I totally agree that adolescence is a cultural construct. What I don't understand is what society gets out of reinforcing the dependence of people for ten or even twenty years beyond when they ought to be capable of functioning as fully contributing members of society.
If Dr Epstein is correct in his assessments, there are significant costs in terms of crime, psychological problems, lost productivity, and plain old unhappiness by extending childhood too long.
So what are we getting out of this deal? Part of it I imagine is that our modern economy requires workers with more elaborate education and skills than were required for agriculturally based economies, and those skills take longer to master. Having recently watched "Waiting for Superman" and thinking about this article, I wonder if the demands of our economic system for perpetual growth and innovation are taking us beyond the capabilities of average humans.
I mean, is it really in humanity's best interest for it to take years for rank and file citizens to acquire all the skills necessary to contribute as more or less self-sufficient members of society? And the constant educational chant of "more math and science" - yes of course we all should gain at least basic competencies in those areas, but we are not all gifted in them. Yet it seems that the direction our economy is taking us will mean that those who are not gifted in math and science, or alternately financial services, will be doomed to struggle.
What stood out glaringly to me in WFS was the push for young children to spend more and more time away from their families in formal educational settings, even to the extent of removing them from their families almost all together in the case of the boy sent to boarding school.
In our modern economy families play a smaller and more passive role in preparing children for adulthood. It just makes me wonder, when will it end? Will it end? And, whose interests are being served by this economy? It seems like more and more of us are finding we are square pegs trying to meet the remands of our economy. Shouldn't the economy be our tool, and not so much our task master?
I don't have my references handy Those conceptions seem to have been vastly different from our own, but children weren't just viewed as very short, physically vulnerable adults. Children who could walk and reason often but not always had far more autonomy than children do today, but they were not figured as adults.
Through the Middle Ages in Europe, apprentices and students were considered to be wild and dangerous--and they were. Apprentice-hood and university were times of student societies, lots and lots of drinking, pranks and riots. That's not adolescence precisely as we conceive it - again, students and apprentices had far greater autonomy than teens do today--but it certainly wasn't adulthood. Franco Moretti's At Home In The World , a history of the bildungsroman, or novel of character formation, describes something like adolescence in its treatment of Goethe's lateth-century Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship --that is, young adulthood in the novel is described as a time of character formation separate from adulthood.
If anything, adolescence and childhood have come into being wherever there were resources to support them--there are all kinds of social advantages to recognizing life stages quite separate from the marketing angle.
More time for education before work begins, the pleasure of spending time with one's children, the creation of better methods of discipline and teaching that are more appropriate to the physical state of the child, etc etc.
You could easily argue that it is childhood which is encoded into humanity, appearing whenever it's not destroyed by hardship.
I wouldn't argue that. Philippe Aries, author of the landmark social history Centuries of Childhood which to my mind suggests that childhood is an evolving category, but not a novel one , was criticized in recent years because he hypothesized that since children were painted dressed as miniature adults, they were treated socially that way.
It now appears that children weren't actually dressed as miniature adults every day; those clothes were for best and were worn in portraits to make the families look important. I agree with the point, but suing a particular word to make the point is very sketchy. Words go in and out of vogue somewhat more quickly than the social constructs they describe. The thing we forget is that while yes, adolescents were expected to do adult labor, they were not usually expected to be adults in other senses.
They weren't expected to go and live on their own or run a business. Most continued to live with their parents, though some would have a small house of their own a few doors down. They would go to their parents for advice on most issues.
Some would go into universities and apprenticeships or the military, but they were essentially replacing their parents with other adults who supervised them. In a way, it's not that we suddenly created a transition between childhood and adulthood, it's that we acknowledged that most parents are no longer in a position to employ their child, apprenticeships and the military were often exploitative, early marriage is dangerous, and adults today are so isolated that it is difficult to supervise a young adult unless you have legal guardianship over them.
I feel like this idea that prior to a certain time depending on who you ask, this could be anywhere between the s and the s that everyone started doing 'adult work' and were treated 'as adults' the second it was physically possible is historically inaccurate, and also isn't consistent across history, societies, and various subgroups within societies. This is very indicative of our own racialized and class-based focus on history, as well as an apparent inability to discern between any time period between and Neither of my grandmothers got married and started pushing out babies the second they got their periods; they were born in the s, and based on their lifestyles working class people that would be totally irrational.
By the time they were teens, world war 2 had broken out; there weren't many men their age around to marry. Plus, that left a lot of jobs open; girls their age had to be in school or working though I suppose working would count as an adult task, but a different one than the example. Working class men also tend not to have the means or motivations to sell off their daughters to wealthy business associates.
Both of them finished high school and had jobs before getting married and popping out babies, and one continued to work until the s. Most of them were very wealthy, or poor and rural. Just because you were an 'old maid' at 21 doesn't mean everyone got married at 13; generally women married in their late teens or early 20s. Your parents? A teacher or youth pastor? From teen movies. A rude awakening when some of the girls reacted differently from the girls in the movies!
Youth as consumers Lots of high school students have jobs when they are not in school. But for most of them work has become almost exclusively an opportunity for immediate gratification, to buy the equipment necessary for membership in the youth culture. In last place is family support.
Just 16 percent gave anything to Mom or Dad. On the contrary, our teenage consumers buy what they do because of the deep spiritual hunger of their hearts and souls. They buy certain goods because they long for the love that those who possess these things are supposed to enjoy. They want clothes because the media manipulate them into thinking that their sexual identities will be firmly established and that they will be validated as human beings if they wear the right clothes…they have become alienated from what they really need.
They see their education almost as something inconsequential, as something that takes up their time. Becker, a non-Christian, chastises the Christian Church for having been co-opted by materialism, and in the process, throwing away its heritage, which, he admits, wistfully, used to provide young and old with a unique basis for the dignity and heroism of all human endeavor including work and study.
Loss of Belief in the Judeo Christian Story Neil Postman, also a non-Christian and an astute critic of modern culture like Becker, is keenly aware of the price young people are paying because of the loss of belief in the Judeo-Christian world view.
Without air, our cells die. Few today find such purposes meaningful, because few believe anymore in the larger stories from which these purposes derive. Even fewer, I think, believe in the story of technological progress, which tells of a paradise to be gained through bigger and better machines.
Even the great modern story known as inductive science is not now as gripping as it once seemed. How can they be helped to read, and write a coherent story for our times…? Our individual stories are like strands in that cable, that either contribute to its strength, or stick out like broken pieces of wire that shred the hands. What We Can Do In moments of exasperation with our teenagers and their friends, and the adolescent youth culture in general, we need to resist the temptation of blaming the kids.
Remove stumbling blocks One set of stumbling blocks comes from the fact that it was adults who first defined teenagers by sex and social life. I wonder how many adults realize how much more difficult our generation makes it, for the many young people who want to remain chaste until marriage. And adults in their perplexity with youth turn to these kinds of institutions for assistance—ironically, the very institutions that place youth in their own subculture where they have little to do but expend energy on looking good and entertaining themselves.
They interpret a lack of parental interest in their interests as an indication that parents do not really care. I believe this response comes in part from adult insecurity. These are examples of one set of stumbling blocks the adult generation has put in the way of teenagers growing up. Too many of us have opted out of the creative and time-consuming responsibility of befriending and nurturing the next generation, something which must start early, when our children are young.
But if parents and other caring Christian adults are not there to provide wholesome nurture, guidance, friendship and support, the Youth Culture is there to provide unwholesome alternatives. But there is another set of stumbling blocks well-meaning adults can erect that makes growth into maturity difficult. Often, out of a desire to protect our children from the World, including the Youth Culture, Christians withdraw from the world into their own tribal Christian sub-culture, with its own dialect, rules and regulations about things like dress, hair length or sex roles, that are not in the Bible.
In fact, this option is no more godly than blending in to the secular world. It is also naive to think that as long as they are in Christian schools or even being home-schooled, they will automatically be protected from the youth culture. Again, this means spending time with them, watching movies, listening to music, reading books, magazine articles and newspapers together, and talking about them.
This is a joy, not a chore! There is obviously a place for protection, particularly when children are young.
I think it is important to monitor television and videos very carefully. Not only because of the content, but perhaps even more because of the passivity of this kind of entertainment.
When they are watching television they are not doing all kinds of creative and active things. In our experience, if your children develop active interests in art, music, reading, the natural world, sports, etc. In the area of ideas, both Postman and Becker are wistful about what the biblical world view used to provide for our culture. We can rejoice that the biblical story is true.
We have a story to believe that makes sense of life and provides a basis for human value, meaning, learning and work, for morality and cosmic heroism that is accessible to all people, young and old. Read the first chapters of Deuteronomy to see how Moses prepared the Israelites for entering the promised land, where they would be surrounded by people with alien beliefs and lifestyles.
Imagine how the children would have looked forward to living in tents for a week to remember the Exodus. What can we do similarly, perhaps with the Christian calendar? They practice sacred prostitution.
Without that, the moral laws would seem arbitrary and make no sense. If we subtract, we lose our Christian distinctiveness and blend in to the world. Social structures. In the area of social structures, we can and must provide alternatives to some of the destructive patterns in our culture. As much as possible, give children responsibility for real work, in the home, in the Church, in the community.
Expose your children to your work, so they know what you do; and involve them in it, as much as possible. There is a lot of low tech work cooking, raking leaves, or wood splitting, stacking and hauling, for example , which our children have been able to help with, alongside a broad age range of students and workers.
Our boys were able to work for a friend who runs a small restaurant upholstery business. They learned about running a small business, and we expected them to put one-half of their earnings toward school expenses. The rest was their own. Encourage and help young people to start small businesses of their own—like lawn work or house-painting.
Our boys started a house painting business to help with school and college costs. Age Segregation. Reactivate the extended family where possible; old and young need each other. Abolish junior high schools! That age group needs contact with older and younger students. All too often, the church just mimics the culture. Everyone is divided up into same age or experience groups: youth group, young marrieds, college and career, mature marrieds, single parents, divorced, seniors, etc.
I am not saying we should abolish all peer groupings, i. The Church provides the ideal kind of community to bring together a whole range of ages to engage in real activities, in casual non-professional contexts, i. Work projects: locally or further afield, house or church repairs or decorating, leaf raking, etc. Service projects: helping local single mothers; Habitat for Humanity a local church sent young and older to Florida to repair hurricane damage ; feeding homeless people; volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center or foster home; organizing fund raising events for worthy causes; visiting prisons or nursing homes.
Planning special worship services: evangelistic events, using drama, street theater; discussions on important issues. Artistic endeavors: organizing art shows, and encouraging artistic gifts in a variety of contexts. We have informal musical soirees, including all ages and abilities. Having fun together: making music together; playing games together; watching a teen movie and discussing it. All ages need each other. At the birth of the church, the Holy Spirit was poured out on all flesh, breaking down divisions between men and women, slaves and free, Jew and Gentile, old and young.
The old would dream dreams, and the young see visions. Christian adults should be thinking of ways to encourage and express our appreciation for our young people, many of them are quietly and sometimes not so quietly honoring God in their lives, against powerful pressures.
Modeling is of central importance. The Bible is clear about the importance of modeling. In fact, as many have pointed out, faith, values and attitudes are caught by observation probably more than they are taught. Other work appearing in the late s through the s in Europe and America helped adolescence emerge as a field of study important earlier work by Freud, Piaget, Maslow, and Kohlberg also addressed stages of development. Erikson , pp. Erikson looked at life in eight stages.
We felt that our age group of year-olds actually struggled with the following three stages:. Psychosocial Stage 4 — Industry vs. Inferiority, age Main Question: Am I successful or not? Through social interactions, children begin to develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments and abilities. Psychosocial Stage 5 — Identity vs. Confusion, age Main Question: Who am I and where am I going? During adolescence, children are exploring their independence and developing a sense of self.
Psychosocial Stage 6 — Intimacy vs. Isolation, age Main Questions: Am I loved and wanted? Should I share my life with someone or live alone? This stage covers the period of early adulthood when people are exploring personal relationships. In , Peter Blos published a book titled On Adolescence.
Blos, a German-born American child psychoanalyst, was known as Mr. Adolescence as a result of his research into the problems of teens. His theories described the conflicts teens have between wanting to break free of their parents and desiring to remain dependent.
He popularized the notion that there were two individuation stages in human development. The first occurs when one is a toddler, and the second takes place when one is an adolescent and is finally able to shed family dependencies. It is important to note that in many other societies adolescence is not recognized as a phase of life. Instead, there is a distinction between childhood and adulthood, with significant rituals around this transformation.
The duration of these rituals may be only a few days, whereas in the United States the period of adolescence often lasts over a decade. Youth are frequently left to design their own rites-of-passage, gang violence, pregnancy, and graffiti may serve as such passages. The s also ushered in a greater focus on and understanding of cultural context and gender differences.
New approaches shaped broader definitions of what it meant to develop an identity and sense of self in adolescence. In , Jean Baker Miller published Towards a New Psychology of Women, a groundbreaking work in the understanding of human relationships.
0コメント