Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (42 page)

1. This critique of Foucault has been partly inspired by the work of Norbert Elias, who offers an alternative and more optimistic view of the relationship between sexuality and control in the modern world (Elias 1994, 177; Smith 1999). Norbert Elias’
   The Civilizing Process
   , published in 1939, argued that since the late Middle Ages people became increasingly dependent upon one another, which, in turn, has required them to be more considerate of others and to exercise greater restraint over their emotional impulses. For Elias, this gradual “civilizing process,” while taking its toll, also had benefits, one of which is greater self-mastery.
   

2. Williams 1976.
   

3. For a useful overview of the different concepts of culture that have informed sociol- ogy and anthropology, see Sewell 1999.
   

4. Swidler 2001 and Archer 1985.
   

5. Bourdieu 1984 and also Lamont 1992; 2000.
   

6. See for instance, McRobbie 1991; McRobbie and Garber 1993; Willis 1977; Heb- didge 1979; and Wilkins 2008.
   

7. This synthetic approach draws on the Geertzian paradigm of culture as webs of meaning (Geertz 1973; 1983), the Foucauldian attention to the controlling and constitutive consequences of discursive constructions and practices (Foucault 1977; 1978; 1985), and is sensitive to the ways in which cultural practices serve as means of drawing status distinctions (Elias 1994; Bourdieu 1984; 1990). My approach is synthetic in a second respect: it combines attention to the systematic and structur- ing properties of cultures, with recognition of the way in which individuals use the cultural tools and templates available to them (Swidler 1986; 2001).
   

8. The concept of “emotion work” comes from Hochschild (1979). It refers to the ac- tive attempts on the part of individuals to shape their feelings according to the so- cial rules about the appropriate emotions in a given situation.
   

9. The concept of a “cultural language” comes from Bellah et al. (1985), who have argued that Americans have primary and secondary cultural languages. The first cul- tural language of individualism is most readily available to middle-class Americans. The second cultural language, which promotes commitments to others, is less easily accessible. For an extension of this argument in a cross-cultural analysis of middle- class American and Hindu men, see Steve Derné 1994.
   

71. Swidler 2001, 19.

1. See Lamont 1992; 2000; Biernacki 1995; Dobbin 1994; Kremer 2007; Griswold 1987; and Spillman 1997.
   

2. Kremer 2007 and Steensland 2008.
   

3. Weber 1958.
   

4. Nor are national cultures without contradiction or contestation over the application of their components.
   

5. See Collins 2004; Bettie 2000; and Carpenter 2005.
   

6. Röling (2003) notes the irony that sex education became acceptable in the Nether-
   

   lands right around the time that large populations of immigrants started arriving with a very different sexual culture and values.
   

7. My argument about the two individualisms builds on two strands of scholarship. The first is that of Robert Bellah and colleagues (1985), who have discerned several different traditions of individualism in the United States. Uniting them is a volunta- ristic conception of the self as the origin of social action and ties (see also Varenne 1977; Swidler 2001). For my argument about interdependent individualism I draw on the work of Dutch sociologists, who in turn build on Norbert Elias’ theory of the civilizing process (de Swaan 1981, 1988; Elias 1994; Goudsblom 1987, 2000; Wilterdink 1995; and Wouters 1986, 1987, 2004). Following Elias, Wouters and de Swaan have argued that an increase in the structural interdependencies between different social groups within society has led to a growing awareness of interde- pendence and mutual pressures toward greater self-restraint among citizens of ad- vanced industrial societies. I depart from this perspective in several respects. First, while in keeping with Elias’ “structural” perspective, Wouters and de Swaan attri- bute cultural processes to underlying structural changes and differences, I credit cul- tural traditions and meaning-making processes with a “semi-autonomous” role in shaping social institutions and selves. Second, and more specifically, I argue that while the vision of modern societies advanced by sociologists such as Wouters and de Swaan may accurately describe Dutch middle- and upper-middle-class institu- tions and culture in the post-1960s era, it does not capture the culture of Ameri- can private and public institutions during that period (Schalet 2000; 2001; see also Stearns 1994).
   

8. This plays on the title of Jane Collier’s
   From Duty to Desire: Remaking Families in a Spanish Village
   (1997).
   

9. See Garland 2001; Whitman 2003; Western and Petit 2002; Starr 1986; and Solinger 2005.
   

10. The term “politics of accommodation” comes from Lijphart 1975. See also Heme- rijck and Visser 1999; Outshoorn 2000; and Schuyf and Krouwel 1999.
    

11. Freeman 1994 and Hemerijck and Visser 1999.
    

12. “Harsh Justice” comes from Whitman 2003; Bernstein 2007; and Buruma 2007.
    

13. The age of consent in the Netherlands is sixteen. During the 1990s, consensual sex with someone between the ages of twelve and sixteen was not prosecuted if neither party nor the parents or guardians filed a complaint. David Evans (1993) referred to this legal situation as one in which young people were granted “conditional rights of consent” which recognized that they could potentially exercise sexual self- determination but needed protection against potential abuse. A 2002 law removed this conditional right of consent but has left the prosecution of consensual sexual relations with someone between twelve and sixteen at the discretion of the courts. The “Children’s Telephone,” an organization which is part of the government- subsidized Bureau of Youth Care (
    Bureau Jeugdzorg
    ) explains this legal gray zone as follows: “According to the law, it is forbidden to have sex with each other when you are under sixteen. Sometimes, it is not seen as wrong, namely, when the difference in age is not so great, when you both want it and/or you have a relationship on the condition that it happens without force, violence, or deceit and outside of a rela- tionship of dependence (so it can’t be your teacher or your coach). Under twelve, it is always punishable!! Even if you’re both the same age and you both want it!!”
    

14. Bernat and Resnick 2009.
    

CHAPTER TWO

1. “Going to bed with” is the most common Dutch expression for having sexual intercourse.
   

2. An expression often cited to illustrate the cultural premium placed on acting “nor- mally,” that is, without excessive emotionality or drawing attention to oneself, is “
   Do maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg
   ” which translates as, “Behave normally [because] then you are already crazy enough!”
   

3. Dutch sociologist Paul Schnabel has argued that the sexual revolution led Dutch society to a widely felt need to order and arrange “a new polder of civilization” (Schnabel 1990, 27). The metaphor is an apt one for the Dutch, as polders— land reclaimed from the sea or other bodies of water—make up a large part of the Netherlands. The cultural frame of normal sexuality—with its concomitant prac- tices of open discussions and rational negotiation—expresses the assumption that the polder can successfully be ordered and constitutes a means by which to do so.
   

4. These are the findings of Lewis and Knijn’s (2003; 2002) review of Dutch sex edu- cation curricula in the 1980s and 1990s. For a review of recent Dutch sex educa- tion curricula, including a content analysis of “Long Live Love,” the widely used, government-funded sex education program, see Ferguson, Vanwesenbeeck, and Knijn 2008.
   

5. Lewis and Knijn 2003, 120.
   

6. Lewis and Knijn 2003, 121.
   

7. Lewis and Knijn 2002, 687.
   

8. As we saw in chapter 1, a remarkably quick shift in attitudes toward sexuality took place in the Netherlands between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. The changing at- titudes about parents and children taking showers together—and hence being nude in each other’s presence—illustrate this rapid shift. In 1968, 28 percent of men and 21 percent of women said parents and children taking showers together was “always acceptable.” In 1981, six out of ten of men and women agreed that such a practice was “always acceptable” (Kooij 1983).
   

9. In their interview study of lower- and upper-middle-class Dutch parents, the Dutch researchers Yolanda te Poel and Janita Ravesloot (1997) found similarly that parents of the 1990s looked back on their youth with misgivings about the sex education they received. The parents they interviewed remembered silences, warnings, and evasions, which though not terribly troubling to them as teenagers, were seen in retrospect to have left them ill-prepared for sex during their engagement and mar- riage: “The taboo on sexuality and physicality, and the negative evaluation of this as adults, strengthened their intentions to do it ‘differently’ with their own children” (58). Although mothers are the primary sexual educators at home, fathers too want the topic to be “the most normal matter in the world” (60).
   

10. See Berne and Huberman 1999. SOA/AIDS, a government-sponsored organization in charge of AIDS- and STD-prevention, publicized the new edition of this popu- lar sex education curriculum with an online blurb that demonstrates the desired sequence—from making contact to making love: “Safe Sex is, in this new curricu- lum, ‘Long Live Love,’ the central theme. Attention is devoted to the existence of HIV, other STDs, and unwanted pregnancies. Other themes are going over your own boundaries and those of others. In addition to the transmission of knowledge about safe and unsafe sexual behavior, the curriculum stimulates a positive, responsible attitude toward sexuality. Of course, we deal with the fun, exciting, but also the vul-
    

    nerable feelings that are part of making contact, being in love, getting a courtship, and making love.”
    

11. Lewis and Knijn 2003, 123. The authors found that sex education curricula typically place teenage sexuality in the context of being in love, and emphasize the interplay between self-reliance and mutual respect. Speaking about sexual attitudes in Dutch society more generally, Paul Schnabel (1990) contends that in the post-sexual- revolution era, sexuality remained closely tied to relationships and love among broad sectors of the population.
    

12. In a qualitative study, published under the title “Problems? No Problem! Becom- ing Homo/Lesbo in a Tolerant Social Climate” (my trans.), Picavet and Sandfort (2005) report that the parents of their interviewees were very accepting of their homosexuality. De Graaf and colleagues (2005) found that the twenty-four Dutch homosexual youth with whom they spoke in focus groups had had different home environments, ranging from supportive and accepting parents, to families in which fathers and brothers (but not mothers or sisters) made negative comments about homosexuality.
    

13. Characterizing the shift in attitude among Dutch family physicians in the early 1970s, Evert Ketting writes: “The newly available (and first really effective) possibili- ties to prevent unwanted pregnancies must be utilized. . . . It makes little sense to try and stop young people from having sexual relations together, because they will do that anyway; but you can prevent the problems that follow from it” (Ketting 1990, 78).
    

14. The metaphor of the “web” which I use in this chapter is of course a reference to Clifford Geertz’s famous definition of culture as the “webs of significance [man] himself has spun” (Geertz 1973, 5).
    

15. Other studies have also found that the sexual activity of their teenage children is not a matter of overt concern for Dutch parents (te Poel and Ravesloot 1997; Ravesloot 1997; Brinkgreve and van Stolk 1997). The Dutch political scientist Jan Willem Duyvendak has argued that, in response to the emergence of AIDS in the 1980s, the Dutch government, alone among its industrial peers, strove to counteract the possible stigmatization of gay and bisexual men (Duyvendak 1996). Thus, AIDS, although prompting new public health campaigns that emphasized “safe sex” and condom use, did not lead to a moral panic about sex itself, gay or straight.
    

16. In 1995, the American teenage birth rate was 54.4 per 1,000 girls, ages fifteen to nineteen. At 5.8, the Dutch teenage birth rate (per 1,000 girls, ages 15–19) was nine times lower. In addition, the Dutch teenage abortion rate was one of the lowest in the world (Singh and Darroch 2000; Garssen 2008). A cross-national study of sexu- ally transmitted diseases (STDs) among teenagers in developed countries found that in the mid-1990s, U.S. rates dwarfed those of almost all other countries. Dutch rates were far below those reported for American teens—especially with regard to gonor- rhea: 7.7 per 100,000 versus 571.8. However, since in the Netherlands fewer than 70 percent of diagnosed cases were estimated to be reported, the rates were not fully comparable (Panchaud et al. 2000). In recent years, the tracking and reporting of STDs has improved in the Netherlands. Rates of reported incidences of STDs remain considerably lower than in the United States. But studies of chlamydia
    prevalence
    — which measure the proportion of a given population that is infected—have found less stark differences between the two countries. Van Bergen et al. found that 2 per- cent of a Dutch study group, ages fifteen to twenty-nine, was infected with chla- mydia, while Miller et al. found that 4.2 percent of their nationally representative
    

    Notes to Pages 42–51 / 235
    

    sample of American young adults, ages eighteen to twenty-six, were infected (Miller et al. 2004; van Bergen et al. 2005). In 2007, youth in the United States were more than three times as likely to be living with HIV—rates were estimated at .7 percent for young men, ages fifteen to twenty-four and .3 percent for young women, respec- tively, as compared to .2 percent and .1 percent for men and women in the Nether- lands (UNAIDS 2008). As is true for teenage pregnancies, HIV and other STI’s are disproportionately concentrated among low-income teens.
    

17. In a mixed-methods Ph.D. thesis, Maria Brugman (2007) found that American fe- male college students were far more likely to have known someone who became pregnant in high school than their Dutch counterparts.
    

18. Like nudity among family members, acceptance of homosexuality became, in post- sexual revolution Dutch society, a way to demonstrate the normality with which one deals with sex. Historically speaking, the broad-based acceptance of homosexu- ality in the Netherlands today is a rather unexpected development, Bram van Stolk (1991) has argued, since as of 1960 homosexuals were still among the most derided individuals in Dutch society.
    

19. Reviewing his own writings about the sexual revolution and its aftermath, Dutch so- ciologist Paul Schnabel notes that what he calls “guilty sexuality,” defined as “abuse of power and authority relationships,” did not receive much attention until 1989. “Abundantly late,” he concludes (Schnabel 1990, 49).
    

20. Despite great efforts on the part of the Dutch government to promote upward mobility through education, many children from working-class backgrounds— including the vast majority of ethnic minorities—still enter the lower-level tracks of secondary education (Driessen and Mulder 1999). Only a small percentage of the children who enter the HAVO or VWO, the two college-preparatory tracks of Dutch secondary schools, come from working-class families (Bakker, Bogt, and de Waal 1993, 98). But although young people’s socioeconomic background does effect the kind of secondary school into which they are tracked, it has relatively little effect on their subsequent transition from secondary to tertiary education (De Graaf and Ganzenboom 1993).
    

21. Te Poel and Ravelsoot (1997) find that Dutch parents of the 1990s try hard to be “modern sexual educators,” though they do not fully succeed in conquering their shame and embarrassment. Indeed, the management of sexuality in Dutch middle- class families can be viewed as a vehicle in the “civilizing” of parents, as much as of children, through the tempering of strong emotions and their subjection to reason (Elias 1994; 1998).
    

22. Lewis and Knijn (2002) cite a Dutch informant who makes the controlling aspects of permission quite clear: “We give freedom [for adolescent sexuality] because we can control it (679).”
    

23. In Dutch,
    vertrouwen
    means both “trust” and “faith.”
    

24. That the Dutch parents feel less under assault by the commercial media than their American counterparts has a basis in reality. Throughout the 1980s, commercial broadcasting was illegal in the Netherlands. Government policy regulated both the distribution of airtime to different cultural and political interest groups and the distribution of program content (educational and cultural versus entertainment). It set and continues to set parameters around the programs that can be broadcast during hours when children typically watch television. But in the 1990s, commer- cial television became legal though restricted. In 2000, domestic commercial net- works—which tend to favor entertainment programs over educational and cultural