Teen Emancipation

02.25.2011

At the check-out stand today, I noticed one of those tabloid magazines splashing the story about Miley Cyrus’s feud with her dad. I vaguely remember seeing something about it on Yahoo! but I don’t know the details nor do I care. However, based on the tabloid’s headline, I gathered that rumor has it that she has cut off her dad and the two are now not speaking. He’s apparently upset by all her partying and blames Hollywood for her out-of-control behavior. Frankly, I could write just on how it’s not Hollywood’s fault but I’ll leave that to the certified psychologists.

What this piece of valuable information about Miley Cyrus gave me, though, is thoughts about how teens behave and how we treat them. Are they rambunctious solely because it’s the hormones or are they like that solely because parents didn’t properly discipline at a young age? It’s like asking whether the chicken or the egg came first, I think, and I guess if forced to construct an opinion, I’d say that both nature and nurture are at play. Although, I’d probably err on the side of nurture more because if you instill proper discipline at a young age, teens will quickly learn what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

But my point is that I began to think about why our society designates “18” as an adult. Why that particular age? At one point in history, girls were married by the time they were 16 with at least one child. This would mean that they were already carrying what we today consider to be adult responsibilities. I know that with advances in education, borne out of the abolishment of child labor in America (if kids weren’t going to work anymore they had to go somewhere), the notion of what a child means to a family and what he/she can accomplish has changed. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I just think that we sort of act surprised when teens want to emancipate themselves from their families and I wonder how much of that is actually hard-wired.