?American adults are more fearful of their kids than adults in other societies, more hostile toward younger people, and more willing to abandon them and punish them for social problems than adults in other Western countries.? Why?
In this excellent interview Males addresses the issues of "teen" suicide, drug abuse, pregnancies, obesity, risky behaviors, violence, brain functioning, etc. He offers some valid explanations for why there is a war on teens.
http://www.paulkiel.com/archives/19/mik ... -interviewAn excerpt addressing the notion of "At Risk" youth:
Q. There?s this last one, which doesn?t quite fit into the other group ? you wrote scathingly about a PBS special that aired a couple of years ago that purported to dissect the teenage brain, showing that there?s a flood of chemicals and that?s why they?re so irrational and make bad decisions. What do you have to say about the perception of teenagers as dumb and moody?
A. Right, well ?at risk? is what we call them in science terms. Yeah, the whole thing about the teenage brain is a repetition of this tragic and disgusting aspect of American social and medical policy ? and not just America but in other countries as well ? going back 150 years where any group that is considered an outgroup or somewhat fearsome, immediately social scientists and medical personnel (a rather small number, but they get a lot of publicity), will flock in to try to say that it?s a brain defect, it?s inherent, it?s innate to this particular group to be violent or risky.
Now in fact, and I?ll be glad to debate anyone on this subject, anywhere: There is no such thing as teenage risk taking as distinct from adult risk taking. Teenagers are not more likely to take risks, they?re not more impulsive, they?re not more hormone driven, they?re not rebellious, they?re not any of these stereotypes that are attached to them, when you look at the whole population. What we find is that teenagers at risk tend to very much follow socio-economic levels, the same as for adults, so that poorer teenagers, just like poorer adults, are at much higher risk of violent death; wealthy or middle class teenagers, just like wealthy or middle class adults, are more at risk of suicide and drug abuse. And there?s really, when you look at the whole population, no distinct teenage phenomenon.
Now this idea that there?s something wrong with the teenage brain that they?re governed by the amygdala rather than by the cerebral cortex or they have this flood of chemicals and hormones, really can apply to a lot of other groups in society ? women have been stigmatized by similar arguments, in the past African-Americans were stigmatized by these same kinds of arguments. And what we?re seeing today is that not only is there no distinct teenage behavior phenomenon, but we don?t understand enough about the brain to be making these kinds of statements. If we?re going to talk about brain development, the most frightening thing, documented in many articles, most recently in Nature in June 2004, is the deterioration of the adult brain ? so that by the age of 40, we see major declines in the ability of adult brains to learn new things and to rely on memories. Memories become much more unreliable beginning as early as the age of 40.
Now, you could make a case ? and we will never see PBS do a documentary on this and we will never see social or medical scientists gain prominence by saying this, because adults are powerful. We don?t want to be described as brain damaged ? but we could argue that people over 40 should not have any rights and take a lot of undue risks and we would have a lot of scientific data to document that, not only in brain development, but in behavior ? the high rates of middle-aged drug abuse, the high rates of middle-aged violent death, which in many cases exceed those of teenagers. But we?re not going to look at a group in society that?s powerful. And I would like people to understand that what we?re seeing here are simply attacks on powerless groups. These are political statements, not scientific or medical statements.
Q. There?s also a study you cited ? I think it was a Northwestern study that showed that individuals over the age of fourteen have exactly the same decision-making capacity as adults.
A. According to studies by psychiatrist Daniel Offer, who?s at Northwestern University, and has studied teenagers and adults, tens of thousands of teenagers and adults over the last 4 years ? his conclusions have been basically that by age 16, teenagers and adults are virtually indistinguishable in their decision-making ability, and in the actual decisions that they make and the behaviors that they engage in. Really, you?re looking at exterior factors like whether they?re rich or poor, what kind of families they come from and things like that ? not any kind of internal process that prevents teenagers from behaving like grownups.
Offer?s studies are reliable because they talk about what?s actually going on in society. They don?t talk about some theoretical construct of models of brain development that we don?t even really basically understand and that have been constantly wrong in the past in terms of predictive ability. We?re looking at how people practically behave in society. Teenagers are as mature and behave as maturely and take no more risks and do not behave any more impulsively than adults do. We really see that teenagers and adults behave in quite similar ways and there?s no particular reason for all this panic and singling out adolescents for all kinds of stigmas and restrictions that other Western societies and other societies around the world don?t do. I mean, the United States treats its adolescents in a very different and harsher ways than any society that I can find, and a lot of it is this dereliction of academics, of institutions, and of the news media in taking a more responsible stance towards younger people.
.....recklessness among adults to send poor young people to fight wars on almost whimsical bases far around the globe that have little to do with American interests on the one hand, and then on the other hand, this pious claim that we?re so concerned about the safety of our teenagers and young adults that we just have to clamp down all sorts of curfews and harsh restrictions on them and that sort of thing.
