by Francis Harris

Created on: June 21, 2010   Last Updated: June 23, 2010

Before society invented the idea of "teenager" as a separate stage of human development we did not expect people of a particular age to behave in a particular way. Children just grew up in a mixed aged community, started work in the family occupation, mingled with normal mixed age society and adopted their adult identity with no turbulent, stage of rebellion that has come to characterize the "teenager".

Today it is a vastly different situation. We have had almost 100 years of isolating and segregating children and young people within their generation. We have sought to "socialize" them through peer-imbalanced environments, where they are separated from family and normal community and cut-off from connection with wider society. They end up in with a crisis in both identity and belonging.

When children are raised in impoverished social environments dominated by peers and lacking normal family and community experiences we can expect nothing other than total immaturity, rebellion, defiance and extreme lack of any sense of belonging, connection, love or identity. The teenager will not be able to trust parents, nor heed their advice.

Societal norms concerning peer schooling, peer-imbalanced socialization, isolating young people from family and wider community and denying them any significant role in community, belonging or connection with it, all contribute to the troubles that young people experience.

Contemporary ideas about isolating children in their teenage years and socialising them among peers that they can "find themselves" came from psychologist Erik Erikson. He took his own troubled, turbulent, dysfunctional adolescence and from it created a model of human development that has impacted education, parenting and even government funding that helps isolate youth from normal community and stimulates the generation gap.

We can help teenagers transition to normal adult life, achieve secure independent identity and responsible, mature adult action - including listenting to, evaluating and responding maturely to parental advice - by ensuring that from infants they are never raised in a peer-imbalanced environment (eg childcare, schools, kids clubs, youth groups).

In peer imbanced environments young people are cut off from family and normal community, deprived normal social interaction and connection with wider adult community, isolated from mature sound role models and otherwise deprived the diverse environment that they need to make a swift, painless transition. Instead we stimulate the youth sub-culture and drive children into belonging among peers at the expense of belonging in wider society.

To help teenagers we need to revise our psychological models that have dominated child rearing practice for several decades and move to integrate young people with community in family, instead of segregating them from community among peers. Then the young person will attain identity and sense of independence that enables them to function in a mature manner.

Functioning in a mature manner means that the teenager will respectfully listen to parental advice, evaluate it and determine their own course of action in a responsible way. They will no longer be subject to negative (or positive) peer pressures when it comes to moral behavior impacting self, other and the world, since they will not have been raised in an impoverished peer-imbalanced environment where their basic developmental needs are not met.

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