This post is taken from the weekly newsletter “Darons Daronnes” on parenting, which is sent out every Wednesday at 6 p.m. To receive it, you can register for free here.
At the end of June we received in the newspaper an astronomical number of 2 scholarship holdersof (one hundred and twenty-three, to be precise). When I found myself, with a microphone, in front of this mass of teenagers gathered in the auditorium to present the Intimacies section of the WorldI had a double enlightenment: 1) I can’t knock them out with soporific blah-blah; 2) I’ll never have access to such a group of informants again. So I handed them the microphone and asked them to tell me something simple: their room and the way their parents respect (or don’t) their privacy there.
You wouldn’t believe how many hands went up. Everyone had different ideas to offer, but there was a general consensus on the essentials: the bedroom is a sanctuary and we need to spend time alone there. I was very surprised to hear young people tell me on several occasions about a nuisance I hadn’t anticipated: noise. “I need a moment of quiet, otherwise I can be unpleasant, after a day of non-stop noise”one of them told me. Another adds: “Every day I am bothered by the noise of cars and the hustle and bustle of school. When I get home, I need peace and quiet.” I thought it was stupid to complain about noise pollution…
This observation echoes the work of sociologist Elsa Ramos who, for her book Stay a child, become an adult. Coexistence of students with their parents.Published in 2002 (L’Harmattan), he surveyed fifty young people aged between 19 and 27, in particular on their relationship with their bedroom. There is also talk of noise, as when Franck complains about an infernal device used by his mother: “It’s something new, it’s not an iron, it’s steam and it makes a huge noise. I could hear the steam, pssstttt…” Two comments in passing: 1) steam generators are not that old, after all (or maybe I am); 2) reading a sociological essay from 2002 on current family life, seven years after #metoo, gives the impression of diving into prehistoric archives, where the domestic burden is absolutely unthinkable and returns, without the shadow of an interrogation, to mothers.
This is undoubtedly what explains in part the attitude of these mothers towards their children’s privacy in Elsa Ramos’ book. If they are the ones who tidy up, vacuum, pick up dirty clothes and dust, since the house “belongs to them”, why would they stop at the door? Unanimously among those interviewed, mothers respect their children’s privacy less than fathers. One searches through her daughter’s belongings; another sits down on the bed. While fathers generally remain motionless on the threshold, as if drawing an invisible border.
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