age eighteen half of American girls have talked to their parents about contraception (Abma et al. 2004). A recent study (Beckett et al. 2010) found that many Ameri- can parents do not address the topic of contraceptives until after their children are sexually involved. More than 40 percent of the teenagers in this study had had in- tercourse before having had any discussions with their parents about condoms or birth control.
For accounts of the history and impact of the abstinence-only sex education move- ment, see di Mauro and Joffe 2007; Fields 2008; Irvine 2002; and Lindberg et al. 2006.
Crisis pregnancy centers, which have received federal funding, do not provide coun- seling about abortion (Kantor et al. 2008; di Mauro and Joffe 2007).
Kelly illustrates how the risk discourse permeates thinking and talking about ado- lescent sexuality (see also Fine 1988 and Fields 2008).
Kost et al. 2010.
See di Mauro and Joffe 2007 and Joffe 2003.
For a discussion of the language of the fetus as child and of abortion as killing a baby in American abortion rhetoric, see Myrsiades 2002.
Tolman (2002) and Martin (1996) found a similar duality: on the one hand, a rela- tionship seems a protective factor against being labeled a slut. On the other hand, girls still rightly fear being called sluts. That sex even within a relationship remains unacceptable to many American teenagers is suggested also by the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, which found that a majority of American youth do not approve of sixteen-year-olds who have a strong affection for each other having inter- course (Abma et al. 2004).
See also Tanenbaum 2000.
See England et al. 2007.
Sharon Thompson (1995) and more recently Laura Carpenter (2005) have argued that girls who have sex with a strong emotional investment are especially likely to be emotionally distraught after a break-up (see also Meier 2007).
See also Ann Swidler (2001) on marriage as the cultural reference point for love in American culture.
Others have noted that girls are more likely to report gratifying sexual experiences, and less likely to report negative emotions, when sex happens in committed roman- tic relationships (Meier 2007; Carpenter 2005).
On the role of same-sex peer groups on boys’ experience of relationships, see Gior- dano et al. 2006. On the role of sports culture in particular, see Foley 1994. For the historical evolution of same-sex peer culture and its effect on definitions of mascu- linity, see Kimmel 1996 and Carpenter 2005.
A recent representative survey found that a quarter of American girls who are in dating relationships in which they are having sexual intercourse are also “seeing someone else.” Among sexually active boys in dating relationships, almost half are seeing someone else (Manning, Giordano, and Longmore 2006).
Several other studies have also found boys more emotionally invested in relation- ships than assumed. See Giordano, Longmore, and Manning 2006; and Tolman et al. 2004.
These views of love correspond to what Ann Swidler (2001) has called the “heroic” love myth.
See, for instance, Finer 2007 and Cohen 2004.
De Graaf et al. 2005; Hardon 2003; Ketting 1983; 1990; and Ketting and Visser 1994.
De Graaf et al. 2005 and Lewis and Knijn 2003.
Their effective use of contraceptives led a well-known population researcher to call the Dutch the “perfect contraceptive population” (Ketting and Visser 1994).
About a third of all teenage pregnancies in the United States result in abortion, ver- sus two-thirds in the Netherlands (Garssen 2008; Kost et al. 2010).
De Waal (1989) found also that once a girl was in a steady relationship, she was protected against being called a slut.
Survey data show that four out of five Dutch youth believe that sexual intercourse is legitimate if a girl and a boy feel a lot for each other (de Graaf et al. 2005, 30).
This might explain why even though the vast majority of Dutch girls and young women, surveyed in a national study, say that they are (very) satisfied by the sexual pleasure and contact they feel with their partner, a majority also said that they expe- rience pain during sex, at least sometimes, and a quarter often have trouble reaching orgasm.
One out of four American girls who first have sex at age sixteen do not use contra- ception (Manlove et al. 2009).
In a national poll, conducted by The Campaign to End Teen Pregnancy (see Albert 2004), a majority of sexually active American girls and boys said they wished they had waited longer to have sex. The National Survey of Family Growth found that among young women who had their first intercourse between fifteen and seventeen, in retrospect only a third said they “really wanted it.” One in ten women said they did not really want it. The majority had mixed feelings. See Abma et al. 2004.
Two out of three pregnant American women, ages fifteen to nineteen, carry their pregnancy to term (Kost et al. 2010).
Hanneke de Graaf and colleagues (2005) found that 86 percent of Dutch girls say about their first intercourse: “We both were equally eager to have it.”
De Graaf and colleagues (2005) found that among twelve to twenty-four-year-olds surveyed in 2005, 64 percent of girls and women were on the pill or another form of hormonal contraception at first sex. Forty-one percent of males and 46 percent of females report having used condoms and the pill (or having gone “double Dutch”) at first vaginal intercourse.
This is a play on words, referring back to Michelle Fine’s concept of the “missing discourse of female desire” (Fine 1988; Fine and McClelland 2006).
Several scholars found more gender-stereotypical attitudes about sex among Ameri- cans surveyed than among Dutch surveyed (VanYperen and Buunk 1991; Hofstede 1998; and Brugman 2007). Rose (2005) also argues that American youth hold more gender-stereotypical ideas about teenagers than Danish youth, especially about boys.