User:IglooBars/History of teenagers

The history of adolescence or history of teenagers has been a significant field of research ever since G. Stanley Hall published his journal Adolescence in 1904. The emergence of a new human life stage between childhood and adulthood became a cultural phenomenon at the start of the 20th century when compulsory schooling laws extended to high schools across the nation. This saw the debut of American youth culture in society after World War II left young people feeling isolated from the adult world.

History of etymology

The noun adolescent dates back to the mid-15th century, meaning "youth, young person, one who is growing up," stemming from French adolescent (15c.) or directly from Latin adolescentem/adulescentem (nominative adolescens/adulescens). Meanwhile, it did not begin to be recognized as an adjective - meaning "growing toward maturity" - until 1785.

The derivative referring to the life stage, adolescence, also debuted in the 15th century, being defined as the "age following childhood, age of growing", winnth a chronological approximation being given as the ages from 15 to 21, starting at age 12 for females and age 14 for males, ending at age 25 for the latter. This meaning stems from Old French adolescence of the 13th century, from Latin adolescentia/adulescentia "youth, youthful people collectively," abstract noun from adulescentem "growing, youthful". Adolescency was used prior in the 14th century.

Although teen has been used since the debut of the natural number system to form the name of the numerals from 13 to 19, it was not until the mid-17th century in the 1640s that the plural form teens began to be applied to the stage of a young person's life ranging from ages 13 to 19. Meanwhile, the singular form teen began to be used as a noun in the early 19th century, when it was first used in the title of a journal geared toward youth, though it wasn't common in usage until the 1920s when youth culture, particularly the flappers, was gradually emerging.

The earliest recorded usage of teenager dates back to 1922, though it did not begin to become popular until 1944 when post-World War II socioeconomics created a new demographic in the marketing industry catering to American high school students with fashion, movies, music, and magazines distinct from the adult and child audience. The same thing applies to teenage. It is also significant that the term formerly used to be two separate words as teen ager or hyphenated as teen-ager before the English dictionary finally accepted II as a single word.

Discovery

G. Stanley Hall

The formal study of adolescent psychology started with the publication of G. Stanley Hall's journal Adolescence in 1904. Hall, who was the first president of the American Psychological Association, viewed adolescence as a time of internal turmoil and upheaval (sturm und drang). This understanding of youth was based on two then-new ways of understanding human behavior: Darwin's evolutionary theory and Freud's psychodynamic theory. He believed that adolescence was a representation of our human ancestors' phylogenetic shift from being primitive to being civilized. Hall's assertions stood relatively uncontested until the 1950s when psychologists such as Erik Erikson and Anna Freud started to formulate their theories about adolescence. Freud believed that the psychological disturbances associated with youth were biologically based and culturally universal while Erikson focused on the dichotomy between identity formation and role fulfillment. Even with their different theories, these three psychologists agreed that adolescence was inherently a time of disturbance and psychological confusion. The less turbulent aspects of adolescence, such as peer relations and cultural influence, were left largely ignored until the 1980s. From the '50s until the '80s, the focus of the field was mainly on describing patterns of behavior as opposed to explaining them.

Jean Macfarlane founded the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of Human Development, formerly called the Institute of Child Welfare, in 1927. The institute was instrumental in initiating studies of healthy development, in contrast to previous work that had been dominated by theories based on pathological personalities. The studies looked at human development during the Great Depression and World War II, unique historical circumstances under which a generation of children grew up. The Oakland Growth Study, initiated by Harold Jones and Herbert Stolz in 1931, aimed to study the physical, intellectual, and social development of children in the Oakland area. Data collection began in 1932 and continued until 1981, allowing the researchers to gather longitudinal data on the individuals that extended past adolescence into adulthood. Jean Macfarlane launched the Berkeley Guidance Study, which examined the development of children in terms of their socioeconomic and family backgrounds. These studies provided the background for Glen Elder in the 1960s to propose a life course perspective of adolescent development. Elder formulated several descriptive principles of adolescent development. The principle of historical time and place states that an individual's development is shaped by the period and location in which they grow up. The principle of the importance of timing in one's life refers to the different impact that life events have on development based on when in one's life they occur. The idea of linked lives states that one's development is shaped by the interconnected network of relationships of which one is a part and the principle of human agency asserts that one's life course is constructed via the choices and actions of an individual within the context of their historical period and social network.

In 1984, the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) became the first official organization dedicated to the study of adolescent psychology. Some of the issues first addressed by this group include: the nature versus nurture debate as it pertains to adolescence; understanding the interactions between adolescents and their environment; and considering culture, social groups, and historical context when interpreting adolescent behavior.

Youth culture

During the Victorian era, American compulsory schooling laws required children to attend school up until finishing 8th grade. Few students were enrolled in high school due to lower-class families being in need of their children's help to support their income. After finishing school, children between the ages of 12-14 were sent off to work in factories, on farms, in mines, as busboys, and deliver newspapers. This was a result of the minimum age for child labor being declared 12 in 1901. The children and adolescents were forced to work against their will, often causing rebellious attitudes toward their workers in the form of underage smoking.

Three newsboys smoking cigarettes

Once America banned child labor permanently in 1938 and the Fair Labor Standards Act subsequently made the minimum employment age 14 and prohibited youth aged 16-18 from working full-time jobs on school days and minors from receiving hazardous occupations, compulsory schooling began to expand to secondary education and increased the prevalence in American high school enrollment rates. Thereby, the U.S. Department of Labor enacted laws prohibiting minors under the age of 16 from dropping out.

Poster on Child Labor Standards

Teenagers quickly began to be recognized as a marketing demographic after World War II left young people feeling isolated from their parents. During 1944, the word "teenager" gained an increase in popularity as it was used in press articles, advertisements, and magazines. The spending power of high school students came about when advertisers increasingly began marketing distinct clothing, magazines, literature, and movies relating to the latest trends among the emerging youth culture.

Teenage rebellion became a theme among adolescents as the style of the new rock and roll and greaser cultures emerged. This was further emphasized by the 1950s movies Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle

See also

• History of childhood