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2. The Asexual Teen: Naïveté, Dependence, and Sexual Danger
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20 > 21 22-year-old daughter brought her a towel, gently lifted her long, wet hair, and placed the towel around her shoulders, releasing and tenderly fanning her hair out to dry. It was Sunday, Rosalia’s one day off.1 When her four oldest daughters were going through puberty, Rosalia’s love for them grew stronger than ever, but her concerns also increased: “One of the signs of puberty is menstruation and when they have the first period, I worry so much when I’m at work. I’m constantly thinking about it, about that particular daughter moving on to new things in her life.” Rosalia’s main worry was that they may have bad influences that will give them ideas like drinking or using drugs and then again promiscuity—not necessarily promiscuity, but if they were to be abused then that brings on other problems like drinking and drugging and it could bring promiscuity into their life if they were to be abused. She worries about the older men who hang around the courtyard of her apartment building, leering at her daughters and other girls. Afraid that these men might be sex predators, she orders her daughters to stay away from the courtyard and avoid talking to the men there. She is also “very concerned that people outside [the family], like let’s say girlfriends at school or just people they know, may put ideas in their head, like go with this man or go here or go there.” She knows she cannot control her daughters when they are in school and she is at work, but she can advise them about using good judgment. Although Rosalia still worries, she is “pleased with my daughters, the ones that have gone into that puberty or you know growing up, because they’re not doing things I see other kids their age doing like drinking or drugging or being promiscuous.” Rosalia carries a notion of what the world is like for her teenage daughters —in a word, dangerous. She also knows that sexual teenagers are promiscuous partiers. She can identify the preteens in her apartment complex who are “heading in the wrong direction, they just don’t have the direction [they need].” Her daughters “are not like them.” But Rosalia feels somewhat overwhelmed by the daily task of giving her daughters the support and foundation they need to resist the temptations posed by their peers. She does not let her daughters date or go out alone until they are 18, because before that “they’re gullible. They’ll just believe anything. They’re naïve, I guess.” Even at 18, Rosalia thinks her daughters are prone to naïveté. As evidence of this, she told me that her two oldest daughters both became pregnant at the age of 18 and had their first child at 19. She suspects that these daughters were still too naïve and immature at 18 to withstand the tremendous peer and societal [35.171.182.239] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:07 GMT) 22 > 23 Beatrice’s comment about her 16-year-old daughter typifies this viewpoint: “One thing I’ve noticed is that she’s probably a little bit more immature than some of her friends, and that’s okay, I think it will come.” Echoing Beatrice, Elena said her 16-year-old daughter “seems very young or immature at times.” When I first noticed parents consistently describing their teen children as young and immature relative to their peers, I thought it might have something to do with the parents who had agreed to be interviewed. Perhaps they volunteered because they have “good” kids who do not do all the “bad” things other teens do. Yet—as will become clear as the parents’ stories unfold throughout the book—the parents I spoke with have teenagers who seem to have done virtually everything we define as bad for teenagers: some have become teen parents, and many smoke marijuana, drink alcohol, have unprotected sex, skip school, get failing grades, vandalize school property, sneak out at night, or watch pornography. Teenagers’ actual behaviors, in other words, do not seem very significant in terms of shaping the sense parents have that their own teens are young, immature, and naïve. Why, then, do parents think of their children in these ways? A number of compelling explanations come to mind. Parents likely see their children at times when the children’s guards are down, and at these times...