The Teen-Age is Fraud...

My English professor made a really interesting rant the other day.

He thinks that Teen-Age in America is Fraud.

He says it all started when they made the law that forbade children to work. While it is good that young children shouldn't work, but starting at 13-14 men and women go through puberty and start to become adults. Meanwhile if these young adults are discouraged from working and also marrying what do they do, and how do the dynamics in the home change?

Well, at home.. the father gets more aggressive saying things like "what you think you're a man now?" There are two lions in the same household and there is now competition. Same with the female: mother is like "you're not going to wear that" "but I wore it last year" "but you were FLAT last year!"

So it's kinda like a lion cub is cute when they're young but now that they're grown it's no longer cute when they jump on you.. you'd need to shoot it.

So what do kids do when the parent's are supposed to be teaching them how to live in the Adult world, but are discouraged? They are given more schooling. Further, since they don't get to grow up normally, they go out and they find "father" and "mother" in the streets with drugs, vices, violence, crime, promiscuity etc. Where's the responsibility education? Parents can't even BE with their young ones anymore they're also working! Mother can't be there either.

In the house the "kids" are half man/half boy, half woman/half girl. The parents don't know which one of the personalities to address at times, and it makes them confused. It obviously confuses the "kids". The guys are playing vid games and then going out to smoke weed.

Now you have, adults in this generation affected being like kids in adult bodies. Not having learned how to be adults, not having the responsibility, being dysfunctional.

So.. is Teen-Age in America fraud then?

Interesting. My sister's sons provide a contrast, one went to work in a restaurant when he was 15, the other son age 16 sat home and played video games all day. Today the one that went to work is managing a restaurant and is going to Syracuse U. in the fall 2011. The other one is addicted to oxy-contin and we don't know where he's going, maybe jail some time in the future. Can't talk to him, can't tell him anything. I quit loaning him money a long time ago. My brother and I have discussed taking him (by force if necessary) to detox. See, he was smart too, he got accepted at Syracuse U. too and he isn't going, he'd rather do drugs. I'd say he's so addicted he doesn't have any choice now. My mother(his grandmother) has been talking to him about going to rehab, if anybody could get him to go, it would be her. I just pray that he'll get better.

reply to post by The Quiet Storm


Coddling children, trying to keep them protected and shielded, rather than teaching them how to deal with the real problems, is the big cause. When you go from being in a padded bubble, to tossed out at adulthood, it is no surprise to me that a lot have a HUGE problem. Yes some parents are to blame, they expect censored TV and the school to raise their kids. Kind of hard when a lot of schools these days are forced to teach abstinence, rather than real sex ed. Schools can't teach morality either. Some of them, it really isn't their fault, both parents having to work 2 jobs just to make ends meet, and doing the best they can.

reply to post by The Quiet Storm


Well, when a body hits puberty, the brain starts changing and molding from the once child like perception of things to a more adult way. Parents are there to teach right and wrong as the teen goes through these changes. Its not that there are two lions in the household, its more the fact that the father knows the kid is not yet an adult, and still needs to show him the way to being one. Same goes for girls. Teens need to be taught moral values more advanced than their once child like brain could handle. Having only 2 years left for my teen years, i know that i have learned the most during these years because of the reasons stated above.

I think the only thing that is a fraud is the "im old, respect me" that some, not all, old people pull when they are terribly disrespectful to others.

reply to post by TKDRL


My parents have always taught me that if a kid asks a question, and you try to talk around the answer, they will spot you for it. You're right, dont leave a kid in the dark, but give them an answer that informs them enough that their satisfied. And half the time thats "ill tell you when your older, kid" (i got that a lot as a young'n)

Sometimes kids make up their own answers when the dont ask their parents. When i was little, i didnt know how babies were made, i concluded from all of the movies i watched, that it was the kissing that got women pregnant. (the characters always kissed before the door closes. Cut scene to next morning)