[Update: I read the article/interview. If it’s any indication of the tone and content of the book, it’s more a screed about the author’s issues with his own upbringing and unhappiness with whatever restrictions he lived under than a cogent discussion of where young people are today. So much projection, I thought I was at the movies . . . . ]
Jason Kottke links to The Case Against Adolescence by Robert Epstein, an excerpt from which is available online. I’m reluctant to make an argument against so slim an example but if it spells out his thesis accurately, I think he’s missing a lot.
In every mammalian species, immediately upon reaching puberty, animals function as adults, often having offspring. We call our offspring “children” well past puberty. The trend started a hundred years ago and now extends childhood well into the 20s. The age at which Americans reach adulthood is increasing — 30 is the new 20 — and most Americans now believe a person isn’t an adult until age 26.
In some cases, children have children of their own when they reach puberty. Current societal attitudes are pretty firmly against it, as it happens. Yes, we are mammals, like whales, apes, and giraffes, but that doesn’t mean we obey the same biological signals: society, something that’s alleged to be a good idea, proscribes some of those behaviors.
The whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labor laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways.
Much of this argument of anticipated and in my opinion refuted by The Disappearance of Childhood. Noted curmudgeon Neil Postman makes the case that childhood is a recent phenomenon, that children as a protected class came along after the Renaissance. I think his argument that reading and the availability of books became a useful delimiter of childhood from adulthood, though it often reflected class background as well before the advent of compulsory education. Epstein mentions compulsory education but the reference, linked as it is to child-labor laws, seems dismissive, even negative, as if children are unworthy of education or protection from exploitation.
I don’t find the idea of educating the next generation with the accumulated knowledge of the past, even as it includes material the current generation didn’t know, as “artificially extending childhood.” I see as creating a more useful and productive adulthood.
His theory that childhood now exists until one’s late 20s is just silly and has little to do with society’s mandates or even culture. If a parent wants to enable their kid’s delayed entry into Epstein’s factories, that’s up to them.
Postman’s argument is that children are not allowed to be children, with adult entertainment and messages bombarding them as soon as they watch TV, read, or see movies. Daytime TV, what too many households have on, is a cesspit of adult programming, from the talk shows to the soaps, that kids can learn a lot from, none of it good. At the risk of sounding like “hey, you damn kids, get off my lawn” take a look at the clothes and general deportment of kids from elementary grades on up. There’s a constant pressure to aspire up, to do the things that the older kids are doing. You know what a tween[1] is, right?
The issue is not that childhood is extended: it’s that the age at which kids are treated/marketed and sold to as adults is become extended downward, as younger kids are targeted as consumers.
As for isolating teens from adults, most of what I understand tells me that when we don’t do that — when we mix people who are by definition immature with people on the other side of a legal definition — there are issues.
I’d have to read the book or at least the article to try to understand what he’s driving at, but it seems as if he wants a return to a world that Dickens, Upton Sinclair, and Jacob Riis documented and that, as a result, was outlawed.
Some counter-arguments:
Compulsory education could be modified to allow young people who have an interest in a trade or discipline to incorporate that into their education. Apprenticeships or internships, where young people would learn by doing in a structured environment.
I am reluctant to turn public schools into vo-tech institutions but I think an exposure to work, be it in a skilled trade or professional service, is a good thing. I think it might help kids figure out their options earlier and make better decisions. I wonder if the current “quarter-life” crisis or delayed entry into the workplace is more a result of an insulation from the world of work experience, beyond McJobs, than isolation of kids and adults?
1. A tween is vaguely defined as a prepubescent between the ages of 8 to 14, 9 to 12, or 8 to 12, depending on whom you believe. (Some industries, such as the wireless sector, categorize the age as an unbelievable 6 to 12 years old, prompting one to ponder, “in between” what?) Regardless of the exact age definition, most agree that the breaking point of a “child” becoming a “tween” is by the American fifth grade (approximately ten years old), when he/she rejects more childlike images and associations and aspires to be more like a teen. (Marketing and Tweens)