Parenthood: An Economist's View of Adolescence and the Case Against It

Here is an interesting factoid about how we treat adolescence.

Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week, compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures.

When I was in high school for reasons I no longer remember I took Latin as my foreign language requirement. Being a dead language our classwork was largely spent translating text from Latin to English. I remember one passage we were translating that was 2500 years old. It consisted of a father complaining about how kids "today" (that is in 500 BC) were lazy, disrespectful, and a general pain in the toga. It struck me that complaining about teenagers has been going on since humans first began to walk upright and possibly before.

That said, over the past century we have changed the way that we deal with our youth in far more significant ways that letting them play videogames or have their own cell phones. Perhaps the biggest change is who they spend their time with. It turns out that the majority of their time is with their peers thereby reducing much of the mentoring that used to occur from their contact with adult members of our society.

The following comes from the blog of economist Tyler Cowen.

The problem, of course, is that a contemporary wise and moderate 33 year old is looking to climb the career ladder, find a mate, or raise his babies. He doesn't have a great desire to educate unruly fifteen year olds and indeed he can insulate himself from them almost completely. He doesn't need a teenager to carry his net on the elephant hunt. Efficient capitalist production and rising wage rates lead to an increased sorting by age and the moral education of teens takes a hit.

Cowen sites the work of Robert Epstein and his book "The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen".

In short Epstein believes we have infantilized young people. "Teens are not helpless children, he argues, but capable, resourceful, and creative. The reason young people act like crazy adolescents is that we--the adults of modern western society--have made them that way."

Interesting reading.