Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (36 page)

The American state also compounds the dramatization of adolescent sexuality by taking a punitive approach to the “mistakes” of those who in- dulge in “adult” pleasures. Consequently, even if American parents would like to be more lenient about teenage sexuality and drinking, they them- selves risk “being caught” by law enforcement.
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If the American state con- strains parents in their ability to negotiate, it also bolsters their capacity to prohibit and punish. Not only does the law typically prioritize the rights of middle-class parents over those of children, but the features of the welfare state also leave teenagers directly dependent on their families for the finan- cial resources necessary to attain and maintain middle-class status.
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Thus, American teenagers do, in fact, need to attain financial self-sufficiency to be fully emancipated from their parents.

The relative economic security ensured by the Dutch state and econ- omy, by contrast, cushions anxieties about status maintenance for Dutch

middle-class parents, reducing both the symbolic potency and real costs of a teenage pregnancy. Few Dutch parents appear worried about their chil- dren becoming derailed economically by their sexual or other youthful explorations. Unintended teenage pregnancies carried to term, while un- common among the native Dutch population, do not threaten economic survival, given the various supports and subsidies available for families and children and the second chances to “make it.”
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Moreover, the preference for accommodation over punishment in the public policies that regulate the use of “pleasures” means that Dutch parents, unlike American parents, are able to negotiate, rather than forbid, adolescent behaviors that are pun- ishable by law in the United States.

Not only does the Dutch state mitigate the risks of raising children; as several Dutch sociologists have argued, the state has also created the ground for a relatively equal relationship between family members. Student sti- pends, parents’ legal obligation to support their children, and the strong rights position granted to minors by Dutch law mean that Dutch middle- class youth have, in fact, a position of relative strength vis-à-vis their par- ents, such that their negotiations can approximate those of true partner- ships.
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Indeed, without a welfare state that supports middle-class parents as they raise their children
and
bolsters the economic power of young peo- ple vis-à-vis their parents, it is possible that Dutch parents might not have the equanimity they do to confront their children’s sexuality, and that teen- age children would not feel as empowered to negotiate their sexuality.
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There is a second way to connect the processes of conceptualization, control, and constitution in the middle-class family with those that oper- ate in the economy and polity: we can see normalization and dramatiza- tion as processes by which teenagers acquire skills that will facilitate their thriving and success in their respective political economies. To function adequately within a system of politics and economics that thrives on con- tinuous consultation and compromise, it is of great importance to be the very self-regulating and socially aware individual that the negotiation of sexuality in the family teaches.
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The higher on the Dutch status ladder one is to climb, the more important is the capacity to exhibit self-control and consideration for others. Indeed, occupying positions of power in a society that so delicately balances equality and inequality requires the capacity to exert authority without gloating or obviously neglecting those below.
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American middle-class teenagers, like their Dutch peers, learn to experi- ence themselves as the kind of individuals capable of succeeding in their society. American boys in particular are taught to experience their sexual- ity as biological urges which originate inside themselves and which propel

them into action.
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Not expected to exert internal control or to socialize such urges to meet the demands of social relationships, they are inadver- tently encouraged to experience their sexuality as a potentially exploitative, aggressive force which, when unchecked by external constraints, leads them to take risks. But to do so fully, American boys learn, they must separate from home—furtively at first, and legitimately as soon as they legally and financially can. Experiencing oneself as propelled by strong inner drives which ought to be acted upon aggressively when possible and without un- due caution is critical in a society which requires the ability to fight to get ahead and the willingness to take risks in the process.

Indeed, it is economically and psychologically beneficial for young men to be able to separate easily from parents as well as from sexual partners, so as to be as physically mobile as middle-class educational and occupa- tional trajectories often require. At the same time, to succeed in business, American young men need to have the capacity to respond well to rules that are unilaterally imposed from above, at least until they attain more se- nior positions, and to not feel that this compromises their dignity. Unlike their Dutch counterparts, who typically have considerable input into vari- ous aspects of their everyday working conditions through works councils (mandatory in companies with more than thirty-five employees), Ameri- can young adults in entry-level positions may have very little say over their day-to-day experiences in the workplace.
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Engaging in a modicum of rule- breaking, without getting caught, is a way young Americans can reconcile subjugation with a self-concept of radical autonomy.

In both countries, the economic and cultural advantages of the capaci- ties and orientations conferred onto the young by the sexual ethics that are practiced in the family are more apparent for boys than for girls. Becoming a member of the middle- and upper-middle class has meant something different for Dutch men than for Dutch women. The latter typically have had only part-time paid employment, especially once they are mothers.
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The ideology of motherhood has remained extremely strong in the Neth- erlands, and, outside of government service, women have held little power in the public sphere. But they have been seen, and see themselves, as pos- sessing significant power in the private sphere, excelling in the art of creat- ing
gezelligheid
.
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For such an arrangement to be satisfactory, however, the domestic sphere must be regarded as socially significant and offer oppor- tunities for the exercise of agency. The sexual socialization of adolescents is one arena in which mothers, who do most of that socialization, find such opportunities.
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As we have seen, in their home-based sex education, mothers teach their

daughters both that intimate relationships are valuable and that they can and must develop their capacity for agency within them. What the celebra- tion of regulated love does not teach girls, however, is that intimate rela- tionships sometimes conflict with and impede the pursuit of individual potential. While regulated love grants girls sexual subjectivity in the con- text of the relationship, it does not encourage them to develop their sexu- ality or their identities outside of the context of intimate relationships.
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Indeed, non-relationship-based sexuality is not part of being “normal.”
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And as we have seen, when a mother or daughter wants the latter to be less relationship-orientated, the negotiation of a daughter’s sexuality in the family can produce more tensions and conflicts than normalization would, at first sight, lead one to expect.
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The conception of sex and self as inner struggles barely controlled is more contradictory for American girls than it is for American boys and also less likely to “pay off” emotionally or economically. No longer taken seri- ously by parents or other adults in their professions of love, American girls are increasingly taught that their romantic longings are the consequence of biological urges which lead them, like boys, to act in ways that are risky. On the other hand, unlike their male counterparts, American girls still learn that acting upon those urges can ruin their reputation and social standing, making it critical that they be able to hide any evidence of sexual activity. Thus, American girls inherit the worst of both worlds—they are expected to uphold the (semblance) of virginity required by the double standard of the old gender order and to demonstrate a male-like heartlessness when they act on the “equal-opportunity” hormones granted to them by the new gender order.

This sexual double bind of American girls reflects the deep ambiva- lence and sense of unease which American parents, especially mothers, feel about gender relations in contemporary American society and the impli- cations thereof for their daughters’ future well-being. With their missing discourse of (adolescent) love, American middle-class parents express pes- simism about the possibility of mutuality between men and women. An awareness of the costs that girls and women often incur in intimate rela- tionships seems to have led to a loss of faith in the promise of love. One response to this loss of faith is to reinforce the prescripts of the old gender order—according to which a girl who preserves sex for marriage or at least a “serious commitment” will be rewarded for her patience by protection against sexual exploitation—and even many liberal American mothers ex- press the wish that their daughters could remain virgins until marriage.

But even as they embrace marriage as the only safe place for girls to

have sex, American parents are well aware that the rewards of marriage are far from a “sure thing.” Thus, at the same time that they want their daugh- ters to maintain (the appearance of) the chastity of the good girl, parents also encourage them to acquire the fighting spirit and the economic in- dependence traditionally befitting bad-boys-become-good men. Even the most conservative of American parents admit that they do not want their daughters marrying in their late teens or early twenties, since settling down too young would compromise their educational and occupational oppor- tunities.
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Lacking the cultural resources of an ideology of domesticity or a welfare state that supports such an ideology—by giving women (and men) social rights and benefits to engage in caregiving—American parents are all too aware that without credentials and job prospects even their successfully married daughters will be only one divorce away from poverty.

We have seen how the Dutch and American states create conditions for normalization and dramatization. We have also seen how normalization and dramatization confer upon young people, particularly young men, the capacities to thrive in the two societies. We have seen, in other words, the interplay between the conditions created by the institutions of the pol- ity and economy, on the one hand, and the cultural processes at work in the white middle-class family, on the other. This does not mean however that the economic and legal environments determine the cultural ideals, assumptions, and practices through which modern individuals become constituted. After all, there is a third way to understand the parallels we have seen: in both countries, the regulation of sexuality in the family and the regulation of public welfare are shaped by different ways of conceiving, constituting, and controlling individuals and collectivities.

Indeed, we can trace some of the most notable cultural concepts and their concomitant practices back to before the institutionalization of the modern welfare state. In political and religious philosophy and practice, in literature, and in the rituals of everyday life, especially those prominent among the middle classes in the two societies, there has been a history of embracing and seeking to enact the concepts “complete freedom” and
ge- zelligheid
that white middle-class parents and teenagers articulate today.
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Indeed, the cultural concepts and modes of reasoning about how people acquire self-restraint, attain autonomy, and exercise and accept author- ity at work in the regulation of behavior in middle-class families during the 1990s have also shaped the kinds of welfare state programs that were adopted in previous decades.
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Thus, rather than reduce the cultural pro- cesses that shape the management of sexuality in the family to political

and economic conditions, we must view culture and state policy as mutu- ally constitutive.

Indeed, I have argued, the core cultural ideal of
gezelligheid
, and its con- comitant assumptions and practices, provided the Dutch with cultural re- sources with which to weather the aftermath of the 1960s and 1970s. It may be that the cultural traditions on which the Dutch middle class drew as it encountered the challenge against traditional authority relations and sexual morality, offered both faith in, and skills for, the constitution of sec- ular and equalized collectivities. The celebration and institutionalization of a “secular religion of the social” in the private and the public sphere may have helped create boundaries and social bonds “without God.” By con- trast, the belief in, and celebration of, individual autonomy attained in op- position to dependency and society may have ironically left middle-class Americans without the cultural grounds on which to expect or to demand social attunement and self-regulation.

This lacuna in the secular “cultural imaginary” of the American white middle class may explain why in the United States “harsh justice” has been embraced as a means to keep people in check.
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It may also explain the particular significance of marriage. Finally, one reason that Americans con- tinue to be drawn to religious communities may be that they provide the higher authority and shared moral rules missing from the ideal of free- dom that they embrace. Indeed, like marriage, religion allows Americans to reconcile contradictory cultural imperatives, as it is both “perfectly free and perfectly binding.”
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Conversely, that the Dutch formulated a cultural concept of the common good in a secular age and maintained faith in peo- ple’s tendency to form solid relationships may help explain why, paradoxi- cally, the country in which teenage sexuality had been far from normal in the 1950s would be the one to go through the most dramatic change, and yet also be the one in which that dramatic change would be viewed as not at all extraordinary.