“There has been a real change in middle-class standards of supervision. When the study was replicated more than 50 years later, mothers opted for autonomy and independence. In the famous 1924 Middletown study of Muncie, Ind., mothers ranked conformity and strict obedience in their children as the most desired qualities. What concerns mental health professionals is that hurrying children to grow up stems not from children’s needs, but rather, from those of parents. “There’s no question that the emphasis on drug and alcohol use among teen-agers is incredibly high,” said Krouse of Lake Forest, Ill.īased on information gleaned from his studies, Krouse estimates that 75% of today’s teens are using alcohol at least once a weekend, and that sex is an expected part of many steady romantic relationships.Īs Krouse, who raised four teen-agers puts it, “Twenty years ago, we would have looked at the things today’s ‘popular’ kids are doing, and we would have said, ‘Those are not nice kids.’ ” Paul Krouse, publisher of “Who’s Who Among American High School Students,” has been surveying teen-agers for the last 17 years. Many have observed that teens are on the fast track. The result, he thinks, is “a staggering number of teen-agers who have not had the adult guidance, direction and support they need to make a healthy transition to adulthood.” Moreover, as Elkind wrote in a sequel, “All Grown Up & No Place To Go: Teenagers in Crisis”: “Many parents, schools and much of the media have been hurrying children to grow up fast, but they also have been abandoning teen-agers.” “The things I wrote about have not disappeared but have become entrenched.” Since then, many of the young children Elkind wrote about have become teenagers, and matters have gotten worse, he said in a telephone interview. His book, “The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon,” published in 1981, warned that many young people experiencing school failure, delinquency and drugs and suicide were, in fact, hurried children reacting to stress. In the late 1970s, Elkind noticed a trend to push children to take on the physical, psychological and social trappings of adulthood before they are ready. An extraordinarily large number of children are at risk,” Orr said. “We estimate that only one-quarter to one-third of all kids seem to be growing up very well, going to college and taking the track that would make for healthy integration into American life. John Orr, Tansey professor of social ethics, who co-authored the report with Don Miller, professor of religion, were sobered by some of the findings. A recent USC study, “Values and Everyday Life,” documents how California’s children are living today. The sense that children aren’t doing as well as prior generations comes from many quarters. Given the high divorce rate, they add, children often have a front-row seat while watching one or both parents date. In contrast, today’s young children are bombarded with violence and adult experiences on television and in movies, making them sexually precocious, experts say. And in retrospect, the middle decades of the 20th Century appear to have been the golden age of childhood. It was unstructured play, the kind psychologists believe fosters intelligence and creativity. There was a time when youngsters rushed home from school to Mom, wolfed down milk and cookies, then raced outside for what seemed like endless devotion to throwing balls, skating, riding bicycles and playing hopscotch.
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