In the book THE CASE AGAINST ADOLESCENCE by Dr. Robert Epstein, it is vehemently argued that American society infantilize teenagers. Dr. Epstein contends that although teenagers are adults, they are viewed & treated like children by parents, schools, & the general society. Dr. Epstein maintains that teenagers are far more capable of handling adult responsibilities although many parents refuse to acknowledge this. Dr. Epstein contends that the infantilization of teenagers & young adults lead many to acute depression & other mental illness. Dr. Epstein maintains that teenagers & young adults should be treated & respected as adults. He elucidates that the phenomena of adolescence & teenager are very recent ones. He reveals that until recently, teenagers were viewed & treated as adults. Your thoughts?
I have to concur with Dr. Epstein. I think this treatment of children and adolescences began with Dr. Spock's book of the 1960s. As a result, parents stopped being parents and became "best friends" with their children. Peers, not parents, mind you. The leader dropped himself or herself down to the level of the children and ceased to lead. The child, in effect, became lost without a leader. My generation is to blame. But I didn't treat my children that way.
I'm from the WWII-early Boomer generation, and we definitely were not coddled. We were taught to fight our own battles, including the fistfights with bullies. Our parents gave us curfews and expected us to keep them. Discipline was the key. If we sassed back, we could expect the "board of education" to be used on our backsides. But it wasn't just parents.
Another issue became discipline, or the lack thereof, in schools. One African-American educator told my friend, who was having trouble with her teen-age boys, that he thought a downside to integration was that white parents didn't want black teachers disciplining their children, and likewise, black parents didn't want white parents discipling their children. He believed that led to a lack of discipline and learning in schools. Maybe he had a point.
I'm sure there are other reasons that parents developed cocooning around their children, who became untouchable by others. Some psychiatrist always came up with an excuse for a child's bad behavior. Children discovered they wouldn't be held responsible for their unacceptable behavior. Psychiatrists were telling them it was the parents' fault, which added more to the guilt trip of parents, who then responded with more coddling to hopefully be a better parent. A vicious cycle.
Now the country is reaping what has been sown, but I'm not sure that anyone has the answer.
I fully concur with Dr. Epstein, but he started too late for analyzing those effects, he should have began at birth and follower through.
Because parents force their children to reject feeling the atmosphere by keeping them in blankets even in summer, the children never have the chance to learn if it wants to accept the c hanging weather conditions. If we have noticed, babies and totalers generally will kick off the covers but parents' unwillingness to accept cold will override their instinctive guide for there parents' conditioned into them guide.
From a Christian perspective, Jesus said "the king of God is within" us in Luke 17:20-21, that means our instincts is the voice of God, thus, our parents are teaching us to disobey God and become obedient to man. Also, that is the cause of his telling us we "must be Born Again" to enter the kingdom of heaven, our minds has to be directed from within us, by what we call instincts, before we obtain the "acute depression & other mental illness" that began at birth.
As a matter of fact, we could say it began while in our mother's womb where we constantly HEARD our mother's complaints and thoughts concerning her conditions. If they were server enough that would cause such depression in the child. It is for that reason I am thankful for the bodiless voice that told me last about 6 months that I "may as well be quiet, no one is coming to get you" after scream-crying for someone to get me out of a rails up baby bed. That is why I've always been wondering why things are the way they are for as long as I can remember and only living the life of a nomad has provided me with; along with being curious.
by Cindy Vine 7 years ago
Do high school shootings happen as a result of teenagers being bullied and then having enough, drugs, violence on television or are they just psychopathic?
by Grace Marguerite Williams 12 years ago
In American society, introverted children are made to feel different. Parents often worry that their introverted children are not "normal" like other children. So they enroll them in a myriad of social activities in the hopes of making them "more social". ...
by Annie 4 years ago
Why is so many grown adults children attacking their parents?I wish I had the answer to this question,
by Grace Marguerite Williams 9 years ago
Why are families of 2 or more children prized in American society and culture while childfreeand 1 child families are seen as weird and odd, even denigrated and vilified by our society and culture?
by JDilly 13 years ago
What ar the most popular genres for most teens and young adults to read?Personally, I like Fiction. Especially Fantasy fiction. I also like Romance, Adventure, and Action. I'm hoping most people like to gravitate to those genres because that's what I like to write. Please, tell me your opinion.
by Mark Pitrek 9 years ago
Should teenagers have the same rights as adults? If no, please explain.Please do not say "because they're immature," considering that is a general rule and there are exceptions.
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |