Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (5 page)

The interplay of cultural frames that parents use to interpret adoles- cent sexuality, the capacities of young people, and the responsibilities of adults gives parents’ responses to the question of the sleepover their cogni- tive, emotional, and moral common sense. These “webs of significance”

thus create a more or less coherent cultural universe of meanings in which certain decisions and practices make intuitive sense while others do not. At the same time, there are holes in the webs: as significant as the cultural languages that parents have readily available are the silences, lacunae, and the ways in which dramatization and normalization do not adequately ad- dress aspects of parents’ and teenagers’ experiences. And although there are dominant tendencies in each middle-class culture, not everyone is on the same page. Indeed, as we will see, rather than constitute seamless wholes, dramatization and normalization often involve negotiations—between dif- ferent people and between expectations and realities.

The second step in solving the puzzle is to see that the normalization and dramatization of adolescent sexuality are embedded within different cul- tures of individualism and control that have come to prevail in Dutch and American societies. These different cultures of individualism and control build on longstanding traditions within each country. At the same time, they are also nation-specific responses to the changes in sexual, gender, and authority relations of the 1960s and 1970s: In the United States an “ad- versarial individualism” has prevailed, according to which individual and society stand opposed to each other, which leaves uncertainty about the basis for social bonds between people and for self-restraint within them. In the Netherlands an “interdependent individualism” has prevailed in which individual and society are conceptualized as mutually constitutive. Interde- pendent individualism makes social bonds and the mutual accommoda- tions necessary to maintain them more of a matter of course.
78

Each version of individualism has been accompanied by a distinct form of social control: Adversarial individualism permits, encourages even, indi- viduals to attain autonomy by breaking away from social ties and depen- dencies, and only after that break form intimate relationships. However, because this definition of autonomy necessitates a disruption of social connectedness, it makes it difficult to envision social cohesion and self- restraint without some higher authority. Thus ironically, adversarial indi- vidualism calls for the use of overt external control, especially against those who have not (yet) attained full autonomy. Interdependent individualism, by contrast, encourages individuals to develop their autonomy in concert with ongoing relationships of interdependence. Because such relationships require, by their nature, a certain amount of mutual accommodation and

self-restraint, the use of external controls appears less necessary. But while overtly egalitarian, interdependent individualism can obscure inequality and the fact that the less powerful parties in relationships are expected to make the greater accommodations.

The premises of adversarial and interdependent individualism—their as- sumptions about the relationship between self and other, and the relation- ship between different parts of the self—create cultural logics that under- gird the dramatization and normalization of adolescent sexuality. Hence, American middle-class parents encourage adolescents to pursue individual interests and passions, break away from home, and establish themselves as emotionally and financially self-sufficient beings. At the same time, during the teenage years, American parents also view it as their responsibility to fight back, sometimes forcefully, against the passions that they at the same time encourage as signs of individuation but doubt that their teenage chil- dren are able to control. This template for adversarial individualism makes parents wary of adolescents’ establishing intimate bonds. It also makes do- mesticating such bonds by permitting a sleepover out of the question.

The Dutch template of interdependent individualism provides a way for adolescents to develop their autonomy within relationships of interdepen- dence. Such ongoing interrelatedness is not viewed as a matter of choice as much as an inherent human need and proclivity. Thus, adolescence does not bring the same rupture in the relationships with parents or in the self. An assumption of interdependent individualism is that even as they develop autonomy, individuals—parents and children alike—must dem- onstrate interpersonal attunement, which requires from adolescents the development of self-regulation. Within this framework of interdependent individualism, teenagers’ intimate relationships do not pose a threat to the acquisition of autonomy, nor does their sexual component threaten paren- tal authority within the home. By negotiating the sleepover, parents model the very interdependent individualism—integrating the needs of the self and the social—they encourage in their children.

Intergenerational cultural transmission takes place not just through cultural narratives but also through methods for maintaining control and connec- tion that psychologically encode them. As part of a new generation, young people’s cultural universe only partially overlaps with that of their parents: they consume different media, are subject to different technological flu-

encies, participate in different institutions—school and peer culture—and are recipients of different formative “zeitgeists.” Having not been fully so- cialized and yet subject to multiple sources of socialization, young people are often “rawer” in their desires and tendencies than their parents. For all these reasons, one cannot assume that just because a cultural logic makes sense to parents, it will make sense to their children as well. Yet, as we will see, even as they are in the process of forging their independent selves, young people do, in fact, reproduce through the interpretation and con- struction of their own experiences many of the same cultural categories their parents use.

Such cultural reproduction between the generations is not a matter of course. In both countries, adolescent experimentation with sexuality and alcohol are sources of potential parent-adolescent conflict. However, the methods by which parents establish control and connection shape how those conflicts are experienced. Most American teenagers describe a pa- rental strategy of
reestablishing connection through control
. Many American teenagers encounter parental policies much like those in the Fursman household—no sex or alcohol. And while most young people start their teenage “careers” as rule followers, sooner or later they start “sneaking around” to engage in forbidden activities, which in turn become vehicles through which they engage in a
psychology of separation
. But this secrecy also creates a disjuncture in the connection between parents and children. To reestablish that connection, parents must exert overt control and young people must “get caught.”

In most Dutch families, by contrast, teenagers are subject to parental strategy of
maintaining control through connection
: With the belief widespread that it is not possible to keep young people from engaging in sex and drink- ing if they decide they want to, few teenagers find such exploratory activi- ties outright forbidden. At the same time, they are expected to continue participation in family rituals that keep them connected to their parents, even as they begin to experiment with sex, alcohol, and venturing into the world of nightlife. The “domestication” of their experimentations cre- ates bridges between the world of adults and the world of peers that their American counterparts lack, and it encourages in Dutch teenagers a
psychol- ogy of incorporation
. Those bridges are two-way streets: young people are able to integrate their experiences outside the home more easily with their roles as family members, but they are also subject to a deeper form of so- cial control. This “soft” power is particularly effective when young people stay genuinely connected to their families not just out of duty but out of desire.
79

The different cultural templates for individualism and control also shape interpretations and experiences of gender. The American parents often mention differences and conflicts of interest between girls and boys. In fact, in some, though certainly not most, families, the American boys re- port receiving implicit or explicit encouragement from fathers to pursue sexual interests. And while the interpretation and management of sexuality in American middle-class families led both girls and boys to use sex as a vehicle to engage in a psychology of separation, bifurcating sexuality and family life, this process tends to take a greater psychological toll on girls. While boys are expected to be “bad,” girls are encouraged to be “good.” But with “good girl” status and sex viewed as incompatible, American girls of- ten experience, or anticipate experiencing, difficulty reconciling their sexual maturation with good daughterhood.

Interdependent individualism shapes the language and experience of gender in Dutch middle-class families. As noted, the Dutch parents do not speak about adolescent sexuality in terms of girls’ and boys’ different posi- tions of power or of their “antagonistic gender strategies.” Nor do they give evidence of treating sons and daughters differently with regard to sexual- ity and relationships. In keeping with national statistics and qualitative re- search, they suggest that daughters and sons are equally likely to receive permission for sleepovers. Like their female counterparts, most Dutch boys are subject to a “soft control” that socializes them into a relationship-based experience of sexuality and self and that encourages negotiations within, rather than separation from, the household. But there are subtle gender differences: such negotiation tends to be more fraught for girls, and while few Dutch boys express reservations about actually bringing their girl- friends home for the night, a number of Dutch girls say that they would rather spend the night elsewhere, suggesting that they do feel more closely supervised by their parents.

Adversarial individualism and interdependent individualism also pro- vide cultural templates with which the American and Dutch girls and boys navigate sex and sense of self within peer cultures. The different assump- tions about people’s inherent relational needs and proclivities—at the root of the two versions of individualism—shape teenage girls’ and boys’ dilemmas of gender. In both countries girls are confined by the potential slander of being called a slut, but that label is much more prominent in the interviews with American girls. One reason is that American girls en- counter adult and peer cultures skeptical about teenagers’ ability to sustain

meaningful sexual relationships. This skepticism means that American girls lack the indisputable certainty that the Dutch girls possess about whether and when sex is culturally legitimate. But while Dutch adult and peer cul- tures validate sexual experience in relationships, uncritical validation of relationship-based sexuality can obscure conflicts of interest and power dif- ferences in heterosexual relationships.

To different degrees, the notion that boys want sex but not relationships has some currency in both American and Dutch peer and popular culture. But in both countries, the vast majority of boys describe themselves as quite romantic in their orientation, wanting to experience sex with some- one with whom they are in love. The American boys tend to see themselves as unique for their romantic aspirations, calling to mind the icon of the lone cowboy opposing the crowd of hormone-driven boys and a peer and popular culture of soulless sex. Indeed, some American boys set the bar for love very high—defining it as a heroic relinquishing of self—thus distanc- ing themselves not only from other boys but from sexual pleasure itself. The Dutch boys describe themselves as normal in their pursuit of a combi- nation of sex and relationships. Without the stark oppositions—between male and female, love and lust, and pleasure and responsibility—they evi- dence a more integrated experience of ideals and realities.

Having set out to solve a puzzle, in the end
Not Under My Roof
reveals a comprehensive picture of coexisting processes occurring at the intrapsy- chic, interpersonal, familial, and societal levels. For, as we will see, there are striking parallels between policies governing the household and the polity itself. The premises of adversarial individualism inform the organization of government and economy in the United States, pitting different political parties and economic actors against one another in winner-take-all politi- cal battles and in often highly contentious economic negotiations. Within such adversarial political and economic climates, people are encouraged— and when they have the necessary resources are able—to pursue individual ambition relatively unfettered. The flipside of such unfettered opportuni- ties, however, is that post-1960s American society has had an unusually punitive penal system which imposes heavy sentencing for minor infrac- tions to control people, including teens, not deemed able to exert sufficient control over their impulses.
80

Meanwhile, the premises of interdependent individualism have struc- tured the organization of government and economy in the Netherlands:

building on a longstanding tradition of the “politics of accommodation,” decision-making, including about contentious issues, has long been re- solved through a process of consensus-seeking between the different po- litical parties.
81
A similar consensus orientation informs the regulation of economic negotiations, requiring all parties partaking in negotiation— management, unions, and government representatives—to broker mutu- ally agreeable arrangements that are sensitive to the needs of, and accept- able to, all.
82
Such a politics of accommodation can often preempt social disruption and successfully elicit compliance. At the same time, public au- thorities in post-1960s Dutch society have approached “vices,” including sex work and drugs, much as have the Dutch parents, through a regulated legalization or tolerance of activities that are subject to “harsh justice” in the United States.
83