我在荷兰长大。当我12岁的时候，一位女士来到学校给我们上性教育课。她头发花白、面容严肃、不苟言笑。我还认得这种样子：我祖母当年就曾在我妈妈的学校教性教育课。
我们这些教室里的男孩女孩都有些尴尬。但我现在还记得当时很好奇：这位女士能教我们什么呢？我们在小学已经学过了所有关于性方面的知识。那位女士的开场白是：“我不会教你们性知识，因为你们已经知道了所有这些知识。相反，我们将谈论性关系问题。”
当时住在我家马路对面的，是一位名叫艾米•斯嘉丽(Amy Schalet)的美国女孩。她后来回到了美国，发现了一个全然不同的世界。斯嘉丽吃惊地发现，许多美国少女怀了孕。有些少女几乎没有接受过任何性教育。她们的父母往往试图禁止她们发生性行为，正如美国议员试图禁止吸食大麻和卖淫一样。
如今，斯嘉丽是马萨诸塞大学(University of Massachusetts)阿姆赫斯特分校的一位社会学者。她刚刚发表了《不要在我家里：父母、青少年和性文化》(Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex)一书。该书由芝加哥大学出版社(University of Chicago Press)出版。在书中，她从青少年的卧室说起，最后解释了美国之所以对社会问题相当保守、而荷兰相当开明的原因所在。
该书以斯嘉丽向“荷兰和美国无宗教信仰或温和基督教派的中产阶级白人父母”提出的问题开头。他们会允许自己的青少年子女（一般在16岁左右）带女朋友（或男朋友）回家过夜吗？90%的受访美国人与下面这位母亲回答的一样：“上帝啊，这是不可能的。”而90%的受访荷兰人则表示，他们将允许、或至少会考虑一下。
你或许以为上述调查结果支持了外国人认为荷兰人过于放纵的说法。然而这种说法并不准确。荷兰父母并非完全撒手不管。他们通过允许子女带异性朋友回家过夜，严格控制了他们的性生活。正如一位荷兰男孩告诉斯嘉丽说的那样：“如果我带女友回家过夜，至少我的父母知道我在哪里。”父母可以事先为女儿准备避孕药。他们几乎是在父母的眼皮子底下发生性行为的。父母可能早已认识女儿的男朋友，他们或许会在第二天早上邀请他共进早餐。如果他们不喜欢这位男孩，他们可以巧妙地把他撵走。如果他们喜欢他，就会把他视为准女婿，有可能让他参加必要的荷兰家庭聚会，比如姑姥姥生日聚会之类。青少年性行为通常会演变为平淡的小夫妻生活。当我们年轻的时候，一位荷兰朋友告诉我，他不可能抛弃自己的女友，因为那样他父母会不高兴。
简言之，荷兰青少年性行为是在父母的控制之下。它处于一种有序的状态。难怪荷兰女孩怀孕的几率，几乎才约为美国女孩的五分之一，而流产的可能性仅为美国女孩的一半，尽管她们可能会在不征得父母同意的情况下流产。
荷兰父母对待青少年性行为的态度，很大程度上与荷兰社会对待毒品或卖淫的态度一样：允许它、远离它、控制它。荷兰人知道，有些人会吸毒。他们只是确保这些行为有序进行。正如约翰•特拉沃尔塔(John Travolta)在影片《低俗小说》(Pulp Fiction)中解释阿姆斯特丹为何会有大麻馆一样：“我想说，你不可能走进一家饭馆，卷上烟，然后开始吞云吐雾。他们想让你在自己家或某些指定场所吸食大麻。”荷兰的大麻馆与妓院一样，都要缴税。
相反，美国人禁止这些行为，从而使其陷入无序状态。美国父母禁止子女带异性朋友回家过夜，因此青少年性行为通常是在汽车后座等地方进行，不采取任何避孕措施。孩子们不得不“偷偷摸摸”地实施被斯嘉丽称为“美国青少年重要仪式”的行为。实际上，“偷偷摸摸”会让孩子们更兴奋。20年前，当我带着自己的英格兰大学足球队前往阿姆斯特丹踢巡回赛的时候，我的队友们坚持要每天在大麻烟馆过夜。某天晚上，我们的美国门将醉醺醺地说，他很高兴在成长过程中能够尝试所有被禁止的行为。他表示：“我们偷偷地用假身份证去买啤酒喝，这非常好玩。”
美国社会试图通过婚姻、教堂和监狱制度来推动好的行为。但这种做法的效果并不明显。如果你只是简单地禁止，你就会创造出不受监管的无序区域。美国陷入了恶性循环。因为美国人创造了如此多的无序区域——生活其中的有单身妈妈、贩毒团伙以及其他穷人——所以美国非常担心这些无序区域。因此美国人继续禁止，这只会促使更多人进入无序区域。当然，这些区域令青少年们着迷。可能正因如此，美国青少年的吸毒人数多于荷兰。正如我记忆中的那样，荷兰青少年可能很看不起大麻馆。荷兰政客们现在关闭许多大麻馆的一个原因是“药物旅游”：外国人错误地认为，这些大麻馆是反文化的天堂，因此趋之若鹜。
荷兰人已经做了人类所能做的一切事情，让青少年性行为和吸毒显得平淡无奇。美国社会保守人士应该加以尝试。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001042795
When I was 12 years old, growing up in the Netherlands, a woman came to school to give us sex education. She was grey-haired, tough and unsmiling. I recognised the type: my grandmother had taught sex ed at my mother’s school.
We boys and girls sat in the classroom embarrassed. But I also remember wondering: what could this woman teach us? We’d already been taught all about sex at primary school. “I won’t teach you about sex,” she began, “because you know all that. Instead, we’ll talk about relationships.”
Living across the road from me back then was an American teenager called Amy Schalet. Later she returned to the US, and discovered a different world. Many American teens, she noticed with surprise, got pregnant. Some had received scarcely any sex education. Their parents often tried to ban teenage sex, just as American lawmakers try to ban marijuana and prostitution.
Schalet is now a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and she has just published Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex (University of Chicago Press). Her book starts in the adolescent bedroom, and ends up explaining why the US is so conservative on social issues and the Netherlands so liberal.
The book opens with a question that Schalet put to “white, secular or moderately Christian” middle-class Dutch and American parents. Would they allow their teenagers – typically aged about 16 – to spend the night with a girlfriend or boyfriend in the parental home? Nine out of 10 American parents responded, in the phrase of one mother: “No way, José.” Nine out of 10 Dutch parents said they’d allow or at least consider it.
You might think this finding supports foreign clichés of Dutch permissiveness. Yet that isn’t quite right. Dutch parents aren’t hands-off at all. By allowing the sleepover, they gain great control over their children’s sex lives. As one Dutch boy told Schalet: “If it happens at home, at least they [his parents] know where I am.” The parents can put their daughter on the pill beforehand. The sex happens practically under their noses. The partner – whom they probably already know – might be summoned for family breakfast the morning after. If they don’t like him, they can subtly start ousting him. If they do, he is adopted as a kind of son-in-law, expected to show up for obligatory Dutch family gatherings like great-aunts’ birthdays. Often the teen sex evolves into a bland mini-marriage. When we were young, a Dutch friend told me he couldn’t dump his girlfriend because his parents would be upset.
In short, Dutch teenage sex happens under parental control. It’s a zone of order. No wonder Dutch teenage girls are nearly five times less likely than American girls to get pregnant, and less than half as likely to have an abortion, even though they can get abortions without parental consent.
Dutch parents treat teen sex much as Dutch society treats drugs or prostitution: permit it, hug it close, control it. The Dutch know that some people will take drugs. They just make sure this happens in a zone of order. As John Travolta explains Amsterdam’s marijuana cafés in the film Pulp Fiction: “I mean, you just can’t walk into a restaurant, roll a joint and start puffin’ away. They want you to smoke in your home or certain designated places.” And Dutch marijuana cafés – like prostitutes – pay taxes.
By contrast, Americans banish these activities to zones of disorder. American parents forbid sleepovers, and so teen sex typically happens without contraception, in places like the backseats of cars. Kids have to “sneak around”, something that Schalet calls “an important ritual of American adolescence”. In fact, sneaking around enhances the thrill. When I took my English college football team on tour to Amsterdam 20 years ago, my teammates insisted on spending every night in marijuana cafés. One night, our American goalkeeper dreamily reflected that he was glad he’d grown up with everything banned. “We had the fun of sneaking around buying beer with fake IDs,” he said.
American society tries to enforce good behaviour through the institutions of marriage, church and prison. This doesn’t work well. If you just ban, you create unsupervised zones of disorder. The US is trapped in a vicious cycle. Because Americans create so many zones of disorder – inhabited by single mothers, drug gangs and other poor people – American anxiety over disorder stays high. And so Americans keep prohibiting, which only pushes more people into zones of disorder. Of course these zones fascinate teenagers. That may be why American teens take more drugs than Dutch teens, who, as I recall, can be quite snooty about marijuana cafés. One reason Dutch politicians are now closing many drugs cafés is “drugstoerisme”: foreigners wrongly think the cafés are countercultural havens and come flocking.
The Netherlands has done everything humanly possible to make teen sex and drugs seem dull. American social conservatives should try it out.
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