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openness among Dutch parents to minors’ spending the night together? This chapter starts answering this question by examining
three powerful frames parents use to understand adolescent sexuality and their own responsibility as parents— normal sexuality , relationship-based sexu- ality , and self-regulated sexuality .
In the process of illuminating those frames, we gain insight into the workings of normalization as an active cultural process—which involves conceptualizing, controlling, and constituting both teenagers and parents: we will see that the three cultural frames construct adolescent sexuality as a nonproblematic, non-emotionally disruptive, and decidedly relationship- based phenomenon. They help parents describe and interpret teenage sex- uality. At the same time, parents may use these cultural frames to exercise control—Marga Fenning, for instance, uses the frame of relationship-based sexuality not only to describe her children’s sexuality but also to communi- cate a distinction between the relationships of which she approves and the fleeting encounters of which she does not. 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.
But if the normalization of adolescent sexuality involves conceptions, control, and the constitution of individuals, it does not constitute a seam- less cultural process. Implicit and sometimes explicit in the Dutch parents’ efforts at normalization are references to “other” times and “other” social circles in which sexuality was or continues to be not approached normally. And as Jolien’s account of her husband’s initial protest and eventual acqui- escence illustrates, parents can disagree with one another and with their children. Even when they agree to permit the sleepover, they may be left, as is Marga Fenning, with mixed feelings. Nor is there a perfect fit between cultural language and people’s actions and experiences. Indeed as we will see, parents struggle when they run up against situations for which normal- ization does not provide adequate frames—instances of adolescent sexual- ity that are not the product of self-regulation or embedded in egalitarian relationships, and other instances in which teenage sexuality has become too normal.
Contestation and contradiction notwithstanding, the normalization of teenage sexuality in middle-class Dutch families—and in the institutions of education and health care that support them—runs counter to the man- agement of adolescent sexuality, as described in the American scholarly lit- erature. Not only do Dutch parents generally articulate an acceptance of adolescent sexuality, under the right conditions. They underscore that boys and girls must develop and use their inner resources and relationships to determine their readiness and sexual identities. They describe teenagers as moving along a continuum of sexual and emotional development, not as
categorically different from adults. Although this generation of parents was, for the most part, raised with a very different dominant sexual ethic, they can normalize adolescent sexuality because they have both the cultural and material resources to do so: they possess the ideal of an interdepen- dent individualism, which recognizes self-determination as a key feature of modern life—but always within cultural practices that maintain continuity, connection, and control—and they can rely on economic safeguards that have made changes in adolescents and society less threatening.
Normal Sexuality
Like Jolien Boskamp, Marga Fenning, and Karel Doorman (in chap. 1), most Dutch parents make an effort to demonstrate both their capacity to talk normally about sexuality with their teenage children and their capacity to regulate the emotions of shame or discomfort that sexuality might evoke between family members. The word gewoon communicates
three powerful frames parents use to understand adolescent sexuality and their own responsibility as parents— normal sexuality , relationship-based sexu- ality , and self-regulated sexuality .
In the process of illuminating those frames, we gain insight into the workings of normalization as an active cultural process—which involves conceptualizing, controlling, and constituting both teenagers and parents: we will see that the three cultural frames construct adolescent sexuality as a nonproblematic, non-emotionally disruptive, and decidedly relationship- based phenomenon. They help parents describe and interpret teenage sex- uality. At the same time, parents may use these cultural frames to exercise control—Marga Fenning, for instance, uses the frame of relationship-based sexuality not only to describe her children’s sexuality but also to communi- cate a distinction between the relationships of which she approves and the fleeting encounters of which she does not. 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.
But if the normalization of adolescent sexuality involves conceptions, control, and the constitution of individuals, it does not constitute a seam- less cultural process. Implicit and sometimes explicit in the Dutch parents’ efforts at normalization are references to “other” times and “other” social circles in which sexuality was or continues to be not approached normally. And as Jolien’s account of her husband’s initial protest and eventual acqui- escence illustrates, parents can disagree with one another and with their children. Even when they agree to permit the sleepover, they may be left, as is Marga Fenning, with mixed feelings. Nor is there a perfect fit between cultural language and people’s actions and experiences. Indeed as we will see, parents struggle when they run up against situations for which normal- ization does not provide adequate frames—instances of adolescent sexual- ity that are not the product of self-regulation or embedded in egalitarian relationships, and other instances in which teenage sexuality has become too normal.
Contestation and contradiction notwithstanding, the normalization of teenage sexuality in middle-class Dutch families—and in the institutions of education and health care that support them—runs counter to the man- agement of adolescent sexuality, as described in the American scholarly lit- erature. Not only do Dutch parents generally articulate an acceptance of adolescent sexuality, under the right conditions. They underscore that boys and girls must develop and use their inner resources and relationships to determine their readiness and sexual identities. They describe teenagers as moving along a continuum of sexual and emotional development, not as
categorically different from adults. Although this generation of parents was, for the most part, raised with a very different dominant sexual ethic, they can normalize adolescent sexuality because they have both the cultural and material resources to do so: they possess the ideal of an interdepen- dent individualism, which recognizes self-determination as a key feature of modern life—but always within cultural practices that maintain continuity, connection, and control—and they can rely on economic safeguards that have made changes in adolescents and society less threatening.
Normal Sexuality
Like Jolien Boskamp, Marga Fenning, and Karel Doorman (in chap. 1), most Dutch parents make an effort to demonstrate both their capacity to talk normally about sexuality with their teenage children and their capacity to regulate the emotions of shame or discomfort that sexuality might evoke between family members. The word gewoon communicates
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