Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex by Amy T. Schalet

want it yourself.” For a while, Marlies was very insecure about her body. She told her mother, “I dare to show my breasts but down there, I don’t want them to touch it.” Katinka’s response was, “Well, Marlies, if that is the case, then you are not yet er aan toe . And then you should not do it.” Han de Vries believes his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter was ready because “she herself indicated that she was ready.” Illustrating how he recognizes what scholars call “sexual subjectivity” in his daughters, Han recounts hav- ing told them:

    I will never have any objection to [a sexual relationship] when they—really out of their own free will, and never because they have to do it or because of coercion or because they feel that they have to belong, or because otherwise the boyfriend won’t like them anymore—but only when they themselves feel the desire for it, and when they are themselves ready for it. And when that is, I don’t know.

    As Karel Doorman suggested in the book’s first chapter, the premise of self-regulated sexuality also applies to same-sex adolescent sexuality. With the interview questions about sexuality framed in a gender-neutral lan- guage, four Dutch parents volunteered that their son or daughter might de- sire a same-sex partner. 12 About that possibility, Karel says: “You are choos- ing the harder route. I still think that is true. It is not like thirty years ago, but it remains the harder route.” Were Heidi to be a lesbian, Karel says, “Yes well . . . then let it be so. I do not believe that you can change their [sexual] orientation by talking it through with them. . . . You cannot persuade a person with regard to [their sexual orientation]. So, I think that you will come to accept it.”
    Yet, even as many parents describe becoming er aan toe as a self- generated process, they suggest also that it occurs not in isolation but in the context of specific attachments. Being er aan toe is for many parents the product of a particular relational or emotional configuration. Piet Starring expects he will start to notice that his “sons are becoming ready when they bring home girls regularly.” “Yes, when they start getting a bit of a court- ship,” his wife adds. Karin Meier believes a child is ready as soon as that child is “him- or herself curious about it.” Yet Karin does not value “sex for sex’s sake.” She believes sex “has a value within a communication, within a
    relationship.” Christien leaves her children free to explore. As long as “they relate to one another with respect, that is so important. If they both want it, then it does not concern me in the least.”
    Being er aan toe is not just a matter of feeling ready and relating well. It requires taking precautions against the potential dangers of sex. Parents play a crucial role in solidifying this capacity in their children. Hannie and Dirk de Groot believe it is “stupid” to try to avoid giving teenagers opportu- nities to have sex. “They need to determine it themselves,” says Dirk. “They can do that. They can [be in charge], provided that you have spoken about it with them, and that you pointed out the dangers and the consequences to them. And if they know all that, they can handle it well.” Concerned about AIDS, Marga Fenning has warned her son repeatedly about using condoms. “Now he makes a joke . . . if I say something [about condoms]. Right now I really don’t need to tell him, ‘You’ve got to be careful.’ He cer- tainly knows where Abram gets the mustard [how it works]. I don’t need to say anything anymore. That would sound really silly.”
    In urging their children to use contraception, Dutch middle-class par- ents are bolstered by education and health policies that strongly support educating teenagers about contraception and giving them easy and stigma- free access to birth control. “The approach in the Dutch [sex education] ma- terials,” write sociologists Jane Lewis