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Framing Youth: 10 Myths About the Next Generation

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If you like strong social criticism, you'll like Framing Youth. Today's youth generation has been harmed by politicians cutting social programs because the generation is unorganized and unable to vote. Media and politicians have overblown anecdotes into sterotypes maligning youth. Males fights back for youth, smashing stereotypes with statistics.

Framing Youth, author Mike Males' follow-up to The Scapegoat Generation, is simply the best book out there in regards to understanding our adolescents' "dreadful behavior". Politicians, the media, and even what we think of as "unimpeachable scientific agencies", have led us all, even us health professionals who work with adolescents on a daily basis, to believe such a distorted view of reality, in relation to our "problems with teens", that we routinely take what appear to be logically good decisions to benefit teens, then wonder why those kids "just don't get it". In reality, it's us adults who haven't yet "got it". Mike will take you through the Top Ten Reasons Why Kids Have a Bad Rep, and afterwards I guarantee you'll be a better health professional, community activist or politician in regards to understanding adolescent behavior. Just be sure you can handle the truth, because the enemy is us.

I used Mike Males in a college research paper that I recently wrote, "The Politics of Sex Education," and found him fascinating. Since teenagers can't vote, they can't defend themselves against the avalanche of claims that are made against them. Fortunately, however, Males comes to their aid, arguing on their behalf, as their biggest defender anywhere. His writings were the most direct arguments that I found anywhere on teenage sexuality. I plan to read more of Males, although I can already imagine what he will say. He will defend teens against all charges, whether they are high violence rates, high drug rates, "promiscuous" sex, or tobacco use. He will help set the record straight. Teenagers aren't behaving any differently than the rest of us. They are just being blamed of all of it.

Males has done it again in Framing Youth, a book that utterly slams the 1990's American dogma that 17-year-old "kids" need to be curfewed, uniformed and monitored at all times lest they booze, dope and kill. This book should be required reading for every politician, social worker, teacher, parent and even student. Many youth rights groups like NYRA, ASFAR and Youthspeak have already flocked to this fine piece of literature as part of their arsenal in their battles against the special interest groups and politicians that would (and do) oppress them.

Like in the aptly-titled "Scapegoat Generation," Mike Males' rapier wit cuts though all the bull that the media has been feeding America about my generation (I am 24) and where we are headed. We are NOT the worst generation in American history. "Superpredators," junkies, drunken killers, suicidal, videots, oversexed, selfish, lazy, ignorant, apathetic, stupid--while a few of us may very well fit that description, the silent majority are actually LESS likely to be like that than the boomers, or at least no worse. Males shows that crime, violence, drug abuse, drinking, binge drinking*, teen sex, and teen pregnancy have all been falling, not rising. And volunteering has been rising. And the statistics he gives pan out as well. For example, teen drug abuse has plummeted a lot since the '80s, but more drugs (especially hard drugs) are entering this country than ever before. Either the surveys are totally bunk, or something else is going on. Who is doing these drugs then? Middle-aged people, that's who! That's the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. And it is America's real drug abuse crisis. All that excess capital of the middle-aged of the 90's and early 2000s--just where IS that money going? Meanwhile Millennials get the shaft--taxes cut for the old, services cut for youth. Public schools are floundering, and higher education is more expensive than ever. Heathcare is ridiculously expensive, and is just getting progressively worse. Youth poverty remains persistent despite massive declines in old-age poverty. And we have the highest prison population in the entire world, even more than China. He forgot to mention that to top it off we will likely get nothing from the Social Security pyramid scheme even though we've been paying into it since the age of 16 on average. And the wholesale trashing of the planet that the past several generations have done. A generation in crisis indeed--but not for the reasons most people think, and the usual "panaceas" just make it worse.

*Not to promote drinking, but I wonder what the statstics would show if "binge" drinking used a 10/8-drinks/occasion definition instead of a 5/4-drinks definition. The latter of which is laughable IMO (5 drinks is a "binge?" come on now!), while the former (called "extreme drinking") is much more dangerous. However, Males reports what was already reported, and there are virtually no studies on extreme drinking. The only one to my knowledge was one of first-semester college freshmen in Fall 2003 that showed, while the vast majority (even among "binge" drinkers) did not participate in it, it was high enough to be a significant issue on campus. And no study looked at the change over time from say 1980 to the present, like is done with "binge" drinking. Although there is only anecdotal evidence to back up my claim, I believe it probably went up somewhat since the drinking age was raised to 21, even as drinking and "binge" drinking went down (and began declining before the age was raised, even in California which was 21 since 1933). When you criminalize and demonize normative drinking and force it ever deeper undergound, you also inadvertently normalize dangerous drinking. That is just basic action/reaction stuff a la Newton's third law of physics, and was demonstrated among both teens and adults during Prohibition.

A MUST HAVE for people wanting to learn about "teenage" issues in America. This book and Mike Males other book "Scapegoat Generation" should be required reading for sociology and juvenile justice classes.

It's hard to believe, but Males has managed to follow up his acclaimed The Scapegoat Generation with another solid work. The only question left after reading Framing Youth is why hasn't the rest of the country caught on?