Not Under My Roof Analysis

How Different Culture Influences Parents’ Attitude towards Puppy Love In the book Not Under My Roof, Amy Schalet gives her interesting insights into the differences between parents-teenagers relationships with regards to teenagers’ sexuality. After reading this book, I find out that although American and Dutch parents have different attitudes towards teenage sex, both parents accept and even encourage their kids, who are still in high school, to have a boyfriend/girlfriend.This fact reminds me of the parents from China, who would extremely disagree with their children get involved in a relationship at such a young age. In this paper, I would like to analyze the different attitudes given by American and Chinese parents towards puppy love and

In America, students in high school usually have diverse courses and flexible schedules. American education system focuses not only on academic study but also on developing interests and cultivating teenagers’ creativity. Thus, schools in America provide children many chances to join in clubs and participate in extracurricular activities. With these opportunities, American children have better access to social networks and thus know more people as well as develop social ties. So, while having a boyfriend/girlfriend is also one significant social tie in American people’s eyes, no one would be angry about children if they decide to have a boyfriend/girlfriend. In other words, American parents engage in the cultural process of normalization, regarding puppy love as “a process of becoming physically and emotionally ready…” (Schalet, 17). However, in contrast to normalization, Chinese parents are involved in the process of dramatization on the issue of puppy love. In China, high school students are under huge pressure because of academic studies. In order to get into a good university, students must study hard in their high school years. From Chinese parents’ perspective, when their children are in high school, their mainly focus can only on academic study so that anything distracting them from study hard is a bad thing. Thus, Chinese parents dramatize the issue of puppy love, viewing their children’s involvement in a relationship with their boy/girlfriend as something which would badly influence their current academic performance and implicitly, their future success. Because of this idea, Chinese parents would extremely oppose the happening of puppy love during school years. Once they find out their children is in a relationship, they would tell them it is bad for them and make them apart. Moreover, if considering the issue of