“My Kid Wouldn’t Do That” – Study Shows Parents’ Difficulty With Teen Sexuality
It can be difficult for parents of teenagers to come to terms with the fact their kids may have sex, particularly given widespread concerns about the consequences of teen sexual activity. In fact, a new study from North Carolina State University shows that many parents think that their children aren’t interested in sex – but that everyone else’s kids are.
“Parents I interviewed had a very hard time thinking about their own teen children as sexually desiring subjects,” says Dr. Sinikka Elliott, an assistant professor of sociology at NC State and author of the study. In other words, parents find it difficult to think that their teenagers want to have sex.
“At the same time,” Elliott says, “parents view their teens’ peers as highly sexual, even sexually predatory.” By taking this stance, the parents shift the responsibility for potential sexual activity to others – attributing any such behavior to peer pressure, coercion or even entrapment.
For example, Elliott says, parents of teenage boys were often concerned that their sons may be lured into sexual situations by teenage girls who, the parents felt, may use sex in an effort to solidify a relationship. The parents of teenage girls, meanwhile, expressed fears that their daughters would be taken advantage of by sexually driven teenage boys.
These beliefs contribute to stereotypes of sexual behavior that aren’t helpful to parents or kids.
“By using sexual stereotypes to absolve their children of responsibility for sexual activity, the parents effectively reinforce those same stereotypes,” Elliott says.
Parents’ use of these stereotypes also paints teen heterosexual relationships in an unflattering, adversarial light, Elliott says and notes the irony of this: “Although parents assume their kids are heterosexual, they don’t make heterosexual relationships sound very appealing.”
A paper describing the study, “Parents’ Constructions of Teen Sexuality: Sex Panics, Contradictory Discourses, and Social Inequality,” is published in the May issue of Symbolic Interaction. Elliott is also the author of the forthcoming book, Not My Kid: Parents and Teen Sexuality, which will by published by New York University Press.
NC State’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology is a joint department of the university’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
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Note to editors: The study abstract follows.
“Parents’ Constructions of Teen Sexuality: Sex Panics, Contradictory Discourses, and Social Inequality”
Authors: Sinikka Elliott, North Carolina State University
发布时间：2010年5月，象征性互动
摘要：青少年性行为占据美国社会的高度矛盾和矛盾的地方。青少年被认为太年轻了，无法了解性，但太性性驱动，可信赖信息。青少年性活动被描绘为危险的充满危险，而性行为是美国文化景观的普遍方面，并考虑了身份和履行的关键。本文宣传了与青少年四十七个父母的深入访谈，探讨了父母如何在使这些矛盾的话语中达到青少年性感。调查结果表明，父母认为他们自己的青少年作为性欲欲望，即使他们构建青少年通常是具有性别，种族和级别的性别，种族和阶级指示的性别掠夺性。I argue that parents’ binary thinking – constructing their teen children as asexual but other teens as hypersexual – represents more than simply an effort to maintain a notion of their teens as sexually innocent: it reveals deep anxieties about their teenagers’ future life chances and underscores the prominent role sexuality plays in reproducing social inequality.
