This will be very apparent in some of the cases discussed in later chapters. The rival demands of conflicting motives and conflicting roles, brought to self-awareness, call forth a complex internal behavior called "conscience," a term literally meaning "shared knowledge." Before this "conscience," motives and roles pass in review. Conscience serves as an internal court that lets "the left hand know what the right is doing." Compartmentalization fails when ethical universals are involved. For instance, if a person has internalized the professed values of a traditionally-oriented community, their generalized other will saddle them with guilt when their sex acts fall short of the professed demand level (Gerth and Mills, 1953, p. 124).
There are two broad areas of experience that we will focus upon that are consistent
with an interactionist frame of reference. In the first, the major focus is on personality
development, especially the learning of sex roles. In the second, attention is focused
upon the interaction of adolescents acting out sex roles they have learned. Actually, the
"learning" and the "doing" of sex roles are often carried out simultaneously. This is
especially apparent when one is dealing with sexual experiences, for the sexual
learning process is so chaotic, quixotic, or episodic in the United States.
All major theories of personality argue that personality is a product both of
inheritance and experience, particularly social experience. Social experience is not
static. It follows that changes in society, as well as the stable patterns of society, have
an influence on the types of personalities a society creates. Since the United States is
a changing society, it should be assumed that, generally speaking, personality is
changing and is different from what it was in earlier decades, and that the learning of
sex roles and the subsequent behavior reflect some of these differences.
Socializing or role learning is a significant aspect of interaction in primary
relationships such as child-parent relationships. The central focus of the socialization
lies in the child's internalization of the culture into which they are born and in which
they grow to maturity. Significant for our study is the fact that child-parent relationship
appears to be ineffective in socializing the child into well-articulated sexual roles.
Parents in the United States are not generally trained for roles that permit continued
intimacy with the growing child, teaching sex roles, or permitting the child continuing
intimate contacts with their parents or with others. In this sense, parents may be
repressing rather than motivating agents.
They tend to hand on vague and negative sexual mores that inhibit rather than release.
Anticipatory socialization is one of the functions of the family. That is, the child is taught to look forward in preparation for
school, a job, and marriage. Anticipatory socialization in the family is greatly restricted,
however, when it comes to preparing the child to anticipate the satisfactions of sexual
encounters. This is why learning sex roles from peers becomes important in the life of
the adolescent. For example, Kinsey reports that parents in ghettos may punish their
offspring for attempting intercourse, but the offspring may in turn not understand why
they are being punished, and they do not consider it wrong to attempt coitus, because
they know that other boys and girls-their peers as well as older boys and girls-are
doing so (Kinsey, 1948, p. 445).
Middle- and upper-class children have less access to
such explicitly sexual behavior models than do children in "disadvantaged" areas.
Sometimes parents attempt to impose patterns that are stricter than those
existing in the community. Sometimes they attempt to be more liberal, and to raise
the child without the standard fears, repressions, and inhibitions surrounding sex.
The odds against the parents being completely successful, within a community that
holds contrary values, are high (Kinsey, 1948, p. 445).
The written legal codes and the proscriptions of the common law are less
influential in controlling the sexual behavior of adolescents than are direct contacts
with peers, parents, and others. Personal patterns of behavior are established long
before the adolescent is likely to have any comprehension of the nature of legal
restrictions on sexual activity.