Prof. Schalet's book may be the most useful scholarly work ever written about adolescent sexuality. Her comparison of how parents and society deal with teens and sex in Holland and the United States is all the more significant since both societies have been strongly influenced by Calvinist Protestantism and both cultures prize social equality, individuality, and autonomy.
As Schalet explains, Dutch society has developed a template for "normal" and healthy adolescent sexual development that fosters emotionally committed relationships under parents' and adults' watchful gaze. Although she is scrupulously fair in admitting its imperfections, Schalet shows that this template leads to clearly superior health outcomes, since Dutch teens have much lower rates of unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and abortions than do American teens. By contrast, American teenage sexuality is a battleground pitting girls against boys, parents against children, and ungovernable adolescent peer groups against ineffectually authoritarian adult laws and norms. Few of the participants on the American scene seem particularly happy with the way things are. This is where Amy Schalet's book is so valuable: she shows that things could be otherwise.
As a piece of scholarship, this book is of sterling quality: it recognizes and respects the cultural and institutional forces at work in each country's approach to adolescent sexuality. Schalet demonstrates that culture shapes behavior and experience powerfully, but that cultural change is also possible: the Dutch approach to sexuality is a recent, post-1960s innovation.
The American parents, health professionals, educators, and even teens who will benefit most from this book are those with socially liberal impulses who feel that there must be a better way, but are not entirely sure what a realistic alternative to the status quo might be. For these people, Schalet shows a way forward that is neither the current prohibitionist culture nor a completely permissive libertarian mirror image of the status quo. Her book holds out the possibility of a more humane, mutually respectful, and healthy adolescent experience of sexuality.
Staunch social conservatives who read this book will probably come away unconvinced, believing that American adolescents are somehow intrinsically less self-disciplined than their European counterparts. (How is it that "socialism" teaches self-control so effectively?) Or they may believe that making teens "pay for their sins" is morally or religiously appropriate.
But for American readers who want a more compassionate--and demonstrably effective--approach to helping adolescents learn about love and sex, Schalet's book is indispensable. The more widely this book is read, the better the prospects for improving our children's lives, home by home and community by community.
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A good read for sex educators and parents
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on February 13, 2017
