Youth Vs. Teenager

Here's an article for the day by Michael Platt, PHd:

“We have two teenagers,” I sometimes hear parents say. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I sometimes reply. Although I say it with a smile, the truth is sad.

Teenagers are not inevitable, natural, or God-given. The Teenager was invented, fashioned, permitted—let loose you might say—by the generation of our parents and grandparents. Discovering that may help us to raise our children differently.

There were no “teenagers” before World War II. Ask those still living who raised their children before then. Or spend a rainy Saturday in the basement of your library, comparing old Life magazines from before the War and after.

Instead of Teenagers, there were Youths. Youths were young people who wanted to become adults. However confused, wayward, or silly they acted, however many mistakes they made, they looked to the future, wanted to make it different from their youth, and planned to. They were aware that life is more than youth. The Teenager has no such horizon. Beyond the “Teeny” world there is no adult life, no past with heroes, no future with goals.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.tjed.org/2011/04/youth-versus-teenager/