Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (40 page)

The analyses presented in the book chapters are the product of a continu- ous process of moving back and forth between theoretical and empirical “tracks of analysis.
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The first stage of analysis took place in 1991–92, in my undergraduate thesis at Harvard University on the cultural construction of adolescence among Dutch and American parents.
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The analytic and theo- retical interpretation I developed then informed the subsequent research I conducted for my sociology Ph.D. thesis at the University of California at Berkeley. This research took me to the Netherlands in 1994, 1995, 1998, and 2000, to Corona in 1998 and 1999, and to Tremont in 2000. After each interview, I wrote memos on notable findings, and how they con- firmed, challenged, or developed my hypotheses. As my ideas evolved with new theoretical lenses and empirical observation, I refined the interview questions I used, adding some new questions and dropping others.

As a consequence of these processes of moving back and forth between theory and data, by the time I started the systematic analysis of interview transcripts, I had already developed a fairly clear idea of the critical cultural concepts and practices in the two countries, as well as of the important relationships and dynamics which the data revealed. These ideas refined themselves as I coded the transcripts with the help of QSR’s qualitative

software programs N5 and NVivo 8 and tabulated the answers to the quan- tifiable standardized questions. I analyzed the transcripts in the same or- der as the chapters of the book—moving from the Dutch parents, to the American parents, to the teenagers in the two countries. The analyses of the data evolved from the creative interplay between these tabulations of quantifiable answers and my interpretations of the meanings, causes, and consequences of the critical cultural concepts and practices.

I would be remiss if I did not discuss some important additional tools and sources for my interpretations, analyses, and theoretical propositions. The first is the interpretative lens that I developed as the oldest child of American immigrants, living and fully participating in Dutch society from childhood to young adulthood. Like many second-generation immi- grants, I had participant observation or “observing participation” thrust on me from an early age, becoming familiar enough with Dutch culture to see it “from a native’s point of view” but not so familiar as to take it for granted.
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This familiarity gave me access to what Clifford Geertz has called “first-order interpretations”: the interpretations that are made by people who share a culture, and that are distinct from the “second-order interpre- tations” made by cultural analysts.
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A second source of information has come from interactions with researchers, professionals, policymakers, and advocates in health and education. In 2004, I published an article in an online medical journal. The article’s distribution through networks out- side of the academic social sciences led to speaking engagements at sexual and reproductive health, policy, and education conferences, at government organizations, and to collaborations with educators and adolescent medi- cine specialists. These interprofessional exchanges have constituted a dif- ferent source of learning: the back-and-forth with audiences who spoke as professionals and as parents—and reflecting on their teenage years, as adolescents—greatly enriched my understanding of the cultural, political, and economic factors that shape adolescent sexuality in the United States today. These inspiring exchanges have also attuned me to what appears to be a widely felt desire to see adolescent sexual development become less fraught territory and prompted me to develop the conceptual map for ado- lescent sexual health with which I close this book.

In these tables I count parents who were interviewed together as a couple as one because although they are two people, together they represent one household. In brackets are the numbers counting both parents.

United States Netherlands

a
The category “professional” refers to households in which at least one parent has a four-year degree and a professional or an upper- managerial position.

Corona (population, 130,000) is a county capital and home to a reputable junior college as well as a state university. Although located in the midst of liberal Northern California, the majority of Corona residents identify as moderates. Far enough away from major metropolitan areas to make com- muting difficult, close enough to draw many “escapees” from the big cities, Corona is a blend of city and suburb. It possesses a popularly frequented commercial core of cafés and shops, including a Barnes & Noble, which, true to its Northern Californian location, features extensive sections on spirituality, astrology, and gay and lesbian studies. Much of the city’s life, however, takes place in the stretched out, suburban neighborhoods that lie a car-ride away from the city’s center. While Corona’s residential neigh- borhoods are segregated by income and ethnicity—over 10 percent of the city’s residents are Hispanic—the city is not as polarized economically as are many of its counterparts across the country.

For the parents who reside in the green, spacious, middle- and upper- middle-class neighborhoods that lie sprinkled within the city’s boundaries, it probably comes as no surprise that Corona ranks high on a number of measures of the “good life.” Corona parents are typically part of married couples, in which both spouses have at least a two-year, if not four-year, college degree and are employed as professionals in health care, engineer- ing, and business. Most inhabit sizable, detached homes, found at the end of cul-de-sacs, perched along hillsides, or half-hidden among woodsy growth. While few would characterize themselves as particularly wealthy, none would deny being relatively “comfortable.”

And yet, if Corona parents have gone a long way toward attaining the “American dream,” they are acutely aware that an entirely different world lies beyond their own secluded streets. One way parents confront that world is through their own children. The teenage children of most Corona parents attend two of the city’s five public high schools. Like its residen- tial neighborhoods, Corona’s high schools are economically and ethni- cally segregated. However, the dividing lines between schools are less rigid. Corona’s steadily growing gang problem, for instance, has become a defin- ing feature of even one of Corona’s most economically and educationally advantaged public schools. Corona high schools give evidence of “diver- sity” in other ways as well. On the one hand, there is a wide array of stu- dent cliques and organizations—including a group for gay and bisexual teens at one school. On the other, a sizable proportion of students have parents with serious substance abuse problems. And it is not uncommon for Corona’s high-school students to move back and forth between par- ents, or to live for extended periods with grandparents.

Tremont (population, 10,000) lies a short plane flight away from Co- rona in Washington State. The flight north, however, feels like a move across time as well as space. In many respects, Tremont approximates the mid-century, small-town America featured in many sociological clas- sics. Tremont was long a thriving blue-collar town with strong egalitarian sentiments—millworkers and lawyers met on their walk down the hill to work in the morning—and a firm civic culture organized around church, school, and voluntary associations. Those social and political traditions are still evident even as profound economic changes are underway: as Trem- ont’s population grew by almost one half, its productive center of gravity moved from the mill in town to the high-tech firms out of town, as has much of its commercial activity. Downtown still houses a movie theater and a supermarket, but many locals now shop and entertain themselves in the newer developments and malls that lie ten or fifteen miles out of town. The residential patterns of the Tremont interviewees mirror the town’s character. Half of the parents are natives or long-time residents of Tremont. The other half are relatively recent transplants, mostly from other regions in the Pacific Northwest. The majority of parents live outside of the “old town”—in the new developments on the other side of the hill or in the rural areas beyond the town’s limits. Tremont parents are more education- ally and occupationally diverse than their Corona counterparts. Half of the Tremont interviewees were only in college for a year or two, while the other half hold four-year degrees. Their occupations range from customer ser-

vice provider and postal clerk, on the one hand, to engineer and company president, on the other.

If Tremont is changing, the high school does not yet show visible signs of change. With seven hundred students, Tremont’s only high school is sig- nificantly smaller than any of the Corona schools. The calm and highly regulated way in which students and teachers move about in the former— discipline in and outside of class is tight—is a far cry from the chaotic at- mosphere of the latter. The sea of fair-haired boys and girls—most Tremont residents are of Northern European heritage—demonstrate the student body’s ethnic homogeneity. The student groupings of Tremont High also lack the diversity of Corona high schools. But sports, the mainstay of Tre- mont’s extracurricular life, are strongly supported by the community. And it is common to see groups of adults and teens congregated on lit fields on early spring evenings, taking joint pleasure in cheerleading, running track, and playing ball.

As its name suggests, Eastern City is located in the east of the Nether- lands, a region which has long functioned as the semi-periphery to the more densely populated and commercially developed West. Although it lies at some distance from the country’s main political and economic cen- ter, Eastern City nonetheless constitutes an urban area of some substance. With 130,000 inhabitants and two vocational colleges as well as an inter- nationally renowned soccer facility, the city has its share of urban charms and problems. One of Eastern City’s undeniable assets is its downtown, a conglomeration of cafés, restaurants, and small shops housed in centu- ries-old buildings along windy, cobblestone roads. On Friday and Saturday nights, the main plaza draws youths, including children of the parents in- terviewed, from all over the city and beyond.