HHS Public Access Author manuscript Author Manuscript
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05. Published in final edited form as: Contexts (Berkeley Calif). 2015 ; 14(1): 44–49. doi:10.1177/1536504214567855.
mixed messages about teen sex Stefanie Mollborn Institute of Behavioral Science and the sociology department at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies teen parenthood, social norms, and social inequalities
Author Manuscript
Patton grew up in a mostly white, wealthy, liberal town. He thinks about half of the kids in his high school, mostly the “cool” ones, were having sex. Mostly, they practiced safe sex, and few ended up pregnant. Parents, he said, “turned their head because they didn’t want to know what their kid was doing.” This made teen sex and pregnancy a taboo topic. Parents gave their teenage children a clear message about “being careful”—avoiding sex or using contraception consistently—to avoid getting pregnant. Patton says, “As a whole, it was more kids practicing safe sex rather than being a focus on being abstinent.” Teens who messed up paid a social price, and pregnant girls were shunned. Someone from the same town said, “A pregnancy is just like a physical marker that you are a slut.”
Author Manuscript
Patton’s story contrasts sharply with Annika’s experiences in a conservative, white, lowerincome mining town with deep Evangelical roots. There, the message was “don’t have sex before marriage.” But most teens were having sex anyway, and hiding it from parents. Annika thinks because most teens were with someone they eventually expected to marry, they weren’t as motivated to “be careful” with contraception. Many of the kids in her high school were pregnant. The school didn’t try to hide them as Patton’s school did—on the contrary, the senior class president was eight months pregnant at graduation. Annika links this openness to teen pregnancy to the fact that people in her town were very anti-abortion; some teens even wore “abortion is homicide” shirts to school. Pregnant teens who chose not to have abortions were sometimes praised by older people, who Annika said thought, “it was a gift from God.”
Author Manuscript
It may seem like Annika and Patton come from different worlds when it comes to messages about teen sex and pregnancy, but their hometowns are in the same U.S. state. It’s striking that Patton’s “very liberal” town accepted that teen sex may happen but ostracized pregnant teens, while Annika’s “very conservative” town grudgingly accepted pregnant teens. Both of these communities are communicating messages to teens that work to reproduce their cultural values in the next generation. But as we will see, these messages are mixed, which may be making them less effective. The vast majority of American adults today have had sex outside of marriage, but most adults think teenagers shouldn’t have sex. Even so, researchers at the Guttmacher Institute have found that most young people become sexually active in their teens: Just 16 percent have had sex by age 15, over 60 percent by 18, and 71 percent by 19. And about one in four teen girls ends up pregnant. (This article focuses on self-identified heterosexual teens— additional research would be helpful for understanding the experiences of teens who identify in other ways.) Research collaborators and I interviewed 57 college students and 76 teen
Mollborn
Page 2
Author Manuscript
moms and dads about the messages they heard about sex, contraception, and pregnancy in high school. The college students all attended a large public university in the West. Most teen parents were nonwhite and living in or near poverty in an urban area. Even though their backgrounds are so different, there are important experiences these young people have in common. Most teens they know eventually have sex, most adults seem clueless that it’s happening, and most adults disapprove. Teens themselves are petrified that their parents and other adults might find out they’re having sex. But there are also tremendous differences in the messages teens hear about sexual behavior in different communities. Here, I examine these messages—which tend to be inconsistent and confusing —and the ways teens react to them.
practical concerns, moral messages Author Manuscript
In the New Yorker article “Red Sex, Blue Sex,” Margaret Talbot argues that teens’ experiences of sex and pregnancy differ in fundamental ways between liberal, secular “blue” areas like Patton’s and conservative, highly religious “red” areas like Annika’s. People in Patton’s town are communicating a practical message, one that is focused mostly on careful contraception if teens decide to have sex. They talk about things like maturity, responsibility, and being smart about your future. In high-poverty, secular urban communities regardless of race, the messages about responsibility and protecting your future sound the same as in wealthier ones—but they feel different because teens and those around them realize that their futures are precarious.
Author Manuscript
In contrast, Annika’s highly religious community takes a two-pronged approach of teaching abstinence until marriage, and if that fails, strongly discouraging abortion. As Bryce sums up the message in his Catholic-dominated community, “we were taught that premarital sex and pregnancy outside of wedlock is against God, and therefore wrong.” This moral message is in line with conservative Christian religious teachings but—as evaluations of abstinence-only sex education and virginity pledges have shown—it is not as useful for reducing teen pregnancy. Teens from wealthier religious communities may resolve an unwanted pregnancy through a secret abortion. But teens from lower-income communities like Annika’s have less to gain by aborting a pregnancy in violation of their community’s message.
Author Manuscript
Sociologists call these messages social norms, or rules about how people should behave that result in punishment if they aren’t followed. The moral and practical communities are not just teaching teens how to behave, but they’re trying to pass on their cultural values that represent different sides in what has been called a “culture war.” Both Annika’s and Patton’s communities aren’t just sending messages to teens about what they should or should not do —they’re communicating expectations about how to treat someone who has violated a norm against pregnancy, sex, contraception, or abortion. Metanorms (norms about how to enforce norms) ensure that teens who violate age norms against sexual behaviors are punished by family, friends, and community members. Metanorms often tell us to punish people differently depending not only on their gender, but also by their race and social class. For instance, teens who are seen as part of the “social problem” of teen parenthood (usually non-
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
Page 3
Author Manuscript
white girls from lower-income families or areas) are held accountable for their sexual behavior and socially punished. But as the people we interviewed said repeatedly, teens who are not identified with this “social problem” are excused for “making a mistake” if they have sex or use contraception inconsistently. Boys hear the same messages as girls and face some of the same social punishment for violating norms, but it tends to be weaker.
how messages are mixed
Author Manuscript
Teens hear messages about sex that are mixed in several ways. Both the moral and practical messages are internally inconsistent. They start out with a similar norm discouraging teen sex but combine it with different norms in ways that can seem contradictory to teens. People communicating a practical message say, “Don’t have sex, but use contraception.” Inconsistent metanorms tell people to support teen parents in the community but view teen mothers as sluts who should be shunned. The moral message is equally inconsistent. People communicating this message say, “Don’t have sex, but carry your pregnancy to term.” Isaac summarizes the mixed messages communicated to teens in his lower-income, rural town as: “Don’t get pregnant, I don’t care how you do it, I’m not gonna give you condoms, you’re not supposed to get pregnant when you’re 17.” The moral message’s metanorms confusingly encourage people to condemn teens who have had premarital sex but praise teen mothers because they refused to have abortions.
Author Manuscript
This means that even in towns like Patton’s or Annika’s that have fairly consistent norms, teens hear mixed messages about sexual behavior from adults. But in other communities, the presence of both practical and moral messages sends teens mixed messages about sex. Teens who hear a practical message from their communities often hear a moral one from grandparents or other older people. In higher-income conservative communities where teens have a lot to lose, parents and teachers privately give teens a practical message about contraception and abortion, something different from what teens are hearing from other adults. School administrators and community organizations like health clinics or churches are often strong defenders of the community’s practical or moral message.
Author Manuscript
But friends, siblings, and schoolmates often communicate a third message that is neither moral nor practical, intensifying the experience of mixed messages. By late in high school, either quietly among close friends or publicly around school, most teens are talking about how sex is “normal” or something to do when you’re “ready.” Close friends help each other be sexually active away from the judging eyes of adults. Especially for girls, even revealing sexual activity to schoolmates who aren’t good friends is a potential danger because they may consider at least some types of female sexual activity “slutty” and tell adults. In Helena’s liberal school, she says most teens were having casual sex, but they still worked hard to avoid people finding out. “Because it was such a small school, they just didn’t want to talk about it all with people, as things go around really quickly. So, yeah, they would just keep their mouths shut.” Both the practical and moral messages conflict with certain trends in broader U.S. society, making them feel even more inconsistent to teens. Some watch shows like MTV’s 16 and Pregnant or Teen Mom and see real girls enjoying success because they had babies, which
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
Page 4
Author Manuscript
conflicts with the practical and moral messages. Teens who hear a moral message learn to carry a pregnancy to term because abortion is evil, but teen pregnancy has been constructed so visibly as a “social problem” and linked to failure that they know some people in every community will treat them badly if they become mothers. Our society goes back and forth about teen sexuality, alternatively glamorizing and demonizing it in ways that make the messages teens hear even more mixed.
battles over messages
Author Manuscript
The fight for control of sexuality messages communicated to teens is a fight over which value systems adults want teens to reproduce. The “abstinence-only” programs favored by former president Bush’s administration communicate a moral message about teen sexuality. The Obama administration, while still funding some abstinence-only programs, has shifted its focus towards “comprehensive” or “abstinence-plus” programs that teach teens about using contraception. Schools and outside organizations work to influence teens. I have found that schools often work with organizations that conform to the community’s predominant message and that target the “right kind” of teen. Larena’s school in a low-income urban community let a nurse distribute birth control pills onsite with parental consent (these were the “right kind” of teens to be put on long-term contraception). But in Madelyn’s wealthy conservative suburb a pro-abstinence Christian youth group located next door to her high school held daily meetings, and the school allowed students to go for free periods. These were the “right kind” of teens to absorb moral messages.
Author Manuscript Author Manuscript
As teens’ legal guardians, parents have even more control over them, and many go to great lengths to constrain teens’ sexuality. Dylan says, “Parents’ talks were like, ‘You don’t do this [have sex]. This is wrong, religiously, morally.” They paired this moral message with threats: “If you [got pregnant], it would completely destroy our family.” Physical control is also important, with many rules about how to behave when an opposite-sex friend visits and threats of being grounded if rules are broken. A surprisingly common strategy in which parents and teens implicitly cooperate is for girls to start taking birth control pills for apparent reasons other than sexual activity. Kara said, “I was on birth control for different medical reasons, and so I think that put my parents at ease, because they knew that I was on birth control, even though it wasn’t for sex initially. So I think that kind of took some pressure off.” Noelle thought girls themselves took some initiative: “A lot of the girls were on the pill. People would start early for cramps or to clear their face, so they didn’t have to have the conversation with their parents if they’re already on the pill.” Even if the “medical reasons” were valid, this strategy allows both parents and teens to protect a daughter from pregnancy (though not sexually transmitted infections) without acknowledging sexual activity.
teens’ reactions to mixed messages The pressures brought to bear on teens by the people in their social worlds can be hard to withstand, and for most of adolescence most teens don’t even want to withstand it. When younger, teens have internalized community norms saying teen sex is inappropriate and don’t feel “ready.” Yet most Americans end up having sex in their late teens when many
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
Page 5
Author Manuscript
people still disapprove. So at some point, teens start finding ways to resist attempts to regulate their sexuality. Because different people send different normative messages and those messages are themselves inconsistent, teens have some “wiggle room” to negotiate normative pressures. If a teen wants to have sex, he might disregard the part of his community’s normative message that discourages teen sex and focus instead on conforming to the part that encourages consistent contraception. Or he might become more peer-oriented, choosing sexually active friends who support his behavior and “tuning out” adult influences as much as possible. As Kaitlyn says, “Once their friends have sex and start experimenting it starts to be okay. … You start to think, ‘Everyone is doing it, so why am I not doing it?’” But there are limits to teens’ behavioral options. Our participants are too dependent on adults for resources, and on friends for social interaction, to risk openly going against the messages they hear.
Author Manuscript
conclusion
Author Manuscript
Although U.S. teens start having sex at about the same age as in many other places, they don’t use contraception as consistently, so sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancies, abortions, and births are more widespread than in many other countries. Could this have to do with the normative pressures on teens coming from mixed messages? The practical message tells teens sex is risky, and the moral message says it is wrong. Moral, practical, peer, and media messages may vie for teens’ attention, but they all tell teens that sex will screw up their lives. This negative message about teen sex is one overarching piece of the message that isn’t mixed. The sex-negative cultural frame in the U.S. is a stark contrast to some other countries, as Amy Schalet shows in the Netherlands. That sexpositive frame views teen sex—when done right, which means in a loving relationship, when the teen feels ready, and with consistent contraception—as a positive aspect of adolescent development. Ironically, this sex-positive frame results in less risky sex because it often happens at home with the protection of more effective long-acting contraceptives.
Author Manuscript
The sex-negative cultural frame and the mixed messages about teen sex put our society in a double bind. It’s hard to communicate a strong message discouraging teen sex when you’re simultaneously giving advice about contraception and abortions. And it’s hard to convincingly teach young people to support teen parents when you’re also socially punishing them for having violated community messages. Open communication about sexuality becomes difficult when the messages are mixed, and it’s also hard for teens to absorb the messages. Faced with this challenge, many adults become ineffective supports for teens who are struggling with responsible sexuality. So which is more important for our society, eliminating teen sexual activity or minimizing its negative consequences? This is what battles over sex education are largely about—the moral message says the first is more important, and the practical message says the second. Acknowledging the mixed messages teens are hearing and breaking the silence around their sexuality may be a good first step towards communicating more effectively.
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
Page 6
Author Manuscript
recommended readings
Author Manuscript
1. Bearman, Peter S., Brückner, Hannah. Promising the Future: Virginity Pledges and First Intercourse. American Journal of Sociology. 2001; 106:859–912. This influential article’s findings on the effects of virginity pledges have been used by both sides in cultural debates about teen sexual behavior. 2. Elliott, Sinikka. Not My Kid: What Parents Believe About the Sex Lives of Their Teenagers. NYU Press; 2012. Articulates the complex ways in which parents think about their teenagers’ sex lives and how they communicate with teens 3. Fields, Jessica. Risky Lessons: Sex Education and Social Inequality. Rutgers University Press; 2008. Documents community debates around sex education and the role that social inequalities play 4. Mollborn, Stefanie, Jacobs, Janet. ‘We’ll Figure a Way’: Teenage Mothers’ Experiences in Shifting Social and Economic Contexts. Qualitative Sociology. 2012; 35:23–46. Investigates how cultural and structural changes over time have shaped the consequences of teen parenthood. 5. Schalet, Amy T. Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex. University of Chicago Press; 2011. By comparing middle-class messages about sexual behaviors in the United States and the Netherlands, this book sheds light on our taken-for-granted cultural understandings
Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
Page 7
Author Manuscript
•
There are “culture wars” over teen sexuality playing out in U.S. society as a whole and in individual communities.
•
Teens’ experiences of sex and pregnancy differ in fundamental ways between liberal, secular “blue” and conservative, highly religious “red” communities.
•
Most teens eventually have sex, most adults seem clueless that it’s happening, and most adults disapprove.
•
“Don’t get pregnant, I don’t care how you do it, I’m not gonna give you condoms, you’re not supposed to get pregnant when you’re 17.”
•
Which is more important for our society, eliminating teen sexual activity or minimizing its negative consequences?
Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05. Published in final edited form as: Contexts (Berkeley Calif). 2015 ; 14(1): 44–49. doi:10.1177/1536504214567855.
mixed messages about teen sex Stefanie Mollborn Institute of Behavioral Science and the sociology department at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies teen parenthood, social norms, and social inequalities
Author Manuscript
Patton grew up in a mostly white, wealthy, liberal town. He thinks about half of the kids in his high school, mostly the “cool” ones, were having sex. Mostly, they practiced safe sex, and few ended up pregnant. Parents, he said, “turned their head because they didn’t want to know what their kid was doing.” This made teen sex and pregnancy a taboo topic. Parents gave their teenage children a clear message about “being careful”—avoiding sex or using contraception consistently—to avoid getting pregnant. Patton says, “As a whole, it was more kids practicing safe sex rather than being a focus on being abstinent.” Teens who messed up paid a social price, and pregnant girls were shunned. Someone from the same town said, “A pregnancy is just like a physical marker that you are a slut.”
Author Manuscript
Patton’s story contrasts sharply with Annika’s experiences in a conservative, white, lowerincome mining town with deep Evangelical roots. There, the message was “don’t have sex before marriage.” But most teens were having sex anyway, and hiding it from parents. Annika thinks because most teens were with someone they eventually expected to marry, they weren’t as motivated to “be careful” with contraception. Many of the kids in her high school were pregnant. The school didn’t try to hide them as Patton’s school did—on the contrary, the senior class president was eight months pregnant at graduation. Annika links this openness to teen pregnancy to the fact that people in her town were very anti-abortion; some teens even wore “abortion is homicide” shirts to school. Pregnant teens who chose not to have abortions were sometimes praised by older people, who Annika said thought, “it was a gift from God.”
Author Manuscript
It may seem like Annika and Patton come from different worlds when it comes to messages about teen sex and pregnancy, but their hometowns are in the same U.S. state. It’s striking that Patton’s “very liberal” town accepted that teen sex may happen but ostracized pregnant teens, while Annika’s “very conservative” town grudgingly accepted pregnant teens. Both of these communities are communicating messages to teens that work to reproduce their cultural values in the next generation. But as we will see, these messages are mixed, which may be making them less effective. The vast majority of American adults today have had sex outside of marriage, but most adults think teenagers shouldn’t have sex. Even so, researchers at the Guttmacher Institute have found that most young people become sexually active in their teens: Just 16 percent have had sex by age 15, over 60 percent by 18, and 71 percent by 19. And about one in four teen girls ends up pregnant. (This article focuses on self-identified heterosexual teens— additional research would be helpful for understanding the experiences of teens who identify in other ways.) Research collaborators and I interviewed 57 college students and 76 teen
Mollborn
Page 2
Author Manuscript
moms and dads about the messages they heard about sex, contraception, and pregnancy in high school. The college students all attended a large public university in the West. Most teen parents were nonwhite and living in or near poverty in an urban area. Even though their backgrounds are so different, there are important experiences these young people have in common. Most teens they know eventually have sex, most adults seem clueless that it’s happening, and most adults disapprove. Teens themselves are petrified that their parents and other adults might find out they’re having sex. But there are also tremendous differences in the messages teens hear about sexual behavior in different communities. Here, I examine these messages—which tend to be inconsistent and confusing —and the ways teens react to them.
practical concerns, moral messages Author Manuscript
In the New Yorker article “Red Sex, Blue Sex,” Margaret Talbot argues that teens’ experiences of sex and pregnancy differ in fundamental ways between liberal, secular “blue” areas like Patton’s and conservative, highly religious “red” areas like Annika’s. People in Patton’s town are communicating a practical message, one that is focused mostly on careful contraception if teens decide to have sex. They talk about things like maturity, responsibility, and being smart about your future. In high-poverty, secular urban communities regardless of race, the messages about responsibility and protecting your future sound the same as in wealthier ones—but they feel different because teens and those around them realize that their futures are precarious.
Author Manuscript
In contrast, Annika’s highly religious community takes a two-pronged approach of teaching abstinence until marriage, and if that fails, strongly discouraging abortion. As Bryce sums up the message in his Catholic-dominated community, “we were taught that premarital sex and pregnancy outside of wedlock is against God, and therefore wrong.” This moral message is in line with conservative Christian religious teachings but—as evaluations of abstinence-only sex education and virginity pledges have shown—it is not as useful for reducing teen pregnancy. Teens from wealthier religious communities may resolve an unwanted pregnancy through a secret abortion. But teens from lower-income communities like Annika’s have less to gain by aborting a pregnancy in violation of their community’s message.
Author Manuscript
Sociologists call these messages social norms, or rules about how people should behave that result in punishment if they aren’t followed. The moral and practical communities are not just teaching teens how to behave, but they’re trying to pass on their cultural values that represent different sides in what has been called a “culture war.” Both Annika’s and Patton’s communities aren’t just sending messages to teens about what they should or should not do —they’re communicating expectations about how to treat someone who has violated a norm against pregnancy, sex, contraception, or abortion. Metanorms (norms about how to enforce norms) ensure that teens who violate age norms against sexual behaviors are punished by family, friends, and community members. Metanorms often tell us to punish people differently depending not only on their gender, but also by their race and social class. For instance, teens who are seen as part of the “social problem” of teen parenthood (usually non-
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
Page 3
Author Manuscript
white girls from lower-income families or areas) are held accountable for their sexual behavior and socially punished. But as the people we interviewed said repeatedly, teens who are not identified with this “social problem” are excused for “making a mistake” if they have sex or use contraception inconsistently. Boys hear the same messages as girls and face some of the same social punishment for violating norms, but it tends to be weaker.
how messages are mixed
Author Manuscript
Teens hear messages about sex that are mixed in several ways. Both the moral and practical messages are internally inconsistent. They start out with a similar norm discouraging teen sex but combine it with different norms in ways that can seem contradictory to teens. People communicating a practical message say, “Don’t have sex, but use contraception.” Inconsistent metanorms tell people to support teen parents in the community but view teen mothers as sluts who should be shunned. The moral message is equally inconsistent. People communicating this message say, “Don’t have sex, but carry your pregnancy to term.” Isaac summarizes the mixed messages communicated to teens in his lower-income, rural town as: “Don’t get pregnant, I don’t care how you do it, I’m not gonna give you condoms, you’re not supposed to get pregnant when you’re 17.” The moral message’s metanorms confusingly encourage people to condemn teens who have had premarital sex but praise teen mothers because they refused to have abortions.
Author Manuscript
This means that even in towns like Patton’s or Annika’s that have fairly consistent norms, teens hear mixed messages about sexual behavior from adults. But in other communities, the presence of both practical and moral messages sends teens mixed messages about sex. Teens who hear a practical message from their communities often hear a moral one from grandparents or other older people. In higher-income conservative communities where teens have a lot to lose, parents and teachers privately give teens a practical message about contraception and abortion, something different from what teens are hearing from other adults. School administrators and community organizations like health clinics or churches are often strong defenders of the community’s practical or moral message.
Author Manuscript
But friends, siblings, and schoolmates often communicate a third message that is neither moral nor practical, intensifying the experience of mixed messages. By late in high school, either quietly among close friends or publicly around school, most teens are talking about how sex is “normal” or something to do when you’re “ready.” Close friends help each other be sexually active away from the judging eyes of adults. Especially for girls, even revealing sexual activity to schoolmates who aren’t good friends is a potential danger because they may consider at least some types of female sexual activity “slutty” and tell adults. In Helena’s liberal school, she says most teens were having casual sex, but they still worked hard to avoid people finding out. “Because it was such a small school, they just didn’t want to talk about it all with people, as things go around really quickly. So, yeah, they would just keep their mouths shut.” Both the practical and moral messages conflict with certain trends in broader U.S. society, making them feel even more inconsistent to teens. Some watch shows like MTV’s 16 and Pregnant or Teen Mom and see real girls enjoying success because they had babies, which
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
Page 4
Author Manuscript
conflicts with the practical and moral messages. Teens who hear a moral message learn to carry a pregnancy to term because abortion is evil, but teen pregnancy has been constructed so visibly as a “social problem” and linked to failure that they know some people in every community will treat them badly if they become mothers. Our society goes back and forth about teen sexuality, alternatively glamorizing and demonizing it in ways that make the messages teens hear even more mixed.
battles over messages
Author Manuscript
The fight for control of sexuality messages communicated to teens is a fight over which value systems adults want teens to reproduce. The “abstinence-only” programs favored by former president Bush’s administration communicate a moral message about teen sexuality. The Obama administration, while still funding some abstinence-only programs, has shifted its focus towards “comprehensive” or “abstinence-plus” programs that teach teens about using contraception. Schools and outside organizations work to influence teens. I have found that schools often work with organizations that conform to the community’s predominant message and that target the “right kind” of teen. Larena’s school in a low-income urban community let a nurse distribute birth control pills onsite with parental consent (these were the “right kind” of teens to be put on long-term contraception). But in Madelyn’s wealthy conservative suburb a pro-abstinence Christian youth group located next door to her high school held daily meetings, and the school allowed students to go for free periods. These were the “right kind” of teens to absorb moral messages.
Author Manuscript Author Manuscript
As teens’ legal guardians, parents have even more control over them, and many go to great lengths to constrain teens’ sexuality. Dylan says, “Parents’ talks were like, ‘You don’t do this [have sex]. This is wrong, religiously, morally.” They paired this moral message with threats: “If you [got pregnant], it would completely destroy our family.” Physical control is also important, with many rules about how to behave when an opposite-sex friend visits and threats of being grounded if rules are broken. A surprisingly common strategy in which parents and teens implicitly cooperate is for girls to start taking birth control pills for apparent reasons other than sexual activity. Kara said, “I was on birth control for different medical reasons, and so I think that put my parents at ease, because they knew that I was on birth control, even though it wasn’t for sex initially. So I think that kind of took some pressure off.” Noelle thought girls themselves took some initiative: “A lot of the girls were on the pill. People would start early for cramps or to clear their face, so they didn’t have to have the conversation with their parents if they’re already on the pill.” Even if the “medical reasons” were valid, this strategy allows both parents and teens to protect a daughter from pregnancy (though not sexually transmitted infections) without acknowledging sexual activity.
teens’ reactions to mixed messages The pressures brought to bear on teens by the people in their social worlds can be hard to withstand, and for most of adolescence most teens don’t even want to withstand it. When younger, teens have internalized community norms saying teen sex is inappropriate and don’t feel “ready.” Yet most Americans end up having sex in their late teens when many
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
Page 5
Author Manuscript
people still disapprove. So at some point, teens start finding ways to resist attempts to regulate their sexuality. Because different people send different normative messages and those messages are themselves inconsistent, teens have some “wiggle room” to negotiate normative pressures. If a teen wants to have sex, he might disregard the part of his community’s normative message that discourages teen sex and focus instead on conforming to the part that encourages consistent contraception. Or he might become more peer-oriented, choosing sexually active friends who support his behavior and “tuning out” adult influences as much as possible. As Kaitlyn says, “Once their friends have sex and start experimenting it starts to be okay. … You start to think, ‘Everyone is doing it, so why am I not doing it?’” But there are limits to teens’ behavioral options. Our participants are too dependent on adults for resources, and on friends for social interaction, to risk openly going against the messages they hear.
Author Manuscript
conclusion
Author Manuscript
Although U.S. teens start having sex at about the same age as in many other places, they don’t use contraception as consistently, so sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancies, abortions, and births are more widespread than in many other countries. Could this have to do with the normative pressures on teens coming from mixed messages? The practical message tells teens sex is risky, and the moral message says it is wrong. Moral, practical, peer, and media messages may vie for teens’ attention, but they all tell teens that sex will screw up their lives. This negative message about teen sex is one overarching piece of the message that isn’t mixed. The sex-negative cultural frame in the U.S. is a stark contrast to some other countries, as Amy Schalet shows in the Netherlands. That sexpositive frame views teen sex—when done right, which means in a loving relationship, when the teen feels ready, and with consistent contraception—as a positive aspect of adolescent development. Ironically, this sex-positive frame results in less risky sex because it often happens at home with the protection of more effective long-acting contraceptives.
Author Manuscript
The sex-negative cultural frame and the mixed messages about teen sex put our society in a double bind. It’s hard to communicate a strong message discouraging teen sex when you’re simultaneously giving advice about contraception and abortions. And it’s hard to convincingly teach young people to support teen parents when you’re also socially punishing them for having violated community messages. Open communication about sexuality becomes difficult when the messages are mixed, and it’s also hard for teens to absorb the messages. Faced with this challenge, many adults become ineffective supports for teens who are struggling with responsible sexuality. So which is more important for our society, eliminating teen sexual activity or minimizing its negative consequences? This is what battles over sex education are largely about—the moral message says the first is more important, and the practical message says the second. Acknowledging the mixed messages teens are hearing and breaking the silence around their sexuality may be a good first step towards communicating more effectively.
Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
Page 6
Author Manuscript
recommended readings
Author Manuscript
1. Bearman, Peter S., Brückner, Hannah. Promising the Future: Virginity Pledges and First Intercourse. American Journal of Sociology. 2001; 106:859–912. This influential article’s findings on the effects of virginity pledges have been used by both sides in cultural debates about teen sexual behavior. 2. Elliott, Sinikka. Not My Kid: What Parents Believe About the Sex Lives of Their Teenagers. NYU Press; 2012. Articulates the complex ways in which parents think about their teenagers’ sex lives and how they communicate with teens 3. Fields, Jessica. Risky Lessons: Sex Education and Social Inequality. Rutgers University Press; 2008. Documents community debates around sex education and the role that social inequalities play 4. Mollborn, Stefanie, Jacobs, Janet. ‘We’ll Figure a Way’: Teenage Mothers’ Experiences in Shifting Social and Economic Contexts. Qualitative Sociology. 2012; 35:23–46. Investigates how cultural and structural changes over time have shaped the consequences of teen parenthood. 5. Schalet, Amy T. Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex. University of Chicago Press; 2011. By comparing middle-class messages about sexual behaviors in the United States and the Netherlands, this book sheds light on our taken-for-granted cultural understandings
Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
Mollborn
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There are “culture wars” over teen sexuality playing out in U.S. society as a whole and in individual communities.
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Teens’ experiences of sex and pregnancy differ in fundamental ways between liberal, secular “blue” and conservative, highly religious “red” communities.
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Most teens eventually have sex, most adults seem clueless that it’s happening, and most adults disapprove.
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“Don’t get pregnant, I don’t care how you do it, I’m not gonna give you condoms, you’re not supposed to get pregnant when you’re 17.”
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Which is more important for our society, eliminating teen sexual activity or minimizing its negative consequences?
Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Contexts (Berkeley Calif). Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 October 05.
