Father-daughter

Here are pretty much the exact words my father told me. 'I would like nothing more than to see you walk down your wedding aisle a virgin. If you feel you cannot contain this natural desire any longer, and you should become pregnant, come to me immediately. I will be shocked, of course but I am here to help you. Just say no. Keep saying no and the situation should remedy itself. Do not act on impulse. If you feel you must go ahead, tell your companion to supply some kind of contraceptive.' How is that for an explanation! I am sure this would shock my mother, but I would never think of doing anything to disappoint my father.

There is little evidence, at least in the United States, of parents actually encouraging heterosexual activity on the part of their adolescent offspring. That there is some, at least sub rosa, support for "sowing wild oats" on the part of the boy is well known, however. The empirical evidence on parental permissiveness is extremely limited. Bandura and Walters (1959, p. 141-187) gave some attention to the subject in an interview study of 52 adolescent boys and their parents. The families studied represent a fairly broad cross-section of socio-economic classes. Fathers were considerably more permissive than were mothers.

Most fathers regarded petting as a normal and inevitable activity, and some admitted that they would not be too surprised to learn that their sons had had coitus. Most mothers who had faced the possibility that their sons might engage in petting or coitus had attempted to arouse sufficient anxiety about the possible consequences of coitus to deter their sons from going so far. Some of the fathers of aggressive boys (the study was concerned with aggressive boys) were, in the words of the authors, "surprisingly permissive" of heterosexual behavior. Some fathers appeared to feel that if the boy could conquer the girl, then there was little to be said or done about it. While some of the fathers of the boys in the control group were equally tolerant, they did not appear to regard coitus as a personal conquest. Bandura and Walters conclude that perhaps the most usual attitude expressed was to expect and permit some petting, but to draw the line on coitus.

In terms of behavior, the aggressive boys engaged much more freely in heterosexual encounters, leading to coitus, than did boys in the control sample. They also displayed somewhat less anxiety about sexual behavior. Bandura and Walters suggest that these differences may be a product of the greater permissiveness for heterosexual encounters on the part of the fathers of the aggressive boys. In general, encouragement on the part of parents is not encouragement in intimacy but encouragement to date. We must assume that parents know of the "risks" of erotic encounters when they urge their adolescents to date. Few mothers are as openly accepting of the possibilities as the following mother, however. She wrote in response to a high school counselor who criticized her daughter for hanging around boys "too ostentatiously."

'I don't want her criticized. I told her she should explore the world. If she relates to a boy so warmly that sex enters into it, she is not to be inhibited' (Grafton, 1964, p. 7). We usually think of parents being anxious if their adolescent daughters rather than their adolescent sons do not date. Sometimes parents also prod their sons. I was indifferent to dating in general. This attitude lasted until the prom when our mothers (my best friend's and mine) told us that if we didn't get a date to the prom, we would have to take them. We both got dates promptly, needless to say.

The case above and the case following, as well as several cases reported in an earlier chapter, indicate that adult-sponsored institutions often hold and enforce norms that are in conflict with parental norms. The case to follow involves a mother and her daughter, a child of low intelligence. As reported in the press, the daughter gave birth to her first illegitimate baby before her fourteenth birthday. Fifteen months later she gave birth to a second baby, followed by a third illegitimate baby eleven months after that. The babies were all taken in and cared for by the girl's mother. The mother, in attempting to deal with the situation, advised her daughter to use birth control. The mother was subsequently convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for having advised her daughter to use birth control methods (Civil Liberties, April 1965, p. 1-4).