Amy T. Schalet
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226736181
- eISBN:
- 9780226736204
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226736204.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Marriage and the Family
For American parents, teenage sex is something to be feared and forbidden: most would never consider allowing their children to have sex at home, and sex is a frequent source of family conflict. In ...
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For American parents, teenage sex is something to be feared and forbidden: most would never consider allowing their children to have sex at home, and sex is a frequent source of family conflict. In the Netherlands, where teenage pregnancies are far less frequent than in the United States, parents aim above all for family cohesiveness, often permitting young couples to sleep together and providing them with contraceptives. Drawing on extensive interviews with parents and teens, this book offers an intimate account of the different ways that girls and boys in both countries negotiate love, lust, and growing up. Tracing the roots of the parents' divergent attitudes, it reveals how they grow out of their respective conceptions of the self, relationships, gender, autonomy, and authority. The book provides a probing analysis of the way family culture shapes not just sex but also alcohol consumption and parent-teen relationships. Avoiding caricatures of permissive Europeans and puritanical Americans, it shows that the Dutch require self-control from teens and parents, while Americans guide their children toward autonomous adulthood at the expense of the family bond.Less
For American parents, teenage sex is something to be feared and forbidden: most would never consider allowing their children to have sex at home, and sex is a frequent source of family conflict. In the Netherlands, where teenage pregnancies are far less frequent than in the United States, parents aim above all for family cohesiveness, often permitting young couples to sleep together and providing them with contraceptives. Drawing on extensive interviews with parents and teens, this book offers an intimate account of the different ways that girls and boys in both countries negotiate love, lust, and growing up. Tracing the roots of the parents' divergent attitudes, it reveals how they grow out of their respective conceptions of the self, relationships, gender, autonomy, and authority. The book provides a probing analysis of the way family culture shapes not just sex but also alcohol consumption and parent-teen relationships. Avoiding caricatures of permissive Europeans and puritanical Americans, it shows that the Dutch require self-control from teens and parents, while Americans guide their children toward autonomous adulthood at the expense of the family bond.
Nona Willis Aronowitz
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816681204
- eISBN:
- 9781452949048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816681204.003.0023
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter focuses on the debate over sex education and whether it promotes teenage sex. The liberals argue that we should concentrate on preventing pregnancy and venereal disease by giving teens ...
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This chapter focuses on the debate over sex education and whether it promotes teenage sex. The liberals argue that we should concentrate on preventing pregnancy and venereal disease by giving teens sex education, birth control, even counseling to help them “manage sex responsibly” and “have good relationships.” They assure us that giving out contraceptives “tends to make youngsters less promiscuous and not more promiscuous.” Conservatives, on the other hand, blather on about the need to provide kids with moral values. They want schools to give lectures on chastity. This chapter suggests an alternative strategy it calls “benign terrorism,” which aims to make the very idea of sex so frightening that no sane teenager could enjoy it, and offers twelve ways of implementing it.Less
This chapter focuses on the debate over sex education and whether it promotes teenage sex. The liberals argue that we should concentrate on preventing pregnancy and venereal disease by giving teens sex education, birth control, even counseling to help them “manage sex responsibly” and “have good relationships.” They assure us that giving out contraceptives “tends to make youngsters less promiscuous and not more promiscuous.” Conservatives, on the other hand, blather on about the need to provide kids with moral values. They want schools to give lectures on chastity. This chapter suggests an alternative strategy it calls “benign terrorism,” which aims to make the very idea of sex so frightening that no sane teenager could enjoy it, and offers twelve ways of implementing it.
Nancy Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226922270
- eISBN:
- 9780226922294
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226922294.003.0007
- Subject:
- Education, Educational Policy and Politics
This chapter explores the shared construction of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections as the most dangerous problems linked to teen sex in mainstream sex education programs, and examines the ...
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This chapter explores the shared construction of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections as the most dangerous problems linked to teen sex in mainstream sex education programs, and examines the ascendancy of an effectiveness model focused on individual health outcomes (such as STI and pregnancy rates). It also considers the effects of “evidence-based outcomes” frameworks on classroom sex education experiences and school environments. These offer a powerful lens through which to view key components of the differing morality tales being told by Comprehensive Sexuality education and Abstinence Only Until Marriage education programs, and to begin to map some of the unintended consequences of these tales on students and schools.Less
This chapter explores the shared construction of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections as the most dangerous problems linked to teen sex in mainstream sex education programs, and examines the ascendancy of an effectiveness model focused on individual health outcomes (such as STI and pregnancy rates). It also considers the effects of “evidence-based outcomes” frameworks on classroom sex education experiences and school environments. These offer a powerful lens through which to view key components of the differing morality tales being told by Comprehensive Sexuality education and Abstinence Only Until Marriage education programs, and to begin to map some of the unintended consequences of these tales on students and schools.
