Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon. – E.M. Forster
Part of the process of growing up is becoming an individual, defining oneself as a unique entity separate from one’s parents and other authority figures; it starts at about the age of two, when we begin to set boundaries by the act of refusal. From that point there develops a dynamic interaction in which children continually seek to expand their autonomy while parents work to contain that expansion to a greater or lesser degree (depending upon the temperaments of both parent and child). Wise parents apply only as much constraint as is strictly necessary to keep the child from undertaking risks for which he is unprepared and might seriously harm him, but those less wise and/or more controlling attempt to establish regimes ranging from the somewhat overprotective to the wholly tyrannical. My mother was somewhere near the middle of this spectrum; as I explained in my column of one year ago yesterday she “seemed bound and determined to control my natural free-spiritedness and to delay my sexual maturation for as long as possible,” and so tried to bind me with rules more appropriate to girls several years younger. I of course saw these limits as arbitrary and unfair, and therefore disobeyed them in every way I could; because I was clever and resourceful and my mother was not equipped with the spying resources and cultural support available to modern overprotective parents, I was nearly always able to break the rules without getting caught and suffering the consequences.
Unfortunately for modern teens, overparenting has now become the rule rather than the exception, and even those parents who might be inclined to allow a healthy and stimulating degree of autonomy are hampered by ever-increasing legal restrictions on young people, a large fraction of which inflict criminal penalties on parents for the “crime” of actually allowing their offspring age-appropriate levels of autonomy rather than treating them as helpless children until 18. Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids chronicles these outrages, including cases of a mother threatened with “child neglect” for allowing her daughter to bicycle to school, a 12-year-old boy arrested for “walking alone” and a father charged with “child endangerment” for letting his kids play in the park without hovering over them. Legal restrictions on young people have constantly increased since the mid-19th century, and our society now expects people to remain irresponsible, incompetent “children” until they’re 18 (in some ways, 21) and then to instantly transform into adults upon reaching a certain date on a calendar, without any preparation for that assumption of responsibility whatsoever.
I recently found a March, 2007 Psychology Today interview with psychologist Robert Epstein in which he explains how Western culture invented the concept of “adolescence” and why it’s terrible both for young people and for society:
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…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…
Imagine what it would feel like—or think back to what it felt like—when your body and mind are telling you you’re an adult while the adults around you keep insisting you’re a child. This infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed…we have completely isolated young people from adults and created a peer culture. We stick them in school and keep them from working in any meaningful way, and if they do something wrong we put them in a pen with other “children.” In most nonindustrialized societies, young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable, and there is no sign of teen turmoil. Many cultures do not even have a term for adolescence…But [in the West] young people can’t own things, can’t sign contracts, and they can’t do anything meaningful without parental permission—permission that can be withdrawn at any time. They can’t marry, can’t have sex, can’t legally drink. The list goes on. They are restricted and infantilized to an extraordinary extent. In recent surveys I’ve found that American teens are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many as incarcerated felons. Psychologist Diane Dumas and I also found a correlation between infantilization and psychological dysfunction. The more young people are infantilized, the more psychopathology they show. What’s more, since 1960, restrictions on teens have been accelerating. Young people are restricted in ways no adult would be—for example, in some states they are prohibited from entering tanning salons or getting tattoos…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. In this country, teens learn virtually everything they know from other teens, who are in turn highly influenced by certain aggressive industries. This makes no sense. Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become. When young people exit the education system and are dumped into the real world…they have no idea what’s going on and have to spend considerable time figuring it out…
Though I don’t have kids of my own, I clearly remember how the word “child” was applied like a branding iron every time I had an idea of my own or wanted to do something outside the rigid script. I hated the triviality of the “adolescent” world and longed to escape it, and I’ve often wondered how much less rebellious I might’ve been had the limits placed upon me by “authorities” been more reasonable and acknowledged my right to autonomy, self-determination and independent thought. And due to the exponential growth of laws restricting even adult behavior, that really hasn’t changed except for the merciful removal of one layer of government (my parents) from my back; I still have to deal with busybodies who think they understand what’s good for me better than I do, and who are dedicated to sticking their noses into every aspect of my private life and punishing me with violence, robbery and forcible confinement if I have the nerve to demand full control over my own body, sexuality, property and life. Epstein’s article demonstrates that most of the problems we associate with teens derives from the artificial restrictions we place upon them, and tomorrow I’ll show how these problems reflect in miniature the damage a police state inflicts upon our entire culture.
I’ve pushed my own kids to go out and explore (I live semi-rural) from 7 or 8 years old. Anyone who thought they should be supervised to avoid the teeming plagues of paedophiles apparently lurking in the bushes ready to pounce…well they can bite me. Major worry has always been road and traffic really, that’s the real danger today. And of course I kept a close eye on them near water (rivers, sea) until about age 9 or 10. As for swimming in said waters, watch over them quite a bit longer (well into teens).
Fascinating stuff (both you and the article). I agree with most of what you say. Every aspect of childhood, adulthood and teenhood needs to be examined meticulously because just about all of it has been twisted and turned on its head.
For a start, what does ‘adulthood’ even mean for us today? At the moment ‘adults’ aren’t even allowed to control how their own wealth is spent. At least half of our economic productivity (much more in fact, all told) is taken by force by our government acting like strict parents who must control how our own money is spent for us. (WTF?!)
As ‘adults’ we do not even get to negotiate how this money is spent. Being able to vote in the same system (pick a color!) every five years hardly counts as ‘negotiation’. No contracts are ever drawn up. There is no accountability whatsoever on their part.
We do not get to stop our own money being taken from us by force and used to fund things which we find morally and practically objectionable (bankster bailouts, inefficient and unnecessary government departments, agencies and general bureaucracy, unwanted infrastructure, high tech police state surveillance control grids, illegal wars of genocide and and so on).
The best we can do as ‘adults’ is to throw tantrums in the streets holding up messages in big letters written on cardboard banners while shouting at the government. (imagine having to resort to ‘negotiating’ with your internet provider in this childish and demeaning way!) Often when adults throw tantrums in this way (or when adults do anything which the parental government thinks is ‘naughty’) special men are sent out dressed in blue costumes to smack these adults and drag them away and lock them up in a cage.
But some adults don’t mind having their lives run by a parent authority. They even like it. This is because they were told from early childhood that they needed to be ruled by a parental authority figures, that this was how free society operated and that it was in fact a privilege to be part of this system – something to be very ‘proud of’. And they believed it!
So while teens are restricted in many ways and made to feel like children, when they eventually do become adults and get a job and start paying taxes – that is when the real ‘parental’ authority control over their lives kicks in. Everything up to that point is just a warm up!
The ‘oppressed child/ teen to liberated adult’ transition is quite similar in many ways to the ‘oppressed women to liberated women’ (ie post feminism) transition. The fact that children, teens and women REALLY HAVE experienced rather a lot of oppression does not automatically mean that the next stage after that is going to be any less oppressive.
Both children/ teens along with women in general are always being encouraged to escape the prison of the ‘oppressive family unit’ as soon as possible…… and become (‘naturally’) happy consumer debt slaves, working for some anonymous boss, competing with your peers in the game of who-can-fit-into-the-social-hierarchy-the-best and paying all that tax money to the state to fund their expensive wars.
I’m not suggesting family life is always a pleasant experience – sadly this is often not the case. But destroying the very concept of the family, of long term relationships and of full time parenting is not a solution that benefits us. ……. It only benefits them!)
A solution to all of this mess can only be seen once we realise that ‘society’, and in particular the state, is a *reflection* of the family, of our upbringing, of our (usually horrendous) experiences as children.
A generation raised peacefully, lovingly and reasonably would not be a generation opposed to the system of government, hierarchy and ‘authority’ (rule by violence)…… they would be a generation unable to even *comprehend* such a system!
For a generation raised peacefully, lovingly and reasonably the language of tyranny (“might is right” .. “Do as I say, not as I do!”) would be literally a foreign language to them. Instead, the language of human liberty, (self) respect and personal freedom would be their ‘mother tongue’ …. (pun intended) 🙂
Tomorrow’s column is very much in line with what you’re saying here; I agree.
New world order, huh?
Hmmm
Ten years late, but anyway, we’ve gone backwards so much. Now they’re making it illegal for 18 year olds to buy certain kinds of guns. What’s next, ankle braclets from 0 to 21 years old? Love your comment about protests, always wondered what nagged me about them, basically adults acting like toddlers.
Its embarrassing that at 25, everything I’ve done recently (college, work, living alone, having a mature sexual/romantic relationship), I could’ve started at 14/15 and been ten years ahead in life. Even if it went to shit, at least I would’ve gotten some actual life experience. But nope, had to waste four more years at least in a prison both at home and school. At least work pays. But we live in a screwed up, infantilised society and the voldemort disease that shall not be named really proved that (people wearing masks alone in a park?????).
If we made it legal and normal for teenagers to visit prostitues/escorts and destigmatised nudity/sex, alongisde consensual teen-adult relationships, we would probably live in less sex obsessed society. Young men would be able to get it out of their system and would be treated like the adults they are and could learn how to attract and behave around adult women. Girls/women would grow up with less body shame if we let them dress like they want and show whatever body parts they want in public.
Of-course theres so much more one could say about not letting teens work full-time, useless education (esp high school & most college), mediocre parenting, loss of community, pathologisation of normal male/female behaviour etc.
Sorry for the long comment, but really love your work Maggie. Found your blog by complete accident on a random website but have been hooked for two years straight. As a young male, you really give actually useful advice and thanks for introducing Robert epstein. Reading him, everything makes more sense.
For the first part of my life, I was raised by my grandparents. They were proper, middle class British, quiet and well behaved. That’s how I was trained to be. Think of Hermoine in the Harry Potter books, that was like me, a skinny ginger bookworm. Still, I had some freedoms. I walked to school, and home, but I had to account for my time and whereabouts.
Then, my grandmother died suddenly, and I had to come over to live with my mother and her husband in the states. It was exciting at first, all I knew of the USA was what I saw on telly.
My life was the exact opposite in the US. When my mother married, I was never supposed to be part of the deal. I wasn’t wanted, and that was made clear. But I had a lot of freedom due to that. I could go where I pleased, when I pleased, and no one asked. I raised myself. My family was very non-traditional, anti-establishment rebels. Although both my mom and step dad worked, it was never at on going, 9-5 jobs. Rock musicians, outlaw bikers, and all sorts were around.
I got my first job about 13, totally underage. I worked alone nights, in a store. That taught me a lot.
But things weren’t good at home, so I left to be on my own at 15. Now that was an adventure. I had an ID that said I was of age, so I got work waiting tables. That paid poorly so stripping was my next job.
I have to say, being on my own early taught me a lot. It made me strong (back then, it was get strong or perish) and independent. The freedom made me into a much more capable person, a survivor.
But freedom is a thing that once tasted, you don’t forget. I spent the next 30+ years of my life intent on being free. That’s what drew me to sex work, and kept me there. Of course, that kind of thing can’t last forever. So now, I’ve finally had to wear the leash, like most people. It’s a very, very difficult thing. My attitudes that have made me are still too “free” and “hippie”. For some odd reason, I don’t understand why it’s necessary for us to all be spied on, regulated constantly, or how who we sleep with, when or how, or what substances we ingest is anyone else’s business.
Though our upbringings were quite different, we both have the same sense of independence and inability to accept external control; for me it’s so bad that every husband, boyfriend or male friend I have ever had was very worried about my encountering cops, because as soon as they start getting pompous with me I start mouthing off. That attitude contributed to my getting gang-raped by them, and one day it’ll probably get me killed, but (like the scorpion in the fable) it’s my nature. It’s one of the many reasons why we live where we do; there are few cops around here, and most of them are country boys whose primary jobs revolve around finding lost animals and guiding traffic around highway accidents rather than around snooping and beating people up.
WTF? I missed that you were gang raped by cops?
That is such goddam fucking bullshit. I won’t even tell you what kind of pissed-offedness that instills in me.
If you’re keeping up with “Game Of Thrones” you’ll know that Jaqen tells Arya to “speak three names” – and you’ll know what he does with each one she utters to him. This is the one thing that ruins my ability to enjoy life – knowing that so many assholes are out there and I will never be able to yank a knot in their chain.
I don’t dwell on it; it wasn’t the defining experience of my life, so I don’t really bring it up unless it’s somehow important to the conversation. Things happen, and life is hard. I do wish mine had been a little less hard, but I’m alive and healthy and not totally emotionally screwed so I just file it under “life experiences I don’t care to repeat” and try to divert my mind to other things whenever I have a nightmare or flashback.
I just don’t see how anyone could have dealt with all you have and not become one of those “he-woman man haters”.
You really are piece of work – I don’t think I’ve known any Force Recon Marines tougher than you – and those were tough boys.
My husband admiringly calls me “hard as nails” and has often compared me to Lara Croft. But as for the rest, letting someone control one’s entire life by ONE action is letting him win…and I’m far too obstinate to allow that.
Krulac will undoubtedly correct me if I’m wrong, but under UCMJ Rape is a capital offense subject to battlefield justice, IIRC.
I’ll be blunt: if they were military personnel under my command, their ability to rape again would have terminated on that day.
I’ve been put in a situation where 20 kids tried to forcibly strip me (was in primary school, aged 10). I remember the fear of that, and the anger that came with it. It doesn’t compare to what you went through, but God… those *sub-human bastards*…
The stories in that article show that with determination, media involvement etc., the bad cops can be prosecuted. It’s not too late to get the bastards.
I too, have quite a problem with cops, and like you have had a bad experience with them. Unlike you, however, I hate them with a white hot passion. I believe that policing in the USA has just become too corrupt to be reformed. The entire structure wants tearing down, and an entirely new system built.
Oddly, although I’m not keen on them, UK police don’t bother me so much. I’ve actually had pleasant experiences with them. My suspicion is that part of that is that they don’t carry guns. They often therefore have to work more with the community. Nothing swells a man’s ego so much as a gun on his hip.
Whenever I travel back and forth, one of the first things I see in disembarking at a US airport are men with guns, and I feel much less safe.
I live way out in cornfield land now, like you, and rarely encounter a cop. I’d like it even rarer.
It’s been an incredible struggle for me to merge into the mainstream working world after all those years in sex work. I miss the freedom and autonomy so much, even more than the money. Slowly I’m learning I just can’t say “This can be done better, and here’s how-” so much. I don’t run my own business anymore.
The word “teenager” (and the concepts accompanying it) was first used at the very start of the 20th century.
Oh ………….Magg… i just read about your rape by the cops story. That just makes me sick to my stomach. I`m am sorry, How ever, so many women who this happens come away with the “I hate men” “i hate sex ” thing. somehow you were able to separate, or something. How did you do that?
Rationality. Only an irrational mind turns “a person of x description hurt me” into “all x people are evil”. Unfortunately, most people operate on an irrational level. I don’t even hate all cops, though that incident certainly forms a strong link in a long chain of bad encounters with them both before and after, not to mention everything I’ve heard from others, read and am able to predict from knowledge of human nature and the inevitable result of giving flawed humans power over others and absolving them from all consequences resulting from their behavior.
“Rationality….” Agreed, along with what I term psychological capacity, the ability to cope with emotional and mental stresses.
I suspect both rational and psychological capacities are similar to physical capacities such as strength or endurance in that 1) they exist in humans across a statistical range, with some people on either extreme of the range curve 2) each person’s maximum rational and psychological capacities are set by that individual’s genetics 3) nurture and environment affect how optimally a person’s genetic potentials manifest 4)a person can improve those abilities to think rationally and to bear emotional/mental stress but only up to the limits set by that individual’s genetics; rational and psychological-stress capacities cannot be improved beyond that individual’s genetic limits.
The same three hundred pounds that the person born with high physical strength can comfortably carry might crush the person born with low physical strength.
If my hypothesis is correct, then similarly, the same experience — such as gang-rape — might minimally affect a person born with higher capacities for rationality and psychological stress, especially if that person has optimized those capacities, yet severely life-long traumatize a person born with lower capacities for rationality and psychological stress.
I wasn’t raised to really be an individual.
I was raised to respect the law … “the police are ALWAYS right” … respect teachers … “the teacher is ALWAYS right” …
The role taught to me was responsibility, which wasn’t supposed to be a fun thing – but it was supposed to be the only HONORABLE thing. I remember the 60’s and those anti-war protesters gave my father ample opportunity to drill into my head how destructive they were. I saw my old man cry ONE TIME in my entire life and that was the day Nixon resigned from office. I remember we were watching him make his last speech before he got on the chopper to leave the White House – and my old man started crying. I started laughing at him because I thought he was hyperventilating or something – I didn’t immediately know he was crying.
And I was taught a very rigid gender code too. I remember when I was thinking about joining the band in school – and both my Mom and Dad went into “high gear” to ensure that didn’t happen. No sir – I was football and baseball all the way – all the time too. You never hit a girl. My grandmother taught me that I might have to die one day protecting a girl and if I didn’t willingly do it I was no man at all.
Now, I mean – I love my parents and they DID give me a lot of freedom – mostly to see what I would do with it. I remember they let me go to a KISS concert by myself because none of my other friends liked KISS. I could go anywhere I wanted – unsupervised, because they used that to gage how well I was learning their “freedom” lessons.
Other kids were raised this way too. First time I took my girlfriend, Rhonda, out on a date – her dad told me we could stay out as late as we wanted to as long as we acted … “like white people”. He said this while he was showing me his collection of trophies from his pistol marksmanship competitions. People think I’m full of shit on a lot of my stories – but no, I’m not. And hell, I knew Rhonda wasn’t going to do anything with me anyway as religious as she was. She was soooo short – I decided to kiss her in the car when I dropped her back at her place. Rhonda’s lips were sooooo fucking good I forgot the car was in “D” and I took my foot off the brake and the car crept forward and hit her old man’s pickup in the rear. I THANKED JESUS that there was no damage and the old man didn’t hear it and come running out. And Rhonda grabbed my face and kissed me again which was exciting and seemed real dirty to me at the time! LOL
It was completely natural for me to join the military and when other kids struggled with it – I was like a fish in water. Most of my ability to cope though was due to the fact that I had been trained to be “comfortable” with placing blind faith in authority and those other kids hadn’t been.
I think I’m more “independent” today. However, when I think back to all those lectures my old man gave to me on the anti-war protesters – I even now, using my new-found independent brain – think they were a bunch of creeps and Marxists! 😛
Once again, it amazes me that we went in a short period of time from a very reasonable idea, that children shouldn’t have to work barefoot in factories in order to survive, to the situation we have today. Sometimes I think, having grown up in the late 80s and early 90s, that my generation was one of the last to have at least a chance of having a free childhood. I remember being five, six, seven years old and my mother would let me go off to the local playground by myself or ride my bicycle around with no supervision whatsoever. Granted, we lived in a townhouse suburb, so it’s not like there weren’t people around, but you see my point.
I’ll sadly say it again, but it’s probably going to take an apocalypse with massive depopulation (which I have no illusions about surviving) to break down some of the walls that have been built by people with nothing better to do. Even though my thought about child labor above still holds, I’d love to see how much damage the busybodies could do if they just had a simple job bolting wheels onto Fords or something.
The future is NOT hopeless QM! When my expeditionary force is fully outfitted we will conquer Sweden! The revolution will begin right in the heart of the beast and will spread throughout the globe!
The family is the one place where communism works, there really is no other alternative given that children will take a while before it’s even feasible to take care of themselves, and mothers need at least some support during pregnancy, and whoever is primarily doing the child rearing needs that too. The problem is that while some understand the family as a special (and necessary) case, many others do not and project this onto society at large. Where it fails to the tune of tyranny.
The problem isn’t that we came up with the idea of adolescence as a transitional stage between all child and all adult. We no longer live in the pre-industrial age, where people die young and it takes every hand working as an adult as soon as possible to prevent famine (except when it all to often fails to prevent famine). And yes, it is very, very good that we no longer shove hungry five-year-olds up chimneys.
The problem is that adolescence has gone from being a transitional stage between all child and all adult to being just another part of being all child. You know what I think we need to do? I think we need to give teenagers a partial vote. More vote than a child, but less than an adult. And it needs to be a bigger fraction each year, until at 18 it’s a full vote.
The value of gradualism is what keeps me from saying we should just lower it to sixteen.
I started working outside the family acreage when I was 12 – doing chores for other farm families around, but the difference was, I got paid for it. By the time I was 14, I had bought my own shotgun and would go hunting, entirely on my own.
My youngest sibling, however, got hassled by the county cops whenever they caught him on a public road. (So he just got the landowners’ permissions to cross their property directly.) But even then they didn’t have the guts to detain him because they knew full well that the county citizenry would kick their boss in the ass over it.
At 14 I was moving irrigation pipe – 16 quarter mile lines a day. And the mexican national that was also working the farm there was probably doing twice that – on a farm that was close to 1000 acres – 1 and a half sections.
By the time I was 16, I was running a chainsaw in a national forest under gov’t contract, 12 hours a day, counting travel time. Nowadays, that would be illegal.
It’s ridiculous that we deny children the opportunity to grow into adulthood. And that we do it “in the name of the children” is doubly stupid.
I blame “Stranger Danger” for this. Every parent is paranoid about it, but it represents a tiny fraction of the real risks to children.
Society has scaled it up to the age of 18, taking the idea to a point of insanity, and the current nanny/fascist state is where we’ve wound up.