His proposal was to add not just “a few more minutes to the school day or a few more days each year” but to extend secondary school “by years’—specifically, to add grades thirteen and fourteen to the school curriculum:

Government schooling…kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and teaching disrespect for home and parents…. David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: …when both are 13, you can’t tell which one learned first…. But in school I label Rachel “learning disabled” and slow David down a bit, too. For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and when to stop. He won’t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, “special education” fodder. She’ll be locked in her place forever…. I can’t teach this way any longer. If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know.

child labor laws were extended to cover more and more kinds of work, the age of school leaving set higher and higher. The greatest victory for this utopian project was making school the only avenue to certain occupations. The intention was ultimately to draw all work into the school net. By the 1950s it wasn’t unusual to find graduate students well into their thirties, running errands, waiting to start their lives.25

Consider a few landmark dates in human social history:

a poll of fourteen hundred adults who were asked, among other things, when adulthood now begins in the United States. At eighteen, perhaps, when teens can vote and own property and enroll in the military without parental permission? How about at twenty-one, when young people can buy alcohol? The answer was twenty-six

the main need a teenager has is to become productive and independent.

Aries shows that in many families—even prominent ones—parents didn’t keep track of the exact ages of their children.

It was also not uncommon for people to complete their studies by their early teens; people we would now call prodigies emerged fairly frequently under this system

For most of human history until the time of the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of children worked alongside adults as soon as they were able, and they transitioned to partial or full adulthood by their early, mid, or late teens.

from the mid-1800s onward I found a steady and substantial accumulation of restrictive laws—about fifty distinctive laws between 1850 and 1960. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the sudden increase in rate that began in the 1960s; I found about ninety unique laws over the last four decades of the twentieth century.

because of the contract restriction alone, parents are in an excellent position to control young people through coercion. “

By 1879, only seven states had child labor laws in place, and all were being ignored or circumvented to some extent

The 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression gave a boost to the movement, mainly because jobs were suddenly so scarce that leaders were desperate to exclude as many people as they could from the job market. With perhaps 27 percent of the population out of work, the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act established a minimum of age sixteen for workers in most industri

the Supreme Court struck down the law in 1935, again on constitutional grounds.38

The Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act, passed in 1936, prevented firms handling federal money from employing females under eighteen or males under sixtee

Organized labor was, according to historians, both “the head as well as the body” of the movement to prohibit young people from working.4

In a 1908 essay on child labor, reformer Edith Abbott said that early American policy makers were obsessed with the issue of idleness among children.48 In 1640, for example, the “Great and Generall Court” of Massachusetts “required the magistrates of the several towns to see ‘what course may be taken for teaching the boys and girles in all towns the spinning of the yarne.’” The following year the same authority directed “all masters of families [to] see that their children and servants should be industriously implied so as the mornings and evenings and other seasons may not bee lost as formerly they have been.”49 In 1672, Boston officials directed a list of people to “dispose of their severall children… abroad for servants”; if not, “the selectman will take their said children from them and place them with such masters as they shall provide accordinage as the law directs.”

we don’t want young people to work, even if they want to work and have opportunities to work without being exploited; we want them to attend school, even if they don’t want to attend school and aren’t ready to learn.

in 1852, when Massachusetts made school attendance compulsory for all children—requiring young people between eight and fourteen to attend school at least three months a year—unless, that is, the individual could demonstrate that he or she had already learned the relevant material. In other words, this law was competency based: you were exempt if you could demonstrate competence.

it wasn’t until 1918—sixty-six years after Massachusetts took the lead—that all states finally had such laws

early laws was minimal, perhaps increasing actual school attendance by only 5 percent.52

with America’s immigrant population swelling daily (there were almost nine million immigrants during the first decade of the twentieth century alone), some felt that compulsory education was the best way to Americanize the rapidly changing population

In our culture, the civil rights that are usually withheld until the age of majority are: The right to enlist in the military without the consent of a parent The right to inherit property The right to vote The right to refuse or consent to medical treatment The right to sign contracts The right to buy and sell property (including stock) The right to marry without parental consent The right to file lawsuits The right to make or revoke a will

we shifted from being a society where everyone could drink (except in states that had already banned alcohol in the years just prior to Prohibition), to one where no one could drink, to one where everyone but young people could drink. By 1933, with all young people forced to attend school and many forced out of the job market, the idea that all young people were incompetent was firmly embedded in American consciousness.

Illinois also passed laws prohibiting young people from going to movies or dance halls, fighting, staying out past a certain hour, and behaving “incorrigibly.”69

virtually all of these newly defined crimes had no victims. They were, if anything, “crimes against oneself”—at least from the perspective of the authorities. And most of these indiscretions were typical of the working class and poor, which raises questions about the motives of the people who fought for such laws.

Mary Ellen Wilson was a nine-year-old girl who was beaten daily by her foster parents. In 1874, mission worker Etta Wheeler took it upon herself to rescue Mary Ellen, but the authorities were uncooperative. No laws existed that prohibited such abuse. As a last resort, Wheeler approached the NYSPCA for help. Bergh took the case, arguing to a New York Supreme Court justice that Mary Ellen deserved protection as a “human animal.” Remarkably, in an 1875 decision, Justice Abraham R. Lawrence ruled in his favor, and Mary Ellen was saved.122

Nearly every piece of major reform in the years 1895-1930 came with Jane Addams’ name attached in one way or another,

The Hull-House Legacy Addams’ reach was extraordinary. She either founded, helped to found, or was a major player in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Juvenile Protective Association, the Immigrant’s Protective League, the Campfire Girls, the National Child Labor Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Consumer’s League, the National Peace Congress, the Women’s Peace Party and at least a dozen other major organizations.13

Child labor legislation was often propelled by big business, because “upper-class industrialists… did not depend on cheap child labor for their manufacturing operations.” He cites historian Jeremy Felt’s history of child labor reform in New York, which shows that “the abolition of child labor could be viewed as a means of driving out marginal manufacturer and tenement operators.”139

Compulsory education, says Platt, was viewed by leading industrialists as a means of controlling the poor and working classes and, specifically, of preparing them for work in new Industrial America.

Addams was appalled by temptations available to young people on the streets surrounding Hull-House: Never before have such numbers of young boys earned money… and felt themselves free to spend it as they choose in the midst of vice deliberately disguised as pleasure…

Perhaps the main reason we now treat teens like children is because of the determined efforts of Addams and others to “save” teens from the sinful culture of the city streets.

in focusing on “depraved” behavior that was repugnant to the upper classes—behavior that was usually victimless and non-criminal—the reformers, says Platt, “brought attention to—and, in so doing, invented—new categories of youthful misbehavior.”

Young people could now be rounded up in large numbers for behaviors such as “drinking, begging, roaming the streets, frequenting dance-halls and movies, fighting, sexuality, [and] staying out late.”

a 1910 report by Harvey Baker of the Boston Juvenile Court which explains that a young person might be picked up for an offense as small as playing ball on the street and then committed to reform school when he was subsequently found to have a history of troublesome “habits.”145

delinquency laws gave public officials absolute authority to sweep the streets of undesirable young people for virtually any reason

because juvenile proceedings were “informal,” the offenders were denied due process rights guaranteed to all Americans under the Constitution. With the creation of the juvenile justice system, the Fifth Amendment guarantee that “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and the Sixth Amendment guarantees that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury” with “the Assistance of Counsel for his defence,” were taken away from young people.146

as of the early 1960s, in many states less than 5 percent of juvenile offenders were represented by counsel, no juries were allowed, and most hearings were held in secret.14

some of the early reformers had in mind: the quick and sure containment of the children of the poor and working class. Since the reformers’ own children generally lived privileged lives, they were safe from the system.

Juvenile facilities, she believed, should be supportive and comforting, not punishing,

But teens aren’t children, and administrators soon turned to draconian methods to try to keep their reluctant wards under control

Parker Brothers, another board game company (“Monopoly,”“Clue,”“Risk,”“Trivial Pursuit,” etc.) was founded by sixteen-year-old George Parker in 1884. The previous year, when he invented his first game, he was unable to get any bank loans to publish the game (which, ironically, was called “Banking”). He raised the money on his own, printed five hundred copies of the game, and turned a profit on his investors’ money within a year. By the end of the 1880s, his company was selling twenty-nine different games.

Before the Civil War, most dolls were homemade and simple, and their main function was usefulness. Girls learned to dress and care for them to practice for their future domestic roles. But soon after the Civil War, dolls became commercialized. Girls were encouraged to own and prettify as many dolls as possible. Dolls became fashion-plates, endlessly mimicking the fashions worn by the upper class and coveted by the new middle class.

Youth-oriented corporate empires still with us today got their start during this period. With partner Ubbe Iwerks, Walt Disney started the precursor to Walt Disney Productions in 1919; he bought out Iwerks’ share of the company in 1930 for a modest $2,920. Hasbro (G.I. Joe, Play-Doh, My Little Pony, Furby, Pokémon) was founded in Providence, Rhode Island by brothers Henry and Helal Hassenfield in 1923. Playskool (Mr. Potato Head, Weebles, Gloworm) was founded by two teachers in Milwaukee in 1928. Fisher-Price (Power Wheels, Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer) opened its doors in 1930. Mattel (Barbie, Hot Wheels, He-Man, Cabbage Patch Kids, Harry Potter toys) was started in a garage i

THE HISTORICAL FORCES BEHIND ADOLESCENCE

Before these forces emerged, the troubled teen was a rarity in human history

A 1991 study of 186 preindustrial societies found that more than one hundred of them didn’t even have a word for adolescence and that antisocial behavior by young males was completely absent in more than half of them. Where teen problems are beginning to emerge in various countries around the world, they can be traced to the increasing isolation of teens from adults brought about by Western educational practices, labor restrictions and media.

But the most important benefits for Pedro were more subtle. Pedro’s life had meaning.

A Yequana infant roams freely, “testing everything” and “measuring his own strength and agility.”3 “[The] attitude of the mother or caretaker of a baby is relaxed, usually attentive to some other occupation than baby-minding, but receptive at all times to a visit from the crawling or creeping adventurer…. She does not initiate the contacts nor contribute to them except in a passive way. It is the baby who seeks her out and shows her by his behavior what he wants…. He is the active, she the passive agent in all their dealings; he comes to her to sleep when he is tired, to be fed when he is hungry.”4 The integration of the Yequana children into adult society begins almost at birth:

Liedloff considers the modern child-centered approach to parenting an abomination: “A parent whose day centers on child care is not only likely to be bored, and boring to others, but also likely to be giving an unwholesome kind of care.”10 Instead, she says, we need to encourage the natural tendency of the child to focus on adults, “witnessing the kinds of experiences he will have later in life.”11 The “main business” of the child, she says, is …to absorb the actions, interactions, and surroundings of his caretaker, adult or child.

“From the time they are four or five years old,” said Mead, “they perform definite tasks, graded to their strength and intelligence, but still tasks which have a meaning in the structure of the whole society

186 preindustrial societies.22 Their most important findings were these: About 60 percent of these cultures had no word for adolescence, and the cultures that had relevant terms were usually referring to an innocuous, relatively brief period between puberty and marriage, not to a period of turmoil. Most young people in these cultures spent most of their time with same-sex adults. Teens spent almost no time with same-sex peers. Antisocial behavior in young males was extremely mild (by United States standards) in most of the cultures surveyed and completely absent in more than half of them. There was very little aggression or violence in teens in these cultures and almost no sign of pathology.

their primary task is not to break free of adults but rather to become productive members of their families and their communities as soon as they are able. A

one can track the emergence of fullblown, pathological, Western-style adolescence in countries undergoing Westernization.

Such initiation periods seldom last more than a few weeks, and even the longest of them are negligible compared with the five to eight years of adolescence common in our society. At the conclusion of the puberty rite, the young person is granted full adult status and assumes it without any sense of strain or conflict. Not only is he officially grown up, but he knows and other people know that he is actually ready for adult activities, including marriage. Except for the ceremonial punctuation of the puberty rite, childhood status tends to be continuous with adult status

In traditional Kikuyu culture when young males became “senior warriors,” they were given access to young females in a special hut called the thingira, where they engaged in what Westerners would call “heavy petting” (without intercourse)—a kind of “controlled lovemaking” which eventually led to negotiations between two sets of parents, instruction in sexual practices, and marriage.27

The rapid and dramatic shift in Inuit culture is especially unsettling because it cannot be blamed on either urbanization or industrialization, because Victoria Island has experienced neither one. Television, forced schooling and social security were enough to decimate the traditional culture—and to create the new developmental stage we call adolescence.

teens in many preindustrial nations often initiated their own recreational activities (composing songs, organizing village festivities and so on), the imported youth culture “is largely one manipulated by adults who provide what they believe adolescents will buy.” Hence “modern adolescents seldom act as autonomous groups in constructive, socially meaningful ways.”

When teens in preindustrial societies are forced to attend Western-style schools, how are they affected?

they become controlled by adults rather than part of adult life; teens, rather than adults, become their role models.

because marriage is the hallmark of adulthood in virtually all cultures, the delay of marriage also means the delay of adulthood. It’s no coincidence that Tom Smith’s recent survey (mentioned in Chapter One) showed that Americans now think that adulthood starts at age twenty-six; the median age for first marriages in the United States is now about 26.8.

Father-teen interactions in the United States are certainly “not enough to transmit the knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills that adult males should pass on to their children.

Micky was quite bewildered when he arrived at the Freeport community, and the first thing he did was steal a watch from another young resident and run for the railroad station. On his way out of town he was apprehended, not by the conventional police, but by yet another resident of the Republic, and he soon found himself tried and convicted by a true jury of his peers. Even the judge, district attorney and lawyers were teens

Mr. George noticed that those citizens who caused the most trouble when they first came usually became the best and strongest leaders before they left.

He believed that placing troubled young men in a supportive, homelike environment and then giving them responsibility for running their own lives would put them on the right track. Even though many of the young people in his community had been convicted of crimes, some quite serious, and were referred by judges, Flanagan insisted that the community not be surrounded by fences or walls and that the doors not have locks

A 2000 report by the Institute on Crime, Justice and Corrections at George Washington University, reviewing the effectiveness of eight boot camps around the country, concluded: Although many of the programs have been well-administered and popular with public officials, they have not demonstrated a significant impact on recidivism, prison or jail crowding, or costs, which have been the three core goals of boot camps

The meaningfulness of the experience is key. An experience has meaning when we believe it is connected to people or things we really care about: our immediate family, for example, or our careers or country. That’s one of the reasons real military schools such as the United States Military Academy at West Point produce outstanding results

Admission is highly competitive, and the training makes sense. One learns to follow orders, lead others, work in teams, handle weapons, and so on, so that one can advance one’s military career and, if necessary, defend one’s country. Cadets are given significant responsibilities related to real-world challenges, and the most extreme form of individual accountability—the honor system—is enforced.

Placing enormous demands on young people—at least demands that they find meaningful—seems not only to keep them out of trouble but, in many cases, to bring out the very best in them.

When thrust into adult roles, they act and feel like adults. Even pre-teens can do this, but with teens the transformation is sometimes quite radical because they are equipped, both mentally and physically, to be adults.

Soon after puberty, many or most young people are fully equipped to function as adults. When we infantilize them, we interfere with normal development. Giving young people meaningful responsibilities might simply be a way of restoring normal functioning.

Three relatively simple acts shout to society, in tones that cannot be ignored, “I am an adult, damn it! And you will treat me that way from now on!” These acts are getting married, having a baby, and committing a serious crime. I

G. Stanley Hall, the psychologist who put the modern concept of adolescence on the map a hundred years ago, believed in recapitulation theory, and his own characterization of adolescence is a spin-off from that theory

In reliving our evolutionary past, said Hall, we must inevitably pass through a stage of great chaos—some “ancient period of storm and stress when old moorings were broken and a higher level attained”—a time of “savagery,” with “its tribal, predatory, hunting, fishing, roving, idle, playing proclivities.”6

Rates of crime rise in the teens until peaking at age eighteen, then drop steeply…. Rates of most types of substance abuse peak at about age twenty…. Rates of automobile accidents and fatalities are highest in the late teens…. Rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) peak in the early twenties…, and two thirds of all STDs are contracted by people who are under twenty-five years old….35

As a bonus, a serious crime also gives you a full set of constitutional rights, which guarantees you a lawyer, a speedy trial, the right to confront your witnesses, the right to a court transcript and so on.

gang activity is not childlike; it is most definitely adult: Gangs emulate small governments and armies

in 2007, 36 percent of high school students had been in a physical fight during the last year, and 18 percent of high school students had carried a weapon (a gun, club or knife) to school within the prior month.41

FBI statistics suggest that the peak age at which people (of all ages) commit violent crimes is eighteen

spending on behavior-altering drugs for minors has now edged out spending for all other drugs, including antibiotics and medications for asthma, allergies and skin conditions.6

more than half of high school juniors and seniors drink regularl

As of 2008, about 20 percent of American high school students smoked cigarettes,

In most states, one is instantly emancipated from parents when one marries,

fifteen to twenty-four have tripled in the past halfcentury, even as rates for adults and the elderly have declined. And for every youth suicide completion, there are nearly four hundred suicide attempts.” T

normally, suicide becomes more likely as people get older.

rather than addressing the causes of the problem, parents, physicians and policy makers went for the quick fix. Between 1995 and 2001, the rate at which psychotropic drugs were prescribed for teens increased by 250 percen

in 2007, nearly 40 percent of America’s teens were treated for major depression.

the CDC suggests that the peak age of sadness among American adults (eighteen and over) is eighteen

between 15 and 22 percent of our young people have purposely injured themselves.

parents turn over thousands of children and teens to child welfare services as a means of getting them psychological help

in Pima County, Arizona alone, 1,750 young people were turned over to child welfare officials for this purpose in 2001

we found a fairly large, positive correlation (r = 0.43) between the infantilization scores and the psychopathology scores; the more we treat teens like children, the more signs of psychopathology they show.*

We have also seen the following: A spiraling increase in both the laws that restrict teens and the variety and intensity of teen problems that have emerged over the last century (Chapter Two). Few signs of teen turmoil in cultures that maintain a continuum between childhood and adulthood, as well as evidence that teen problems emerge in these cultures when that continuum is broken (Chapter Three). Evidence that even troubled American teens sometimes straighten out overnight when given heavy doses of responsibility and respect (Chapter Four).

the turmoil we see during the teens years in modern America is caused by the artificial extension of childhood past puberty.

Tens of millions of teens in preindustrial nations around the world also reach puberty every year, but the mood problems we see in America are absent or nearly so in such countries

When one looks carefully at the competencies required to function as an adult, one finds that once people have passed puberty, age is a poor predictor of competence

we concluded that there are fourteen different skill-sets or “competencies” that distinguish adults from non-adults.

unless one is skillful in at least some of them, one will probably be considered immature or childish, no matter what one’s age. The people we consider to be mature are typically competent in many or most of these areas.

Adults are supposed to know the difference between sex and love.

supposed to know that concepts like “true love” and “the one” are, more or less, myths

Leadership

posed to be physically self-sufficient. We make allowances when people are sick or injured.

They’re supposed to be able to make commitments and honor them. When they begin tasks worthy of completion, they’re supposed to persist in completing them.

Epstein-Dumas Test of Adultness (EDTA), which Diane administered to one hundred adults (from ages twenty to seventy-one, mean age 41.9) and one hundred teens (from ages thirteen to seventeen, mean age 15.2).

how superior were adults to teens in fourteen competency areas that define adultness? The answer is: barely, if at all.

For three of the competencies—love, leadership and problem solving—we did find statistically significant differences between the mean scores of teens and adults, with adults outscoring the teens.

On two other scales—work and self-management—the differences between the adult scores and teen scores were marginally significant

On the other nine scales, we found no significant differences at all between the adult and teen scores.

fifty-five of the adults in our sample were college graduates—more than double the rate of college graduates in the United States.

30 percent of the teens between ages thirteen and seventeen scored above the median score for adults. To put this another way, half of U.S. adults scored lower than nearly a third of our teens

we don’t trust them to work or own property or spend money; we don’t allow them to make basic decisions about their health, education or religion; we force them to attend school whether they benefit from school or not; and we often refer to them as boys, girls or children, even though they may be shaving or menstruating.

Scientific research shows unequivocally that the cognitive abilities of teens are, on average, superior to the cognitive abilities of adults. Reasoning ability peaks in the early or mid teens, for example, and so does intelligence. Most memory functions peak in our early teens, and all of these abilities decline throughout adulthood, some quite dramatically.

Object permanence is one of many concepts one needs to master in order to achieve adult thinking, according to Piaget. This is not the place to review Piaget’s theory in detail. For present purposes, what’s important is that Piaget’s stages culminate in a period called “formal operational thinking.” For Piaget, this kind of thinking is, more or less, the highest we can attain, and, in that sense, it’s the kind of thinking one should find in adults.1 Three obvious questions come to mind: What is formal operational thinking? When is it typically achieved? And do all adults achieve it?

formal operational thinkers can think about the world symbolically

all of the formal operations—if they are going to be mastered at all—are typically mastered by age fourteen or fifteen

Many adults never achieve formal operational thinking, and if they haven’t done so by age fifteen or so, they probably never will.

our ability to think operationally starts to decline in our twenties and continues to do so throughout our lives.

one’s thinking ability will be stunted if one isn’t sufficiently challenged intellectually—

two of the most widely used intelligence tests in the Western world, the WISC and the WAIS, indicated that intelligence peaks at about age fifteen—and that it generally declines throughout adulthood

Denied a wide range of adult challenges, American teens may be developing their intelligence in narrow ways

A teen who is underperforming at home or in school may be razor sharp with peers or on the street, where there is at least the possibility of earning real respect.

Drugs and Alcohol. T

IQ is a relative measure—

Apparently by the age of fourteen, a child’s trainability has reached its maximum, while after the age of thirty, a person’s ability to understand a new method of thinking, adopt new methods of working, and even to adapt to a new environment, steadily decreases. If the decline continues at the same rate after the age of sixty, it would appear that by the age of eighty, the average person’s capacity to succeed in the Matrices Test is less than that of the normal child of eight years, and it has, in fact, been found that old people only understand the test at all if it is given to them in the form of boards and movable pieces, just as one would give the test to a little child.2

great young intellects sometimes break through. In modern America we see them mainly in the chess world, one of the few domains in which we allow the intellectual abilities of young people to be expressed with few restrictions.

I’ve also found a number of examples of great accomplishments in mathematics by young people, but all took place in centuries prior to the twentieth—in other words, well before the artificial extension of childhood was in high gear. France’s Guillaume L’Hôpital and Scotland’s James Clerk Maxwell both made significant contributions when they were fifteen, and Joseph-Louis Lagrange became a professor of mathematics at the Royal Artillery School in Turin at age sixteen

children don’t remember much accidentally, and old people barely remember anything accidentally. But young teens have excellent incidental memory; without effort, they can remember things they never even intended to remember.

sixty-seven normal, healthy, forty-eight-year-old men a series of questions that these same individuals had previously answered in writing when they were fourteen—questions about their home environment, dating, general activities and family relationships. The result? They had almost no real recollection of their youth; their answers matched their original answers no more frequently than one would expect if they were responding to the questions at random.37

in 1983 in the prestigious American Psychologist, Gary B. Melton concluded, “The existing literature clearly suggests that for most purposes, adolescents cannot be distinguished from adults on the grounds of competence of decision making alone

teen decision making may be inferior to adult decision making when a great deal of specific knowledge is required to make the decision

Cauffman and Steinberg found that the best predictor of decision-making competence was “psychosocial maturity” (measured by various inventories they administered to their subjects), not age.

it’s possible that we’re supposed to take risks. Mating itself is a form of risk taking. You have to take many risks in order to find and keep a mate.

they often make decisions that seem inferior to adults—decisions that seem irrational or that might expose themselves or others to harm—for a number of reasons: they’re isolated from and infantilized by adults; they sometimes lack the specific knowledge they need to make good decisions; they might have some innate tendencies to take risks; and they’re immersed in a vacuous subculture that has rules and values that are often unfathomable to adults

ABORTION

These laws are punitive, they’re restrictive—they’re deadly.

the Supreme Court’s decision in this matter; it’s completely devoid of any reference to relevant research. In fact, when you read the decision, it’s apparent that the judges were basing their assertions about teen competence on folklore and intuition, rather than on scientific data.

A fourteen-year-old mother bears adult responsibility for her child and can be held criminally negligent for any harm to the child. At the same time, she may not drive a car, hold a full-time job, or rent an apartment, and in most states faces compulsory education laws…. The fourteen-year-old who faces a presumption of incompetency but bears the burden of presumed parental capacity

When questions of maturity or competence are raised, judges around the country act with considerable arbitrariness, in some cases testing a teen’s vocabulary, in others focusing on how the teen is dressed

many teens would score substantially higher on various competency tests than would some of the senescent members of our Supreme Court.

a wide variety of behaviors—meditating, reading, drinking, having sex and so on—literally change the brain.

neither Yurgelen-Todd’s research nor the research of anyone else I’m aware of provides the scientific evidence needed to support the claims made in the article

Let’s say that you were talking politics with a thirty-year-old colleague and that she suddenly got very emotional about her views, speaking loudly and with passion. You might find that irritating, but can you imagine ever calling her “defiant”? The term suggests that you consider teens to be inferior, not worthy of respect or consideration

honored on World Marriage Day in 1995 as the longest-married couple in America, and, yes, they were still together three years later. She married her husband Paul in 1917 when he was twenty-one and she was thirteen

Maybe Mary was ready back in 1917, but there are no Mary’s in today’s world. Today, thirteen-year-olds are children.

when we compare young people who have mature sexual organs to puppies—we are admitting undeniably that we still consider them to be children.

intimacy needs are actually the primary ones for most teens—that love leads to sex and not vice versa

romantic relationships of teens seem to differ from those of adults mainly in one respect. Teens move in and out of relationships extremely fast

we make it difficult or impossible for young people to marry

We isolate them from potentially more mature, more settled partners

we loudly dismiss their feelings as half-baked

we also corral large groups of young people, often against their will, into crowded pens nine or ten months a year. It should surprise no one that teens shift partners frequently.

our own system of marriage is the least successful in the world: 50 percent of first marriages here end in divorce, as do more than 60 percent of second marriages.1

The idea was evidently that a man that age has the maturity to keep her out of trouble and that if they became sexually active and conceived a child, he could handle his responsibilities, which a sixteen-year-old boy [sic] cannot.”

Dylan Healy was sentenced to twelve to twenty-four years in prison for multiple counts of “felonious sexual assault with a minor,” as well as crossing state lines to have sex with a minor. That’s twelve to twenty-four years in prison for engaging in a mutually-satisfying relationship in which no coercion was ever shown and no emotional or physical harm was ever demonstrated.34

Implicit in these laws is the assumption that all young people are incapable of experiencing the same kinds of loving feelings that adults do

These laws assume that no young people are capable of engaging in sexual activities responsibly.

The laws assume that all young people are the same—and, in effect, that all adults are too

The laws suggest that no young person is capable of making sensible decisions about matters of sex, love or romance

These laws suggest that no young person is capable of entering into a stable, successful relationship

These laws imply that the person who is over the age boundary is necessarily coercing the person who is underage

these laws suggest that some or many or perhaps even all young people who have sex or marry young will necessarily be harmed in some way.

Is your daughter ready to take on this kind of responsibility? I have no idea, but would you be willing to find out? As for that twenty-five-year-old man, if he truly loved and respected your daughter, and if he wanted to marry her and support her and treat her with kindness for the rest of his life, and if your daughter also loved this man deeply, would you object to their union?

The very idea that the United States would put a waif-like female, barely out of her teens, in harm’s way during a major combat operation would have been completely unthinkable in the 1950s.

women are now “striking targets, taking fire, guarding Iraqi prisoners of war, and driving trucks laden with supplies amid ambushes and snipers.” They now comprise about 15 percent of the United States armed forces

Now there are more than one hundred thousand full-time female law-enforcement officers in the United States, including 17 percent of patrol officers and other frontline police;

The changing roles of women in our society demonstrate two important points that are relevant to the perspective I’ve been developing in this book: First, people whom we universally consider to be weak, incompetent, feeble and desperately in need of our protection might actually have the potential to be strong, heroic, courageous, tough and independent. Second, as a society, we are sometimes capable of changing our perspective quite radically.

In Los Angeles area alone, authorities believe that there are about 1,350 street gangs with 175,000 members

As of 2006, there were about 800,000 people in 30,000 gangs in the U.S

“You Walk Until Your Time Comes”

By age thirteen or so, SRT is within 10 percent or so of its peak value; from about age thirty on, we never again are capable of reacting as swiftly as we did at age thirteen

These patterns of change in reaction time are especially notable when one considers that reaction time is correlated with intelligence (on some tests), and reaction time also helps us respond effectively to threats and emergencies.

If we shelter our precious young from stress, work, criticism, failure and life on their own—in short, from adulthood—aren’t we making them less able to cope with the inevitable challenges of life?

many or most teenagers are capable of facing the rigors of athletics, the atrocities of war, and the vicissitudes of life with as much or more determination as any adult

Are you suggesting that we put fifteen-year-old boys and girls at risk on the battlefield? A: As women have rightly maintained for many decades, as competent individuals it should be up to them to decide what risks they want to take. Their opportunities shouldn’t be limited just because someone mistakenly believes all women are frail. The military is a domain in which competency is routinely measured and highly valued. The Marines don’t take just anyone; they take people who pass rigorous tests and who meet stringent criteria.

If G. I. Jane can measure up, doesn’t she deserve a chance to serve our country? And if a fifteen-year-old can also pass

Most of the time, a prodigy is just a young person with an obsession and an opportunity:

in some fields—music, art, sports and chess, for example—the prodigy’s magical aura protects him or her from infantilization to some extent. When we recognize that a young person is exceptional, we sometimes relax the rules.

copying, in fact, is a skill they need to be taught. They even draw, literally, outside the lines; no one needs to teach a young child to think outside boxes. By the first grade, however, when elementary schools—now competing nationwide to get high “academic performance indices”—dramatically increase the academic load, the frequency of creative expression declines.5

significant creative contributions in science, engineering and the arts often don’t occur until people are older; it can easily take a decade or more to master the knowledge and techniques available in any rich domain.

in a society that shuts down creative expression through socialization, those who resist socialization are most likely to continue to express their new and crazy ideas

under today’s outmoded system teenagers are made adversaries of adults, as a group they’re all misfits in some sense. They’re neither adults nor children, and they’d like to be treated like adults but aren’t. They’re out of place, and many feel angry about that. They often defy authority, take unusual risks and so on. The prediction is straightforward: teens should express more creativity on the average than adults do, because the less one conforms to society’s rules, the more likely one is to live up to one’s creative potential. When we look at teen creativity, that’s exactly what we find.

At eleven, Kathleen Holtz enrolled as a philosophy major at California State University, Los Angeles. At fifteen, she entered UCLA’s acclaimed law school, obtaining her law license in 2007 at age eighteen, a feat typically accomplished a decade later. In 2007, fifteen-year-old Dhileepan Raj of Manaparai, India performed a Caesarean section while under the supervision of his physician parents. Brandon Conley of Brooklyn, New York has been running Mariner Investment Advisers, a hedge fund that trades with money from outside investors, since he was fourteen. In 2008, John Tyler Hammons became the mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma—at age nineteen

Greg Miller began work as a computer consultant for Claris Software at age ten and also subsequently worked for Apple. By twelve, he had also created a company called Tenadar,

Bill Gates blossomed intellectually at eleven, strongly resisting any attempts by his parents to control his behavior. When Bill was twelve, Dad reacted to his extreme rudeness and sarcasm by throwing a glass of water in his face. A therapist recommended that his parents grant him more independence, which they did and then some. He spent long periods away from home during his teen years, programming computers at the University of Washington, serving as a page in the state legislature and collaborating with future Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen

on family-owned farms young people can still work without restriction, and more than 100,000 young Americans do so every year without suffering any ill effects.

we’re told that “even when working children are not forced to endure harsh conditions, child labor entails sacrifice because children give up the opportunity to be engaged in other activities. The principal activity that children could and should be doing instead of working is going to school” (my italics).19 This is, of course, the agenda of the social reformers of America in the late 1800s,

That fact that Western-style schooling segregates young people from adults is irrelevant. The fact that Western practices create a new and dysfunctional stage of life—adolescence—is irrelevant. The fact that prolonged schooling teaches a great deal that the vast majority of people don’t want or need to know is irrelevant.

young people are allowed to work very few hours and in very few jobs, no matter how benign or beneficial the work experience and no matter how competent and motivated the young person.

In Illinois, the Darien Youth Club was facing a possible penalty of over $500 thousand for hiring twelve- and thirteen-year-olds as umpires for children’s pony baseball games, failing to collect work permits for fourteen- and fifteen-year olds, and making some accounting glitches. The Department of Labor and the youth club are now in settlement proceedings.2

it gave them a concrete reason to want to better themselves. (Meaningful responsibility and authority tend to have that effect.

The teens who are best able to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancies have two characteristics: first, they’ve been taught “a strong sense of self-discipline and responsibility” in their homes, and, second, they’ve developed “strong feelings of control over their lives.”50

Insufficient Competencies and Resources. First, if we lack either the competencies or the resources to handle our new responsibilities, we’ll face enormous frustration, and we might even fail.

When you’re given responsibility, your behavior is now linked to consequences—mainly negative ones. If you’re handed responsibility for a yard, a child or a platoon of troops, this means that from now on you’re the one who will be punished if something goes wrong—

Insufficient Authority. We also overwhelm people when we give them responsibility but fail to give them the authority they need to get the job done.

For the vast majority of us, taking on responsibility is also the only way we have of improving our lifestyles, supporting our families and acquiring the material goods we want.

When you push aside preconceptions and focus not on what American teens usually do but on what teens in general are capable of doing, you can draw, I believe, only one reasonable conclusion: many or most teens are capable of handling enormous levels of responsibility—every bit as much as adults and perhaps even more in some cases

responsibility is essential for bringing meaning to people’s lives

Jesus was her first child. Given the marriage practices of the day, this almost certainly means that Mary was no older than twelve or thirteen when she conceived.

To a large degree, we’re now permissive with our young because (a) they’re completely dependent on us, (b) we love them (or at least we used to before they became unruly teens), (c) we can’t get rid of them and (d) we can’t control them

If we just let our young grow up, however, they would soon be subject to the very real controls of adult life, which are far more powerful and persuasive than the artificial and ineffectual controls we’re able to bring to bear as parents.

if we stop infantilizing our teens, they’ll start respecting us again. Under the authoritarian system of parenting, respect is based largely on fear.

. Young people should be extended full adult rights and responsibilities in each of a number of different areas as soon as they can demonstrate appropriate competence in each area

States specify minimum ages for emancipation (typically sixteen), and generally young people must demonstrate good cause for the action and also show that they can support themselves

a young person of any age who can pass a series of state-approved adult competency tests should be able, without court involvement, to receive a certification of emancipation from the state.

Personally, I’d lean toward requiring young people to achieve a score that is at least at the fiftieth percentile level for adults eighteen and over—meaning that on each test the applicant must score higher than half of adults currently do.

fourteen million young people between ages eighteen and twenty-four who currently live with one or both parents

The incentives for young people to prepare for the tests will be enormous, and even if they don’t pass all of the tests, they’ll still benefit from the process of preparation

A century ago, we rescued young people from the factories and the streets; now we need to rescue them from the schools.

We need shorter compulsory school hours, a shorter compulsory school year and fewer required school years.

1852, and it only required people from eight to fourteen to attend school three months a year—less, if they could show they already knew the material

Mandatory schooling needs to focus on the basics: reading, writing, arithmetic and citizenship

One of the most factory-like aspects of the modern school—segregation by age—needs to be ended.

Reintegrating Teens into the Adult World Summary of Changes Needed

any young person, no matter what his or her age, should be allowed to apply for any job. If he or she can demonstrate appropriate competencies, he or she should be taken seriously as a candidate. If he or she performs poorly, he or she should be fired

Property that’s occupied by owners is maintained far better than property occupied by renters. Realtors say this phenomenon is the result of “pride of ownership”: people care about what they own. A third category of occupants—let’s call them prisoners, for want of a better term—is the worst kind of all.

Teens living under a parent’s roof are generally not allowed to own or even to rent property of any sort; even when they are somehow able to do so (say, with parental permission), they never have complete control over it. Even their treasured cell phones and iPods can be confiscated without notice or explanation by Mom or Dad or other authorities

The rights can be given inalienably, as the Constitution provides, or they can be given in stages, based on competence demonstrated through a series of tests.

By giving competent young people full property rights, we lose some degree of control over them; in return, we get more responsible, secure, independent young people

Our from-the-hip reaction is to get tougher and meaner, but that just makes most young people more secretive and angry. Sometimes even when we think we’ve got a problem behavior under control, we find out later that we only drove it further underground.

I don’t want them to feign adulthood by drinking and smoking in dark alleys; I want them to be adults by drinking and smoking responsibly—

by age thirteen golfer Michelle Wie was nearly six feet tall and making news with her three-hundred-yard drives.

The modern IQ test was largely developed and legitimized in the United States by the Army during World War I. With millions of draftees to evaluate, in 1917, the Army established a committee of seven leading psychologists to devise a suitable screening test. By 1919, more than two million draftees had been given the new test,

Even if unemancipated, young people of any age who can demonstrate appropriate competencies should be able to make and revoke wills, sign contracts, file lawsuits and represent themselves in court. After all, we automatically extend such rights to many older people who lack the appropriate skills and understanding.

For government to single out any particular age group for a curfew seems to me to be a threat to our most basic liberties. Some old people don’t drive very well, and many probably drive more poorly in the dark. Does that give government the right to legislate curfews for the elderly? Blacks, on average, commit more crimes after dark than whites do; does that give government the right to legislate a curfew just for blacks?

The main problem with curfews that single out any particular group is that they turn perfectly innocent members of that group into criminals (that is, curfew violators) based merely on the remote possibility that some members of that group might commit a crime. C

no curfew should be allowed in this country unless it’s for everyone (excluding emergency personnel). Emancipated young people should be able move about as freely as adults. The wanderings of un-emancipated young people will have to remain under parental control because parents of dependent offspring are often held responsible for their wrongdoings.

. To the extent that young people overindulge, I think there is only one legitimate solution: to integrate them into adult society. They are most vulnerable to mischief when they are with peers and less vulnerable when they are with adults

Regarding pornography, I believe that a young person who can pass an appropriate test of maturity should have access to materials that is similar to the access adults have.

: striking an adult is a criminal act called assault and battery, and therefore parents who strike their emancipated offspring should be subject to criminal prosecution. (Now there’s an incentive for young people to pass those emancipation tests.) But as long as young people remain unemancipated, parents should continue to have the right to strike them, with the proviso that when challenged by authorities, they should have a duty to show (a) that their use of corporal punishment was reasonable and appropriate (which means, among other things, that it didn’t cause injury) and (b) that other, less risky means of behavior management had been tried first.

young people of any age who can pass a test that shows they will be competent voters—that they understand how government works and are familiar with current issues and candidates—should be given the right to cast full votes in relevant elections.

Twenty-Something Teens

I’m not suggesting that we take any steps backward into our agrarian, overly-romanticized past. I’m simply proposing ways to reintegrate modern young people into adult society,

There are several reasons we must resist our deeply ingrained tendencies to specify age cutoffs for basic rights: Uniqueness of individuals

Age cutoffs—whether for the young or for the old—often imprison people on the wrong side of the line.

Sometimes a young person who is weak in some respects (say, in verbal abilities) might be exceptionally strong in others (say, in mathematics or performance art). Age cutoffs can be stifling to such people; a competency-based system will allow them to flourish. Arbitrariness. Third, any age we pick for a cutoff point is necessarily arbitrary. Why bother? Protected by competence. Fourth, because we are withholding rights and privileges until appropriate tests are passed, there is no downside to eliminating the age cutoff.

The corrective for infantilization is responsibility, not freedom.

adult freedom is enjoyed in the context of many restrictions and possible penalties

I believe there’s a strong case to be made for withholding most rights (other than basic ones such as due process and free speech) until the competencies entailed by the proper exercise of those rights can be demonstrated.

Americans today don’t care about competence in most of the activities of daily living.

we deny young people a wide range of basic rights because we’re afraid they might be incompetent. We just assume, based largely on unanalyzed assertions passed down over generations, that under a certain age people are necessarily incompetent

If we had even an ounce of sense, we would withhold certain rights and privileges from everyone until they could pass the relevant competency test. We’ve grown used to this idea when it comes to driving a motor vehicle; perhaps, some day, we’ll be able to extend this logic to other areas

for the foreseeable future, we will almost certainly have to continue to award most rights automatically at certain ages.

As the numbers of young people who pass various tests or who achieve full emancipation multiply like the numbers on the old McDonald’s signs, adults will have no choice but to see young people through competency-colored lenses—focusing on their abilities and achievements, not on their failings.

When we say to our young people, “Okay, you want to be adults? Show us what you can do,” many will rise to the challenge. In effect, we will be tapping into one of the most basic of evolutionary imperatives: the desire to be independent.

The tens of millions of American teens who currently live their semi-lives immersed in trivia will be given the means and incentive to make meaningful contributions to our increasingly needy world.

historical norm in which childhood did not extend beyond fourteen at the maximum.9

teens can’t organize to any great extent, because being a teen is temporary

In 2004, fourteen-year-old Patrick Holland was able to end his father’s parental rights after a difficult two-year battle in Norfolk County, Massachusetts. His dad, Daniel Holland, is in prison on a life sentence with no possible parole for the beating and murder of Patrick’s mom when Patrick was eight.

peers are the last people on earth from whom they should be learning. Ideally, teens should be interacting with people over a wide age range, and their most significant interactions should be with the people they are about to become.

adults revere and seek to emulate teens in some respects, but teens no longer revere or seek to emulate adults

Government agencies are the worst offenders in the infantilization of our young for the simple reason that we now reflexively call upon government to solve almost every problem that confronts us. When teens are violent or sexually reckless or taking too many drugs, we expect government to step in, and government typically does so in simplistic, reactive, restrictive ways. The Federal Communications Commission recently announced draconian penalties for broadcasters and performers who offend people over public airwaves;4 the goal, we’re told, is to “protect children.”

Between 1880 and 1900, says Kett, “Protestant churches attempted, as never before, to take over the spare-time activities of youth… and women were often becoming the agents of control.”

MTV programming tells us repeatedly and unequivocally that teens are irresponsible, overgrown children. MTV also happens to be, at least according to company materials, “the largest network on the planet,” reaching about 400 million households in the United States and other countries. That translates to more than a billion viewers—almost one-sixth of the world’s population

Teen spending is expected to be $208 billion by 2011.12

Enemies of the Teen

One of every three high school students now has at least one credit card. The proportion soars to 84 percent for college students.1

. By 2004, young people were generating nearly a quarter of all cell-phone revenue

in 1990, American industry spent about $100 million on advertising and marketing to young people; by 2000, the figure increased twenty-fold, to $2 billion. By 2006, the food and drink industries alone spent nearly that amount.17

About 24 percent of recorded music is purchased by young people between ages ten and nineteen, ev

There are about four hundred thousand workers in today’s mental health professions*—a $100 billion industry23—with more than 70 percent of the industry devoted at least in part to serving the needs of teens

According to the Washington Times, in 2000 the FCC received 111 complaints about indecent material being broadcast over public airwaves

2003 there were 240,350 such complaints. In the first three months of 2006, 275,131 complaints were filed. The increases are driven by coordinated campaigns mounted by organizations such as the Parents Television Council.

perhaps we should all object even more strongly to any form of censorship

. In 1999, in Salinas, California, a $45 million mall construction project was shut down by a judge after members of the Carpenters Union Local 605 went to court armed with a video tape showing the twelve-year-old son of the construction boss operating a forklift.

the non-union construction firm had long been a target of the carpenter’s union.

Confirmation Bias

The Fundamental Attribution Error

Cognitive Inertia

Social Influence and Prejudice

Community-induced beliefs are sometimes so pervasive that they have been called “institutional delusions.”40

Banks is supposed to put the immediate needs of his children—for affection, fun and nurturing—ahead of all else. After he is indeed fired, the film ends with Banks doing just that, literally flying kites in the park with his children—and, miraculously, with all of his fellow bank executives. The children-first message has, it seems, broken through not only to Mr. Banks but to all reasonable adults. We’ve seen these messages before (especially in Chapter Two): the family should be centered around children, who are helpless and incompetent. Parents should cater to the needs of children, not vice versa. Young people should be sheltered, not raised to be responsible adults. Childhood should be extended indefinitely.*

in 1993 only 40 percent of Americans favored allowing gays to serve openly in the military; by 2004, the figure had risen to 67 percent.45

For more than a century now, we’ve been caught in a vicious cycle in which restrictions on teens have produced more teen problems and teen problems have in turn produced more restrictions

the peak age for virtually any crime in the United States is about eighteen—

when you look at the races separately, crime still peaks at about age eighteen for every race.

The Case Against Adolescence A website summarizing Dr. Robert Epstein’s research and writing on teens and providing links to relevant materials

Mike Males’ Homepage A strong advocate for youth rights, Dr. Males is a sociology professor who writes impassioned and extensively documented books about America’s teen

National Youth Rights Association

Youth Facts A website that debunks myths about youth, providing verifiable and evidence-based information to better inform youth policy and integrate youth into democratic and multi-cultural citizenship.