Faculty Profiles
Straight Talk About Teen Sex
When Assistant Professor Amy Schalet (sociology) transferred as an undergraduate to Harvard from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Holland, she was surprised by the amount of attention the American media paid to teen sexuality. And that most of the stories conveyed a sense of anguish and quandary.
“I was like, wow, this is weird,” Schalet explained in an interview shortly after her arrival on campus this fall. Her curiosity about America’s obsession with teen sex grew when she learned that young people in the U.S. are much more likely to experience public health problems such as pregnancy, disease, and emotional damage.
Schalet’s subsequent research, which led to a PhD from the University of California Berkeley, involved conducting 130 detailed interviews on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the questions was whether it would be okay for a teen to bring a lover home for the night. She talked to 72 teenagers and 58 parents and found that sexual maturation is often a source of drama in American homes, whereas the Dutch tend to treat it as a normal part of development.
In the immediate future, Schalet, who also is a faculty affiliate at the Center for Research on Families in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, expects to broaden her research to look beyond the white middle-class families she questioned for her dissertation. Her book, Raging Hormones, Regulated Love (University of Chicago Press), due out the near future, has already led to speaking invitations. Her article "Must We Fear Adolescent Sexuality?" was named Medscape General Medicine’s “Best Article of 2004” in Ob/Gyn & Women's Health and is now used by educators and health care providers as an educational tool. (To read the article, click here. Note, free registration is required to read the whole article.)
“Even though there’s a lot of hype about sex in the U.S.," says Schalet, "parents and kids can’t seem to talk about it,” adding that many American teenagers don’t use contraceptives effectively and they seem to be less likely to form true romantic relationships than are Dutch teens. And working with public-health practitioners Schalet hopes to stimulate conversation that leads to happier and healthier coming-of-age experiences.
Before coming to UMass Amherst, Schalet held a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the School of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, where she pursued the public health and policy implications of her research. She is the principal investigator of a three-year grant from the Ford Foundation to continue research at the intersection of sociology and reproductive health.
When asked why she chose UMass Amherst, Schalet remarks, "I was looking for a department with both a strong and stimulating intellectual climate and support for researchers who are interested in having an impact outside of the academy. The sociology department here and the Center for Research on Families seemed to offer that ideal combination. The fact that it is so beautiful here with lots of cultural activities was a real plus too. Now that I'm here, I can see that the University is going through a period of growth, and it is exciting to be part of that."
October 24, 2006
Expanded from an article by Eric Goldscheider
