Did You Tell Your Parents When You First Became Sexually Active?

Having a teenage daughter in the house, one who is just beginning the journey of discovering and exploring her own sexuality, is flooding me with memories my own first forays into the overwhelming, exhilarating, and often embarrassing shoals of sex. The unrequited crushes of my junior high and high school years, both the ones I had on boys who didn't like me, and the ones boys whom I didn't care for had on me. The fiery blush that raced over my face when my male pediatrician asked "Are you sexually active?" when I'd barely even been kissed. The even more awkward talk around the kitchen table, my parents telling (and showing) me and my two younger sisters the box of condoms they had bought, the one they'd be placing upstairs in the linen closet, just in case we ever found ourselves in need—not that they were recommending we have sex, no, not at all! 

I never talked much with my friends about sex (Catholic high school). And I didn't talk with my sisters about it either. They are both younger than me, and both began dating at a much younger age than I did; asking them for advice about sex, or inquiring about their own sexual experiences, felt awkward, even prurient, and was more than this shy, introverted geek could ever bring herself to do.

And I certainly didn't talk with my parents about sex. I didn't tell them anything about my sexual experiences with my first boyfriend (during freshman year in college), or about the first boyfriend with whom I engaged in sexual acts that required the use of birth control, not at the time nor in the years since. I wonder, now, though, how much they knew, or picked up from my behavior at the time? Or were they not at all interested in knowing?

Not something parents are likely to hear from their teens...

Given my own teenage reticence on the topic, I've been thinking a lot (and reading a lot) about how best, and how much, to talk with my daughter about her own sexual explorations. Would I have appreciated it if my parents had tried to talk with me more about sex in the abstract/general? About my relationships and experiences in particular? Or would I have simply melted into the floor in a puddle of agonized adolescent embarrassment? (Both, most likely). 

Given that in our culture, sex is most often regarded as a private act, is it an invasion of teens' privacy to try and talk with them about it? How can a parent balance these rights to privacy with the need to ensure that their teens are taking proper care to protect themselves and their partners against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases? (Just came across this fascinating book—Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex—which compares the ways parents in the United States and in the Netherlands treat teen sexuality; am looking forward to reading it!)

Did you talk with/tell your parents when you became sexually active? If not, did they know (or inadvertently find out) anyways? Did they engage you in conversation about it?

And are there any good romance novels out there that feature heroes and/or heroines who not only have to negotiate a new romantic and sexual relationship of their own, but who are also faced with the transformation of their own children from asexual to sexual beings? (The only one that's coming to mind is Pamela Morsi's The Lovesick Cure, which I reviewed here back in November of 2012, although it spends more time talking about why the teens shouldn't have sex than talking about it after they already have...).

Photo credits:

First time sex: Kathleen Hassen

Kids in Romance Novels

For the past several weeks, I've been researching and prepping to teach an online course about the history of children and childhood during the Regency period, for an audience of historical romance writers. I'm a research wonk, so digging into all this information about what kids wore, what they ate, where (and with whom) they slept has me in my element. But it's also been making me wonder about the uses of the child figure in romance fiction. As a romance typically focuses tightly around the two (or sometimes more) adults who are falling in love with one another, how, and perhaps more importantly, why does romance make room for secondary characters from the younger generation? And does the inclusion of a child character tend to push a romance toward feminist, or anti-feminist ideologies?

Here are some reasons I can think of to include a child or children in a romance, some neutral, some with feminist leanings, still others that work to contain or constrain female needs and desires:

• Because many of us idealize children and childhood, and regard children as innocent, including a child character can more easily allow an author to mobilize readers' emotions, pulling on those old heartstrings.

• Showing a hero or heroine acting kindly to a child can demonstrate said character's nature, and suitability for a romantic partnership, without having to have the narrator resort to telling us "s/he is a kind person."

• Likewise, because we often think of children (like animals/pets) as having an instinctual "feel" for other people. If a child warms to an unfamiliar adult, said child's instincts can help persuade the other half of the romantic couple that the potential mate is worthy.

• Children can bring lovers in conflict, or lovers who are estranged, back together: witness the ever-popular secret baby plot.

• Or children can foster conflict—a mother at odds with her son's coach; a father who disagrees with his daughter's governess—bringing people with heightened emotions together so that the romantic sparks can flash. When potential romantic partners do not share similar child-rearing philosophies, tensions can mount quickly...

• Kids can play the role of matchmakers, working to push a reluctant parent or relative into a romantic relationship.

• A kid continually interrupting before things get too steamy helps build up the sexual tension...

• Because kids are associated with the inability to suppress emotions, showing a hero interacting with a child can allow said hero to access and show emotions that otherwise would not be allowed under contemporary codes of masculinity.

• Because kids are often believed to be unable to lie socially (or at least, to keep quiet about things adults can more easily suppress), kids can point out how one protagonist is feeling towards the other.

• Interacting with a kid can force that ever-immature hero (or, far more rarely, heroine) to realize that he is ready to "grow up" and start taking on the adult responsibilities of caring for, and financially supporting, a family. For heroines, the trope seems to function more often as a curb upon work, rather than a push towards adulthood; seeing other women's babies or children can persuade a heroine to think that she, too, wants to abandon the working grind to have a child of her own.


Interesting side note: while looking for book covers to accompany this post, I discovered that stand-alone romances rarely seem to feature covers with babies or kids on them. In contrast, category romances seem to have little problem drawing on the "ah, how cute" factor. Why do you think this is?


What are your favorite romances that include babies and/or children? And to what ideological uses do the authors of said romances put their young secondary characters?

Next time on RNFF:

A pre-romance for teen readers: Erica Lorraine Scheidt's Uses for Boys

Subplotting Feminism: Pamela Morsi's THE LOVESICK CURE

When considering a romance novel's feminist credentials, the first place I typically look is at the novel's hero and heroine, and the relationship that develops between them. Does their love relationship work to support, or to undermine, feminism's central tenet, that women and men should have equal political, social, and economic rights? Do the novel or its characters pay overt lip service to such beliefs, all while the twists of the plot, or the decisions the heroine and hero make in order to be together at novel's end, undercut such glib pronouncements? Or are the heroine and hero truly engaged in the complex, difficult work of forging a love relationship in which each struggles to move beyond the limits of patriarchal sex, gender, and (if a wedding is included) marital roles?

Yet sometimes you have to look beyond a book's protagonists to discover its feminist principles, a discovery I made while reading long-time romance author Pamela Morsi's latest contemporary, The Lovesick Cure. Oh, the relationship that develops between city girl science teacher Jesse Winsloe and country boy physician's assistant Piney Baxley when Jesse escapes to the Ozarks to nurse a broken heart contains nothing to make a feminist cringe. The fairly new romance trope of "friends with benefits" (or in this case, "acquaintances with benefits") who turn into long-term partners even nods towards feminism by acknowledging that women have sexual needs and desires separate from any particular man. And, as is the case in Morsi's novel, when it is the heroine who proposes the initial sexual relationship, the friends with benefits trope acknowledges a woman's sexual agency as well as her sexual need. But the message that Jesse shouldn't have given up her own needs for her former boyfriend seems obvious, and not very deeply explored from a feminist point of view.

Intriguingly, the most striking feminist aspects of the novel unfold not in the relationship between Jesse and Piney, but in the subplots of other relationships: between Piney and his son, Tree; between Tree and his girlfriend, Camryn; and between Camryn and her female relatives, cousin Jesse and Aunt Will.

As a name, Piney hardly conjures up the traditional alpha male hero. Yet it fits Morsi's male lead as comfortably as a well-worn shirt. Married right out of high school to his pregnant girlfriend, Piney never had the chance to fulfill his dreams of going to medical school. After his wife left him (not once, but twice) to raise their son alone, Piney settled for studying to become a Physician's Assistant. Working under the supervision of a doctor, Piney hardly qualifies as a stereotypical dominant hero in charge of his own destiny; in fact, his role as provider of the everyday healthcare needs of the people of his small mountain town casts him closer to the stereotypically feminine role of nurse/caretaker than to any traditionally masculine role.

Piney's unconventional masculinity also informs his relationship with his seventeen-year-old son, Tree. After his wife's desertion, Piney's initial beliefs about childrearing ("he'd expected his wife to do most of the parenting. Women, he'd thought, were, by nature, more attuned to their offspring"), quickly gave way as he was forced to act in ways that belied them: "Maybe some women were. But Shauna knew even less about kids than he did. And she'd been a lot less motivated to care for one. Evidence of that fact being that Piney was all alone waiting up for his teenager. And he'd been all alone for most of his son's life" (34). Morsi introduces Piney to her readers not when he first meets Jesse, but instead while he's sitting on his home porch, waiting up in the dark for his son to get home. And despite the embarrassment Piney feels at speaking to Tree about his sex life, he doesn't shy away from discussing the potential ramifications of teen sex, or from encouraging Tree to not make the same mistakes he did when he was the same age. In her depiction of Piney, Morsi demonstrates that fathers can and do parent well, whether or not they embrace the construction of mother as by "nature" primary parent.

That Tree is trying, trying hard, to wait demonstrates the power of the open, honest, and respectful relationship he has with his father. But he's getting tired of people telling him what to do. Not just his dad, but also his girlfriend, Camryn, who keeps pressuring him to take their relationship to the "next level" for reasons completely unrelated to her love for him. That Tree insists upon making his own decisions about his sexuality, even to the point of temporarily breaking up with the girl he still loves because he doesn't want to compromise his own beliefs, gives a voice to those rarely-heard-from young men who break from the stereotypical masculine sexual imperative by choosing to abstain from sex during their teen years.*

Even while sympathizing with Tree, Moris refuses to make Camryn into the über-villainess a reader familiar with romance tropes might be forgiven for expecting when h/she discovers the girl's motives for enticing Tree into sex. Knowing that neither her unreliable father nor her cash-strapped single mother can afford to pay for her to go to college, and desperately fearful that as soon as Tree leaves for college he'll forget her, Camryn decides the only way to avoid being left behind is to get pregnant. Such a decision would likely cast her in the role of evil other woman in an Old Skool romance, but in Morsi's book, Camryn is portrayed not a villain, but a young woman with far too few choices in her life. Rather than demonize her,  Jesse and elderly Aunt Will encourage Camryn to rely on herself, instead of manipulating others. As Aunt Will counsels:

"To my thinking, the best plans are ones that don't require someone else's cooperation. I mean, folks are good to help when they are a mind to. But sometimes there is simply no help coming.... You've got to make up your own mind, form your own plan and get on with what you want in life. When you do that, you'll have your pick of men. Tree or some city fellow or a lug-head from the next mountain, it'll be your choice. But as long as you need a man more than he feels he needs you, then you'll always be stuck." (267, 271)

By watching Jesse and Aunt Will encourage, rather than denigrate or shun, the scheming Camryn, readers are invited to empathize with other young women who may be considering similarly poor plans when facing limited choices in their own lives. Neither turning Camryn into a villainous scapegoat, nor offering her an easy fairy-tale out (no long-lost relatives or benevolent billionaires drop a college scholarship in her lap), Morsi gives Camryn the same respect she demands the teen and other young women like her give themselves. That Camryn comes up with her own plan for what to do after the end of high school, as well as the courage to talk honestly to Tree about what their futures might look like, suggests that a feminist subplot might just be the best way to speak to a reader who may not be able to imagine herself playing the active lead role in her own life.



* In 1988, 60% of never-married males aged 15-19 reported engaging at least once in sexual intercourse, a number that has declined over the subsequent 20 years: 55% in 1995; 46% in 2002; 43% in 2006-2008. See Abma, J.C., Martinex, G.M., Copen, C. E. Teenagers in the United States: Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use, and Childbearing. National Survey of Family Growth 2006-2008. National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Health Statistics 23(30). 2010.


Photo/Illustration credits:
• Friends with Benefits Necklace: Outblush.com
• Sex books for kids: Wired/GeekMom 

Pamela Morsi, The Lovesick Cure. Harlequin/MIRA, 2012.

Next time on RNFF: 

Date rape in early 80's Harlequin romances

 

Romance as Pornography for Women: A History (part 1)

In my previous post on what a feminist can gain from reading from romance, I discussed the use of the phrase "pornography for women" to describe the genre. Several readers suggested that the phrase might refer to other things besides the idea that romance cloaks sex in narrative clothing. In the wake of such responses, I began to wonder about the history of the term. Who first used the phrase to describe romance? What did he or she mean by it? And how has the meaning of the phrase changed over the course of its history?

The earliest usage of the phrase that I could find in reference to romance fiction, as opposed to actual pornography, is from 1979, in an essay by Ann Snitow called "Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different."* Snitow was one of the earliest literary critics to look analytically at Harlequin romances, and one of the first to move beyond viewing genre romance as either a patriarchal opiate for the female masses or a rebellion against patriarchal restrictions. Instead, she was interested in exploring how the Harlequin novels accurately describe what she terms "certain regressive elements in the female experience" (308).

Viewing romance as "pornography for women" was not original to Snitow; she heard a fellow scholar, Peter Parisi, make the connection in an unpublished talk he gave at Rutgers in 1978. Parisi claimed that Harlequins are "essentially pornography for people ashamed to read pornography"; the romance and promised wedding serve only as a cover for readers raised to think sex outside of marriage is sinful or shameful, but who still read primarily for sex (314-15).

Snitow agrees with Parisi that Harlequins are pornographic, but takes pains to note that she is not using the word pejoratively. Rather than judging Harlequins because they sexualize all contact between hero and heroine, Snitow is more interested in thinking about whether the books "contain an affirmation of female sexuality" (315).

In considering this question, Snitow makes a fascinating argument, one that compares pornography to "infant desire and its furious gusto": "In pornography all things tend in one direction, a total immersion in one's own sense experience, for which one paradigm must certainly be infancy. For adults this totality, the total sexualization of everything, can only be a fantasy. But does the fact that it cannot be actually lived mean this fantasy must be discarded?" (316). While misogyny may be one aspect of contemporary pornography, another is its "universal infant desire for complete, immediate gratification, to rule the world out of the very core of passive helplessness," Snitow argues (316).

Because of the way it explodes the boundaries of the self, Snitow believes the "abandon" of pornography gives it the potential for subversion, even for social rebellion. Especially when it also depicts the power balances of society run to excess. But she sees this radical potential as still unrealized, both in pornography for men being published in the 1970s and in the Harlequin romance of the period.

Intriguingly, though, she does not read Harlequins as simply oppressive to women. Rather, she sees in them a strength: the insistence "that good sex for women requires an emotional and social context that can free them from constraint" (320), an insistence rare in any literature of her time. Unfortunately, Snitow notes, the road to good sex that Harlequins of her day map requires romance heroines to give up the very qualities—aggression and spontaneity—that are the hallmarks of rebellious infantile abandonment. In order to gain emotional intimacy, heroines must passively wait for it, for fear they will scare off their emotionally wary heroes.

In future posts, I'll be taking a look at how the phrase "pornography for women" has changed since Snitow (or more accurately, Parisi) coined the term. For now, I'd like to consider the conclusion of Snitow's essay, in which she imagines what a progressive pornography, one for both men and women, might look like. Her vision cals for both "personal feeling and abandoned physicality together in wonderful combinations undreamed of in either male or female pornography as we know it" (320-21). Such a progressive pornography will not be achieved, she posits, until equality between the sexes as both workers and child-rearers is far more commonplace than it is in America in 1979.

Today, U.S. society is far more egalitarian than it was in 1979. But many barriers to full equality between the sexes remain. How close do you think today's romance novel (Harlequin or otherwise) is to embodying Snitow's dream of a positive pornography?




* First published in the journal Radical History Review (20), and later reprinted  in Susan Ostrov Weisser's collection Women and Romance: A Reader. New York: NYU Press, 2001, 307-322. Quotations above have been taken from Weisser's reprint.


Photo/Illustration credits:
• Happy Baby   
• Two covers from Harlequins analyzed by Snitow courtesy of Goodreads  


Next time on RNFF: Book review of Ilona Andrews' Magic series