Podcast: Should Adolescence be Abolished?
Are we infantilizing teens to the point that we are raising a nation of wimps? Is adolescence extended so long that people have grey hair by the time they become adults? Robert Epstein, Director Emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Massachusetts and author of The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, will discuss these questions and more on today's podcast. In a controversial thesis, Epstein's terrific and thought-provoking new book argues that adolescense is an unnecessary part of life that people are better off without. Find out how your teen's exposure to school and Western media may be setting him or her up for incompetence, poor judgement and social-emotional turmoil. What can you do about it? Read the book or listen to the podcast to find out. Or go take Dr. Epstein's competency test to find out how adult you or your teen is at www.howadultareyou.com or visit his website at drrobertepstein.com.
You can listen directly by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player, or you can download the file by clicking right here. You can get a lo-fi version suitable for dialup by going here and selecting lo-fi. And, of course, you can get a free subscription via iTunes -- and wouldn't you want to, really? You can go to our past archives at the GlennandHelenShow.com.
Music is "The High School Song" by Audra and the Antidote. This podcast is brought to you by Volvo Cars -- buy one and tell 'em it's all because of the Glenn and Helen Show!
You can listen directly by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player, or you can download the file by clicking right here. You can get a lo-fi version suitable for dialup by going here and selecting lo-fi. And, of course, you can get a free subscription via iTunes -- and wouldn't you want to, really? You can go to our past archives at the GlennandHelenShow.com.
Music is "The High School Song" by Audra and the Antidote. This podcast is brought to you by Volvo Cars -- buy one and tell 'em it's all because of the Glenn and Helen Show!
Labels: Podcasts, psychology
43 Comments:
Love it! And are you using a new microphone? Your voice sounded especially good.
Oy vey, I hate these sorts of quizes.
Can we just stipulate that there are all sorts of errors in his methodology and move on. I predict 30 comments arguing about ideology, home schooling, and the relationship of penmanship to adulthood.
Move along folks, nothing to see here.
Anonymous: 9:14:
It's the new soundproofing we put in our studio--it seems to help my voice quality.
Anonymous 9:20:
I understand your disdain for quizzes but there is something to see in Epstein's theory. I believe much of the infantilization of youth does lead to pathology, depression, violence and other ailments in the young. We would all do well to read his work, digest it, and see if there are concrete steps we as a society can take to bring out the adult in our teens.
Dr. Helen,
This was a very interesting topic and I enjoyed listening to the podcast this morning. It does make sense that when you treat teens like children, not only do they rebel against that, but they seem to be stifled in their maturation process. Great post!
P.S. Where is your accent from - what state? This is actually the first time I've taken the time to listen to one of your podcasts. I need to do that more often.
I've long heard that "teenagers" are essentially a modern invention of Western culture, and not our best work. This is the first cogent discussion of the issue I think I've ever come across. Thank you!
I don't really see an alternative right now. Realistically, in today's information economy, college, and now graduate school, are almost required for success in life. And, esp. for women, marrying too young is one of the most likely ways to end up poor and uneducated in life. In other words, if we do what comes naturally at that age, we would date, and then get married, while still teenagers, and then spend the rest of our lives broke working dead end jobs - while immigrants who did get the required education got the better jobs and became rich.
But it is a real problem. I estimated the other day that many women who wait until they have a graduate degree before getting married and having a family will have been physically able, and hormonially inclined, to do so for half their lifetimes by then.
I have dyslexia and dysgraphia, guess that means I am not academically an adult! Also, I got a 56% on political adultness, that was interesting!
While the test was more interesting than helpful, and I am curious about his politics, the good Doctor's ideas about adolescence are completely worthwhile.
Trey
Just last night I was perusing a new bio of John Wayne and saw his high school photo circa 1929. Typical of the times, he looked SO mature, so adult, so ready for the world. Even in the late 1950s in my brother's yearbooks all the kids looked like adults-in-waiting. A mere 10 years later the seniors looked like punks, babies and lost boyz. Yearbooks from the 1970s are a real scream. the point seemed to be to NOT grow up.
No doubt, the parents were like my mother, who said I had my "whole life" to be an adult and have to work and all that, why hurry? Sounded great at the time. I'm paying for it now.
Much, if not most, of the world's work has been done by teenagers. If we include as adolescents those in their early twenties undergoing the extended immaturity of college, we'd cover an awful lot of ground in history.
IMO, there is a drive to grow up. With the exception of sports equipment, most toys are analogs of adult tools and devices. You can't even think of a toy for a kid beyond, say, three that isn't.
Yeah, this is an information society which needs extensive education. But starting out as a hired man on a farm at sixteen didn't mean the end of one's education. The guy learned farming. Learned until the day he died, probably.
I saw a museum exhibition of Civil War recruiting posters. One said, "THE GOTHS AND VANDALS ARE AT THE GATES OF THE FEDERAL CITY!!!"
That may have been a slander on the CSA, but the point was made. The composer of the poster was aiming, so to speak, at adventurous adolescents with, at most, an eighth-grade education. And he could bank on their getting the reference.
Today, who'd worry about a couple of heavy-metal bands assaulting DC?
One author of a book on the Somalia adventure remarked that a Marine corporal running a patrol in Mogadishu was balancing innumerable factors and making tactical decisions of immense importance at an age where, "If he were in our office, he wouldn't be allowed to use the copier without adult supervision."
The idea of looking at the evolution and history of the human race and deciding you can put a six-year old behind a desk and keep him there for twelve years is insane. I'm surprised it works as well as it does. Perhaps the forced infantilization is to allow us to keep control.
Also, to keep wages up. No sense saturating the employment pool with people anxious to get started with their lives.
I've said before and will say again, that adults are being infantilized in our society.
Many of us look back on adolescence in horror, not because of the whole maturation thing, but because of the ritual of it all. (Layer conservative religion on top of that and I shudder at the memories.)
One consequence of this ritualization has been to create an education system that is very expensive and largely useless from a pragmatic standpoint. I mean, seriously, does the world really need any more English majors?
The new book "Consumed" argues that adults are being infantilized, as well - and that capitalism is creating needs for them feeding that infantilization.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that the wife of InstaPutz didn't mention that much more high-profile book instead of this one.
Hmm. A 48 year old grandfather and only 84% adult.
Of course, I know a lot of the questions I missed, and I can argue convincingly that I am more correct than the score indicates.
A minor example. Do I respect other peoples' opinions? Well, the answer he wanted was yes, and the answer I gave was no. That is because the real answer is sometimes, but more often no than yes. There are a great many people in this world who have opinions which are not worthy of respect, and I refuse to pander to thier (insert choice: predjudice,ignorance,stupidity).
Take Rosie for example. If respecting her asinine opinions is a requirement for adulthood, count me out. Or take Amaddinejad. Nope, his opinions and beliefs get no respect from me, so sorry.
Or true love. Sorry pal, I may not have given the answers you want, but I can vouch for the existance of true love, I am in the middle of it. It may wear off sometime in the next 28 years, but the first 28 didn't slow it down much!
As a former English major, I take offense...oh, never mind. No, the world doesn't need any more English majors. But we need Sociology and Political Science majors even less - they end up making more trouble for regular people than English majors do.
OK, I couldn't listen to the podcast because I'm at work and they shoot people for listening to podcasts.
I don't have kids and don't have much contact with them. Speaking as an amateur, I'd say it would help to present adulthood and independence as positive goals for children to work toward. As it is, we emphasize the "specialness" of their immature status, making childhood something to cling to rather than something to abandon for bigger and better things.
It helps if the parents are well-integrated into their community. Isolated parents tend to produce isolated children.
It also helps if the parents don't hate their jobs, each other, and/or life in general. The idea is to teach kids that being an adult is positive, not a living hell.
It also helps if children are required to work for things they want badly (such as a new - not second-hand - car) rather than just receiving them as gifts. I know the common excuse today is that kids "need" cars, cell phones, etc., just to function. Not sure if that's true.
I quit the "test" about halfway through, after I'd been asked the same question three times. I know the MMPI does that, but I haven't the time for somebody who expects me to play along. Does that make me more, or less, adult?
That test brought out the inner skeptic in me. There's a big difference between knowing the right thing to do and doing the right thing. Every teenager can tell you why smoking & using drugs are a bad idea, but that doesn't stop teens from doing these things. I still think there's something to the immature brain/impulse control concept.
I think it's clear that we as a society do excessively infantilize our children and young adults. It's also clear that the quiz was complete bunk. So good idea and good point, but I doubt I would agree with him on what it is to be an adult, if the quiz is any indication.
(I'm with the commenter who was annoyed by the "true love" question. Forever? Well, not literally. But my parents have been happily in love for some 5 decades now, and my wife's parents for almost 4 decades. We're only midway through our second decade, but I see no reason why we can't be happily in love as long as our parents were. A lot of it is just making good choices in the first place, and a lot of it is knowing that love indeed requires compromises and acceptance of changes over time. I'd argue that that is more adult than merely assuming true love is a fiction, or at best a short-term anomaly.)
Viola Jaynes,
Hi and thanks for listening to the podcast. I live in Knoxville, Tennessee so I have somewhat of a Southern accent.
O - are you going to teach your children that adulthood is a living hell? Which older fairytales are you going to tell them to reinforce this message? How will this encourage them to let go of childhood and become competent adults?
There must be more to the comment than I'm getting from it.
Realistically, in today's information economy, college, and now graduate school, are almost required for success in life.
Why? What does an eg English degree teach you, that you need in your career, that you could not have learned while in work?
What does a degree do other than demonstrate to employers that you are capable of earning one?
Psychological neoteny is the term that Bruce Charlton assigns to this very real and destructive phenomenon. There are some excellent bloggers who have been describing this syndrome for some time now.
Thanks for helping to bring it to a wider audience.
I think the European school model is wiser in that around 16 they are out of their version of "high school" and are in college or trade school.
Do you think the older system of apprenticeship might have been a more natural way to learn and grow up? You learned practical things on the job, and didn't advance until you'd become an expert at your level. Then you'd be a journeyman, and eventually a master.
Today, you basically get one chance to learn each of a thousand different things, and if you don't catch on the first time around you're screwed - sometimes for life. There's no emphasis on mastery, only on running you through the system on schedule.
Educators may say they're useful work skills, but it's in a totally artificial environment. By the time I got out of school, the only thing I felt qualified to do was be a student. Definitely didn't like a competent adult.
Dr. Helen,
I am a big fan of Glen and yourself, but I have to admit that I winced at this podcast.
Dr. Epstein did not seem consistent to me -- on the one hand, he was talking about how "unmotivated" students need to join the adult world, and on the other hand, how they were not learning in school. If they're not handling the relatively basic duties of high school education well, how are they going to maintain themselves outside of it, when there are so many more duties to perform?
It seems to me (and I venture to many of your right-leaning readers) that the answer is MORE discipline in school, not freeing kids from it. It seems to work in Asia, and it seemed to work well in America in the past.
Also, his argument that kids have fewer rights than prisoners must have created the same thought in my head as in that of many other listeners -- the answer is not to give kids MORE rights, but give FEWER to inmates.
As to his argument that Adolescence is "new" -- I'm not enough of a social historian to answer that, but if it supposed to exist now as a transition period in life, then would not the answer be to truly make it a transition period, rather than just do away with it? To create a situation where, in the home AND outside of it, children learn to gradually take on and assimilate more responsibility as they go from age 13 to 18, rather than just "throwing them out there" at age 16 or so, as Dr. Epstein espouses?
Let me ask you this -- if the Instadaughter came to you and asked to leave high school, how amenable would you really be to it?
Talk about timing. A new comedy just started, "Notes from the Underbelly". In the first scene in a discussion about getting pregnant, the female lead says, "We're barely in our thirties, that's really like the twenties use to be and we are way to immature to have a baby". It's now way to mainstream that adolescence extends into the 30s.
Zerosumgame had an excellent and thought-provoking post that included:
"It seems to me (and I venture to many of your right-leaning readers) that the answer is MORE discipline in school, not freeing kids from it. It seems to work in Asia, and it seemed to work well in America in the past."
I am also skeptical of Dr. Epstein's advocacy for less restrictions for young adults, but believe he would argue that research has backed the use of rewards over punishments. In rehabilitation, researchers recommend a 4:1 reward to punishment ratio for use in dealing with youth offenders.
I am not sure I would support more discipline in schools without addressing other elements of the problem. Schools play a less of an important role than parents do in motivating young people. In most cases, parents have to shoulder the workload and view the eudcation and support of a son/daughter as a long journey that involves paying attention to their offspring, mentoring, and instilling more discipline and respect in young adults. As an example of the limits of school involvement, even with children getting subsidized healthy meals provided by schools, does that make them healthy kids if their parents do not care what they consume away from school?
Bugs -- Sorry I couldn't get back, trouble with Blogger login.
"are you going to teach your children that adulthood is a living hell?"
Nope. Like I said, it's both.
"Which older fairytales are you going to tell them to reinforce this message?"
Not going to, have.
Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast and the rest of the Grimm's for a start.
"How will this encourage them to let go of childhood and become competent adults?"
By demonstrating that observing and figuring out the problem, difficulty or danger and then dealing with it is the way to survive and succeed in life.
"There must be more to the comment than I'm getting from it."
Nope. Life's both.
O - then we're basically in agreement, and there was more to your comment than I go from it.
The opposite of your fairytales - and what I think children get too much of today - is the story that it's better to stay home and play than to venture into the wide world to seek your fortune.
On the quiz. I thought some of the questions were odd. Example: the question on being strong. Compared to whom?
The interview was a little odd too. It sounds both from the interview and his site that your guest is a "progressive education" sort who doesn't like classrooms and standards. Maybe I am wrong - it should have been made more clear. Endorsing apprenticeship was also strange - didn't that system merely transfer both parental control and education to the 'master' of the apprentice? Why not just promote vocational/technical education of minors? In the old days, these young people could not vote, I believe. Would your guest give the franchise to 14 year olds? Would they have to pass a test? Why not have "competency tests" for adults? I don't like where that heads.
The bit about the Roman legions was also odd. I don't know what the 14 year olds did in the legions, but my experience with 14 year old boys makes me think they are not big and strong enough to carry the combat loads our soldiers do with ease. I prefer my country's infantry to be full sized men.
I think the 14 year olds probably did what people nowadays get arrested for doing with 14 year olds.
I didn't hear the podcast. Did the guy mention 12 year old ensigns in the British Army and midshipmen in the Royal Navy in the 18th/19th centuries?
"It also helps if children are required to work for things they want badly (such as a new - not second-hand - car) rather than just receiving them as gifts. "
Not to go too OT here, but this problem would at least partially be solved by also solving the illegal immigration problem; those so-called "jobs that Americans won't do" used to be held by teenagers, and I think society was better for it.
Allow me to explain: When I was in high school, my very first job was at McDonald's...and I absolutely hated it. But I wouldn't have traded it for anything, because it cast my insulated, suburban, only-one-parent-had-to-work self into the world of fulltime fast-food personnel. The managers I worked for were, almost to a man, balder, fatter and more stressed out than they should have been at that point in life. I left that job with a very clear goal to never, ever, ever end up like one of them.
I don't think I was really a kid who was in danger of ending up on the wrong path, but getting a taste of the less-skilled end of the working world certainly helped keep me on track. Having that job also helped me learn the value of money, and saving for things that I wanted, pretty early, and it's too bad that most of today's teens won't have that experience.
Most of the kids I see working today are in places like BestBuy, the bookstore, movie theaters. Maybe fast food just isn't cool anymore.
Considering something like 70% of people in polls think the world is 10,000 years old and 90% spend a whole lot of time talking to and about an invisible man in the sky, I'd say our kids are learning infantilization from us. Childish, immature adults raise childish, immature children.
Half of us can't even be bothered to vote every four years, for crying out loud.
bugs -- glad to oblige.
OT -
Any one else having problems with Blogger losing their passwords?
Epstein's quiz and website made me think that somebody should write a "how to be an adult" web portal with links to good sites on relationships, jobs, money management, health, etc. All of us have areas where we have gaps and could be doing better.
I am 85% adult, according to the learned Epstein. I believe 99% of that is the result of post-adolescent development. That means that the total percentage of adultness acquired during my 'dumbass kid' years would amount to...let's see, cancel the fives, carry the one... Well, it's not much, is all I know.
I conclude that adolescence shouldn't just be abolished - it should be taken out back and shot like Nicolae Ceauşescu and Mrs. Ceauşescu.
The National Youth Rights Association has been advocating for this for years. Dr. Epstein has written a fantastic book that deserves a lot of consideration from policy makers and pundits alike.
I scored 88% on the adult quiz. Before I started it, I was expecting a different result.
My three lowest categories: Physical Abilities (56%), Interpersonal Skills (67%) and Love (78%).
There are sure a lot of duplicate questions.
"To you think the older system of apprenticeship might have been a more natural way to learn and grow up? You learned practical things on the job, and didn't advance until you'd become an expert at your level. Then you'd be a journeyman, and eventually a master."
Apprenticeship implies interaction between teens and adults. Teens can only benefit from more knowledgeable adults. In this case, adolescents learn a trade. In good colleges, this happens too.
As far as getting married earlier, I don't think that it's a bad thing. I am 30 and I wish I had gotten married at 18. If we make knowledge about contraception available, young couples are less likely to get pregnant.
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