REVIEWS
“With grace and style, Amy Schalet presents a forceful and convincing argument about the divergent cultural approaches to sexuality, socialization of adolescents, and conceptions of citizenship in the United States and the Netherlands, probing deep-seated value differences that play out in the management of sex. Nuanced, well documented, and remarkably persuasive, Not Under My Roof is an exemplary study.”
— Frank Furstenberg, University of Pennsylvania
“In Not Under My Roof, Amy Schalet mines the radically different American and Dutch understandings of adolescent sexuality—their different takes on lust, love, gender, hormones, control, and selfhood—and comes away with scholarly gold. Carefully researched, wicked smart, and filled with the voices and stories of parents and teenagers, Schalet’s is one of the best books on sexuality and culture in years.”
— Joshua Gamson, University of San Francisco
“Schalet’s insightful analyses—grounded in history, sociology, and adolescent development—provide a roadmap for normalizing sexuality and guiding social policy. Taking adolescent sexuality out of the darkness of the back seat and into the light under the family roof has the power to transform adolescent and adult sexuality and family relations.”
— John Santelli, MD, Columbia University
“Combining intimate personal stories with brilliant sociological insight, Schalet challenges our assumptions about teenage sex and the inevitability of conflict between teenagers and parents. American adolescents rebel, and their parents impose harsh discipline because they prize individual autonomy and fear the social disorder it implies. Dutch parents expect their children to be reasonable because they see self-regulation as a natural attribute of a cohesive society. This far-reaching and enthralling cultural analysis puts flesh on the bones of theories of modern individualism, and, perhaps more importantly, it offers American parents a new, hopeful—if at times unsettling—sense of how we might better love, respect, and care for our children.”
— Ann Swidler, University of California, Berkeley
“I just finished reading Amy Schalet’s wonderful book, “Not Under My Roof”, and can’t say enough good things about it. It’s easy to read and understand. As the CEO of an almost 100-year-old nonprofit, the American Social Health Association, whose purpose is to educate American’s about how to be sexually healthy, this book is spot on. We tell people every day that parents are critical in starting a child on a sexually healthy life. It is my sincere hope that every parent will read this book.
As the parent of a 23 and 17-year-old, I am humbled by how very much I had to learn. From the first time I heard Amy speak, I was forever changed as a parent. Thank you Amy!”
— Lynn B. Barclay, President and CEO, American Social Health Association
“Not Under My Roof is a thought-provoking sociological treatise rooted in the lives and words of real people. The material is sophisticated, but the writing is clear and direct, which makes it a pleasure to read. Dr. Schalet’s meticulous research gleans the perspectives of teens and their parents in both the U.S. and Holland, offering poignant insight into the struggles over emerging sexuality that occur in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Hers is a lucid window into another culture that may help us to more clearly see ourselves.”
— Jillian Henderson, University of California, San Francisco
“Amy Schalet’s book compares the sexual attitudes of American and Dutch parents and her findings are nothing short of staggering: Whereas most American parents panic about the idea of allowing their kids to have sex with other kids under their roof, for many Dutch parents, it’s not only fine — it’s responsible parenting. . . . Schalet’s extensively researched, fascinating work . . . is a startling wake-up call about America’s largely misguided attitudes toward sex and growing up.”
— Salon
"Her book starts in the adolescent bedroom, and ends up explaining why the US is so conservative on social issues and the Netherlands so liberal."—Financial Times
— Financial Times
“This is a thorough and intriguing look at how attitudes about sexuality have developed in each country since the 1970s. The author presents a brief but convincing discussion of how the economic and political systems in Holland and the US evolved to create the cultural frameworks that led Dutch parents to normalize teenage sexuality and US parents to dramatize it. Schalet has juxtaposed US and Dutch cultural histories, family values, and societal attitudes about such seemingly diverse issues as sexuality, immigration, and the intersection of individual autonomy and state sovereignty to produce a fascinating look into the origins and consequences of two diametrically opposed paradigms of adolescent sexuality. . . . Highly recommended.”
— Choice
Winner of the Healthy Teen Network’s Carol Mendez Cassell Award for Excellence in Sexuality Education
— Healthy Teen Network
ASA Children and Youth Section's 2012 Distinguished Scholarly Research Award
— American Sociological Association
"Not Under My Roof is a fascinating book. I have told all of my friends who have teenagers to read it. I also recommend it for classroom use. College students will immediately grasp how society shapes their experiences of sex, drugs, and alcohol."
— American Journal of Sociology
“[An] engaging and informative monograph. . . .Lucid and highly attuned to the complexities of human experience, Not Under My Roof should find a welcome place in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on sexuality, gender, and culture and should be required reading for scholars in those areas, as well as for makers of public policy."
— Gender and Society
“The analyses and insights are mightily impressive. . . . Schalet’s own background has enabled her to be both an insider and an outsider in her observations in both countries, and this advantage has clearly been maximised. A very important work, and very strongly recommended.”
— Sex Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Raging Hormones, Regulated Love - Amy T. Schalet
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.003.0001
[adolescent sexuality, individual risk-taking, parent-teenager nexus, peer cultures, status hierarchies, gender inequalities, sexual double standard]
This book aims to take us beyond our usual perspectives on adolescent sexuality. Medical and public health literatures conceptualize adolescent sexuality primarily in terms of individual risk-taking and the factors that augment or lessen such risks. American developmental psychologists tend to view adolescent sexuality as part of adolescents' separation from their parents and as an aspect of development that is especially perilous given the disjuncture between teenagers' physical and cognitive development. American sociologists have generally bypassed the parent-teenager nexus to focus on relationships and networks among teenagers in romance and peer groups. They have examined how peer cultures and networks and the status hierarchies within them impact adolescent sexuality. Finally, gender scholars have examined how teenage girls' and boys' experiences of sexuality are profoundly shaped by gender inequalities—including the sexual double standard. (pages 1 - 27)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Dutch Parents and the Sleepover - Amy T. Schalet
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.003.0002
[openness, dutch parents, adolescent sexuality, normal sexuality, relationship-based sexuality, self-regulated sexuality, teenage sexuality, sleepover]
This chapter answers the question of how to understand the openness among Dutch parents to minors spending the night together by examining three powerful frames parents use to understand adolescent sexuality and their own parental responsibility, namely, normal sexuality, relationship-based sexuality, and self-regulated sexuality. In the process of illuminating those frames, insight into the workings of normalization as an active cultural process is gained, which involves conceptualizing, controlling, and constituting both teenagers and parents. It will be seen here that the three cultural frames construct adolescent sexuality as a nonproblematic, non-emotionally disruptive, and decidedly relationship-based phenomenon, helping parents describe and interpret teenage sexuality. Finally, the sleepover serves as a means to constitute teenagers and parents as people who rationally discuss a potentially disruptive topic and jointly integrate it into the household. (pages 28 - 51)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
American Parents and the Drama of Adolescent Sexuality - Amy T. Schalet
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.003.0003
[teenage sexuality, american parents, shared narrative, adolescent sexuality, hormone-based adolescent sexuality, sexes, parent-regulated adolescent sexuality]
This chapter presents interviews with American parents and the differences uncovered in these interviews—between fathers and mothers, between liberal and conservative parents, between past behavior and current approaches, and between cultural languages. However, if the differences and contradictions that characterize the American parents' conceptions of teenage sexuality and romance are easy to identify, a less apparent shared narrative of sequence unites them. Adolescent sexuality starts early with impulses, leads to battles, but becomes only fully legitimate once young people have successfully navigated these trials by fire and established autonomous households, an accomplishment both deeply desired and dreaded. Three frames structure that narrative: the first is hormone-based adolescent sexuality; the second is the battle between the sexes; and finally, until youth establish their autonomy through financial self-sufficiency or marriage, the principle of parent-regulated adolescent sexuality applies, leading a majority of parents to respond to the sleepover question with a resounding “No way, Jose.” (pages 52 - 75)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Adversarial and Interdependent Individualism - Amy T. Schalet
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.003.0004
[cultural traditions, united states, netherlands, interdependent individualism, self-control, adulthood, authority]
This chapter first examines cultural traditions that shaped the perception and experiences of the changes during the 1960s and '70s in the United States and the Netherlands. Out of the confluence of different cultural traditions, the social policies they influenced, and the different experiences of the upheavals of the unruly decades emerged what might be called an “adversarial” and an “interdependent” individualism. Using the interview material from parents who lived through these decades and began raising children in their wake, the author then unfolds the different individualisms by examining three “gray” areas parents confront as they guide their children through adolescence: the fostering of self-control, the attainment of adulthood, and the exercise of authority. Finally, we see how the individualism on which each set of parents draws sets up a logic that makes their approaches to teenage sexuality possible and plausible. (pages 76 - 106)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
“I Didn’t Even Want Them to Know” - Amy T. Schalet
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.003.0005
[sexuality, separation, adult society, daughters, intimacy, good daughterhood, parent-child relationship]
This chapter explores how the management of sexuality induces in both American girls and boys a psychology of separation from adult society, and a bifurcation of sexual self and family life. We will see that the toll this process takes is gender-specific, for many American girls have been taught that they are not entitled to pursue sexual exploration or intimacy during their adolescence. Even when parents accept that their daughters explore their sexuality elsewhere, American girls fear that should evidence of their sexual activity present itself at home, they could lose their claim to good daughterhood. Expected to be “bad” by nature of their boyhood, American boys do not confront the same taboo that makes their sexuality a potential affront to the parent-child relationship. Even so, they too are taught that sexuality requires “breaking away” from home, psychically if not physically. (pages 107 - 129)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
“At Least They Know Where I Am” - Amy T. Schalet
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.003.0006
[parent-teenager tensions, psychology of incorporation, gezellig, domestic pleasures, pregnancy, sleepover]
This chapter shows that in spite of parent-teenager tensions, sexuality becomes a vehicle through which young people are encouraged to develop a psychology of incorporation rather than separation. Boys are encouraged to make their sexuality gezellig—to value the integration of sexual and domestic pleasures and to choose partners who can be treated as temporary family members. Girls are encouraged to make their sexuality normal—to avoid causing unnecessary disturbances by springing a sexual relationship, let alone a pregnancy, on their parents prematurely or out of the blue, and to be able to discuss emotional issues without letting discomfort get the better of them. While it is striking how similarly Dutch boys and girls are treated, it is also notable that negotiations around the sleepover are more prolonged and tension-ridden for girls than for boys. (pages 130 - 153)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Romantic Rebels, Regular Lovers - Amy T. Schalet
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.003.0007
[gender, netherlands, US, physical risks, discursive construction, danger, sexual double standard]
This chapter examines how girls and boys in the Netherlands and the US—using the messages they receive in school, from healthcare institutions, and in popular and peer culture—conceptualize and navigate dilemmas of gender outside the home. Two issues are at stake here: The first concerns the physical risks and dangers of sex which have traditionally been thought to plague girls disproportionately—both in reality and in the discursive construction of sexuality. This chapter shows that American girls and boys both express little faith in their capacity to control the outcomes of sexual activity, with boys as likely to articulate a discourse of danger. The second issue concerns the ways teenagers in both countries confront gender-specific expectations and constraints, including the sexual double standard that makes sex a liability for girls and too little a liability for boys. (pages 154 - 180)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Sexuality, Self-Formation, and the State - Amy T. Schalet
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.003.0008
[individualisms, dramatization, adolescent sexuality, normalization, social ties, Michel Foucault, sexual ethics]
This chapter begins by deepening our understanding of a paradox: the dramatization of adolescent sexuality is predicated on—and stands in service of—an ideal of freedom from social restrictions, while the normalization of adolescent sexuality is predicated on—and produces—a deep disciplinary structure and interconnectedness within a web of social ties and obligations. This is done by applying four questions drawn from Michel Foucault's work on sexual ethics. Doing so brings to fore how dramatization and normalization involve different exercises of power, induce different techniques of self-formation, and produce different individuals. Comparing dramatization and normalization and the different individualisms in which they are based shows, in turn, how Foucault's argument about the effectiveness of modern power misses critical pieces of the puzzle, namely connection, support, and self-mastery. (pages 181 - 201)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Conclusion - Amy T. Schalet
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.003.0009
[emotional development, netherlands, dutch youth, american girls, dutch girls, immigrant communities, teenage birth rate, HIV]
This book concludes by showing that adolescent sexual and emotional development remains considerably less problem-fraught in the Netherlands. Even though Dutch youth initiate sex at comparable ages, their birth and abortion rates are eight and two times lower, respectively, than those of their American peers. In 2007, one in twenty-four American girls aged fifteen to nineteen gave birth, versus one in nearly two hundred Dutch girls. Even in low-income immigrant communities in the Netherlands—where births to those under twenty tend to be concentrated—the teenage birth rate remains considerably lower than in low-income communities of color in the United States. HIV rates are also substantially lower among Dutch youth than among their American counterparts. (pages 202 - 212)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Methodological Appendix
Notes
References
Index
