Customer Reviews

The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Today, because of the massive American youth culture, we take the descriptive term "teenager" for granted. Young people enter their teenager years and seem to become part of another world, children no longer, but not full participants in the adult culture of work and responsibility. At one time, teenagers wanted to grow up rapidly, aspiring to take on the trappings of adulthood as quickly as possible, but today millions of young men and women seem dedicated to hanging on to their youth through their thirties and forties. Because of the pervasiveness of the youth culture, we have forgotten that the concept of a teenager is a social development and a relatively recent one. The idea of the teenager only occurred as America began to achieve relative affluence, when parents - whether farmers or shopkeepers - could afford to have their offspring attend school for a longer time. As these young people began to attend secondary school - and it was only in the 1920's when more than half of our children were educated through high school - and to have more leisure time, the term "teenager" was coined. It was this combination of time and affluence that made the teenager a young consumer to be marketed to. In "The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager" Thomas Hine shows the evolution of the concept of the teenager and the history of American youth culture. He is a professional journalist who writes with a strong narrative drive. He has an eye for detail and is particularly adept at choosing interesting subjects for his books and articles. By following young adults throughout American history, he has shown a light on a subject that has not been illuminated in the same way before.

The information presented in this book is very interesting in that it explains a lot of what I went through in my own teen years as well as what my two children went through in theirs, and what my grandson has faced and the others will face. At this present moment I believe everyone, especially news reporters should be made aware of the contents of this book. My son, a Police Officer, has found the informaiton helpful, and my wife a school teacher has found this to be true also.

I could not put this book down once I began reading it.
It was entertaining, informative, and really made me question the way teenagers are classified today. The amount of both freedom and responsibility granted to younger adults in earlier generations is amazing in comparison to the idleness and lack of direction granted to them today. I'm fascinated by the evolution of the high school--beginning as an actual *useful* place for building work skills and as a replacement for college and how it has evolved into a glorified babysitting service that regurgitates information. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the varied places of youth in America across history.

I found Thomas Hine's work to be fairly well-written. The sections on 18th and 19th century realities for young men and women was particularly interesting. I do wish that Hine would have footnoted his sources, as many historical and psychological assertions are made without the reader being entirely sure as to the origin of the material.

My biggest concern about the book is that I was unable to see, after careful reading, where the "rise and fall" actually was. Despite societal changes and historical trends, it appeared to me that teenagers have simply risen (or fallen depending on your perspective) and there has in actuality been little fluctuation at least within the 20th century in the degree of their powerlessness. Hine's writing becomes a tad more flamboyant when speaking of the 60s (as he confesses this was his own coming-of-age period) and there is very little contemporary information for the 1980s onward. This book would probably be more helpful for the researcher looking for information on the 1800s and early 1900s, but would not lend itself to someone looking for insight into adolescent culture of the last 25 years.

Anyone who wants to understand the American teenager or American culture of the 20th century must read this book. Essential to any student of anthropology, archaeology, sociology, architectural history or popular culture. Extraordinary insights which reflect a remarkable and creative understanding of our own history and place in time.

Tom Hine's book, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, perceptively traces the 3-century history of younger people (those in their teen years) in Colonial and 18th century times, and on to the creation of the "teenager," as a result of post World War I growth of high schools. Throughout Hine chronicles how these younger people have been distrusted and viewed with panic by adults. The decline of the teenager, Hine says, is shown by high school tribalism, with numerous cults and subcults, silently posing in public, but communicating with no one but themselves. This is a witty and valuable book, one that should be in the library of every American parent.

-- Forrest R. Pitts, Prof. of Geography (Emeritus)

The American concept of teenagers is explored in a history spanning 400 years by Thomas Hine in his book: The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager. Hine quotes diaries, sermons, newspapers, histories, and other non-fiction to detail the evolution of "The Teenager" beginning with the first settlers and ending with goths lounging in Disneyland. Past eras treated "those aged 13-18" differently due to varying social and economic circumstances. The experience of a Lowell, Mass. Maiden during Industrialization is vastly different from the experience of 1920s newsie, and both are different from the the post-WWII, high-school-attending teen.

Hine gives very detailed accounts of young peoples' lives in different eras of US History to support his assertion that "the Teenager" is now an alienating, potentially damaging social construct. In colonial and pre-industrialized eras, youth labor was vital to household economies, individual psycho-social development, and the functioning of communities. For example, in the 18th and 19th centuries, youth were treated differently according to their abilities, sexual maturation, and experience. Large, sexually mature men were given men's work at a devalued wage. Young women, during Industrialization, were called upon to work in textile factories. Currently, teens can only work in supportive service jobs at minimum wage. The wage devaluation remains intact but the implicit trust in a teen's abilities to handle anything resembling adult work is gone.

Hine analyzes the philosophic underpinnings of socially delayed maturation, and the consequences of this approach. Teens are discouraged from experimenting with employment, sex and alcohol, meanwhile the time allotted for the being a teen lengthens. Marriage, sex, and pregnancy-- behaviors that were normal for teens in past eras-- are now considered failings of families and society. Drinking and smoking have evolved from a childish rite of passage to misdemeanor crimes. Instead of being "risky," teens are segregated in bureaucratic educational institutions and their adulthood is infinitely delayed. Currently, many Americans in their mid-20s are considered too young for full-time employment and marriage. These YAs' brash disregard for WWII-era morality concerning sex, marriage, drinking, and drugs is tolerated by their boomer parents (who didn't necessarily conform to their parents' ideals either), but "being adult" still creates friction between the generations. Hine argues that the concept of the teenager is a mythical concept that has been so distorted that it is now only harmful, and no longer useful, to our society. Teens today have no physical space to interact, and moreover, they are treated to unchecked adult suspicion. Teen unemployment and delayed employability have been steadily rising, and yet the age in which a teen can be treated as a criminal has dropped considerably. Steve Harmon, an imprisoned, 16-year-old ruefully and ironically acknowledges this dichotomy in the Walter Dean Myer's YA prison novel, <u>Monster</u>, when he says "They didn't allow kids in the visiting area, which was funny. It was funny because if I wasn't locked up, I wouldn't be allowed to come into the visiting room." Hine posits that teens lack a place in American society because "The Teenager" concept has grown vague, stifling, and unwieldy. The lack of clear youth roles in society feeds adult suspicion of teens. Both teens' status in the social matrix and adult suspicion, in turn, feed teens' anger at their interminably delayed adulthood and social disenfranchisement. Hine urges readers to consign "the teenager" to history and create more open, clearer social roles for young adults not based in anger, bureaucracy, and suspicion.

I was quite anxious to read this book when it was assigned to me by my history professor at the University of Nebraska. It was hot off the presses when we had a chance to read and study the book as part of a Family History course. In that context, Thomas Hine's book helped to show how concepts of the American family make their way into our cultural mythos. The idea of the teenager has been around for little over 60 years and it seems well on being a somewhat permanent fixture. Yet, I think he is right to point out the problems that exist with this term. (What irony that the word 'teenager' caught on because it was easily marketable!) Contrary to one's expectations, this book doesn't talk about how teenagers have 'gone bad'. Instead, he suggests that this category might not be as useful as it once was. His theory is almost as economic as it is sociological. Certainly I hope we might expect more from 'teenagers' than for them to act like 'teenagers'. I certainly hope to see the downfall of the modern 'teenager' in my lifetime, in the sense of Hines' vision. His ideas are stimulating nonetheless and I would recommend this book to anyone who has been specifically trained to work with adolescents. It will make you rethink the entire approach to educating and nurturing our nation's youth.

Hine has given readers the opprotunity to see into the development of one of the most interesting creatures in the known universe, the american teenager. Readers are taken on a journey from the days when young people (teens) were called young adults to today where adolescence has been prolonged into the middle 20's to early 30's, in some cases. Why? Hine ties it all to the development of and mandatory attendance at high school. Without it, young people would have a harder time developing their own since of culture seperate from the larger culture of society.

In The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager by Thomas Hine we are introduced to the old and modern teenager. Hine uses socialogical, psichological and anthropological data, we realize that it is not always crystal clear. It is a moving historical process, therefore there are many different elements that must be considered when attenting to understand today's dynamic teens. We must keep in mind that we cannot solely view teens through our modern lens, but must be aware of what has come before.
In today's job market a high school diploma, and even arguably a college degree, is essential for success.