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

let Fleur and her boyfriend go away for a weekend and camp together on a family vacation. But the sleepover is still a no-go: “I just don’t want to have such a little couple in my house. . . . I have the feeling that if we were to say yes to that, he would practically be living here. [It would be] coming a little too close, the sexuality, our feeling is that that just doesn’t feel right.”
What Does Inequality Have To Do With It?
    These two final vignettes are instances of conflict. As such, they defy the dominant cultural categories of adolescent sexuality and bring into view a matter left almost entirely unspoken in the Dutch interviews: power. In relaying their own conversations about sex with their children or discuss- ing the relationships their children have with others, Dutch parents rarely talk about the inequalities, antagonisms, and power differences that those relationships may entail. 19 When confronted with what appears to be an instance of sexual violation, Marga Fenning struggles to find words and responses that make sense out of her son’s experience and behavior. Yet, Marga remains strikingly attached to the language and practices of nor- malization, prodding herself, despite shock and discomfort, to respond to Thomas’s experiences as were they gewoon .
    Fleur van Kampen’s sexual development tests the limits of normaliza- tion in another way. Although confronted with a textbook case of “normal” adolescent sexual development, Ria van Kampen has nonetheless forbid- den her daughter’s boyfriend to spend the night. Her notable articulation of discomfort and exercise of parental power may well be an expression of two concerns that typically remain unarticulated in the Dutch interviews. Gender, conceptualized as an unequal or power-ridden relationship, is a rare theme in the Dutch interviews. If Dutch middle-class parents speak at all of the inequalities of gender and the disadvantages girls face, they do so in reference to other times or the other social classes. A few Dutch parents acknowledge being more worried about, or protective of, daugh- ters given their capacity for childbearing. But unlike their American coun- terparts, the Dutch parents do not tend to talk about adolescent sexual- ity and relationships as an arena in which girls are at a gender-specific disadvantage.
    Concerns about gender and power may, however, be hidden in Ria’s re- fusal to permit the sleepover. Without explicitly addressing gender inequal- ity, like Ria, several other professionally employed mothers of daughters hint that in relationships that are prematurely stable, girls may have more to lose than their boyfriends—who are often a few years older. Anneke Schutte, for instance, is “fine with [my daughters’] having a boyfriend as long as he doesn’t last.” She is wary of the “really steady relationships,” ones that could entail losing contact with other friends. If Mariette is hon- est, she too would rather that her own daughter wait until later. “But that has nothing to do with sex,” Mariette explains. “It has to do with being free. You’re getting yourself into such a bind. . . . You limit yourself. If you
    have a steady relationship, you need to start adapting. . . . [Sixteen] is a bit young to start adjusting yourself to another person.”
    Status anxiety may be another reason Ria and her husband do not want to grant their daughter’s relationship full recognition. Although there are subtle hints that the social class of their children’s boyfriends and girl- friends matters—and is a basis for deciding whether the partner in question is a suitable candidate for the sleepover—Dutch parents never say that “a good way of relating” requires the right class. Many do not need to. Dutch secondary schools are tracked by academic level, which largely matches a student’s social class. 20 Children from middle- and upper-middle class families often attend the upper-level tracks, resulting in