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

happens gradually over time, as it can when the prospect of sexual activ- ity is openly discussed, rather than engaged in furtively and suddenly, it
    becomes easier for teenagers to plan and take precautions against dangers. With the conversations they have, the rules they enforce, and the rituals they institute, parents create conditions under which adolescent sexuality can be experienced as a normal, nondisruptive part of childrearing and coming of age.
    While many Dutch parents do worry about AIDS, and some worry about pregnancy, these concerns do not swell into sources of strong paren- tal anxiety. 15 Fact and faith, experience and expectation, largely corroborate one another. Rates of pregnancy, birth, abortion, and HIV among youth are much lower for Dutch teens than they are for their American counter- parts. 16 And, unlike their American counterparts, few Dutch parents know teenagers who become pregnant. 17 Just how rare it is for Dutch middle- class parents to be confronted with pregnancies among teenagers becomes evident when Piet Starring tells of his shock after hearing from acquain- tances about a girl who became pregnant at age sixteen: “My God, can you imagine that happening to you, [your daughter] comes home saying, ‘I’m pregnant.’”
    At the same time, as a cultural process, normalization also evidently takes place in opposition to examples of non-normalized adolescent sex- uality. Several Dutch parents clearly construct their own capacity to nor- malize in opposition to “other” times and “other” people. They oppose their own normal ways to the secretiveness and shame they experienced in their own upbringing. Nienke Otten explains overcoming reservations because “you do not want to do it the way you were raised yourself. That you just don’t want. You want to try to keep up with the times.” Mariette Kiers remembers being told, “You must save yourself because men are only looking for [sex].” She did not want to teach her daughter, as she had been taught, that men are predators. Mariette has made a point of not teaching her daughter that her virginity is something that should “be saved.”
    It is not only their own parents to whom the Dutch interviewees oppose themselves. While none of the parents are explicit about which “other” groups in Dutch society treat sexuality in non-normal ways, they imply that these others have a lower class status. Some interviewees—usually those who came of age earlier and experienced the most notable shift in attitudes during their own youth and young adulthood—express pride, see- ing themselves as especially progressive frontrunners in a historical trend. Anneke Schutte and Daphne Gelderblom think that in their circle parents are open about sexuality. “I don’t think we are average,” says Anneke. More- over, Daphne believes, in certain (lower) milieus, “[sex] does not get talked about.” Barbara Koning also sees herself as different from most parents
    who are, she believes, stricter than she and her husband are. They are not representative. “No, my husband and I are pretty open for all kinds of new developments and we try to go along with those as much as possible.”

Holes in the Web
    Yet, even within the middle-class family, there are signs that sexuality is not without the taboos, secrets, and feelings of shame that were character- istic of the past. Sometimes, teenage children are not as eager to normalize sexuality as are their parents. The Starrings found Hans not terribly coop- erative when they wanted to educate him: “You know we had all the [sex education] books at home, and I think he read things and talked about things, but if you really wanted to start talking about something, then he didn’t really care for that, no.” About her daughter’s first time, Mia Klant says, “They never tell you. . . . They never told me.” Mariette Kiers also bumped up against the limits of normalization when she tried to initiate a