Chapter 3

Martha & Mark: Teenagers, TCKs, and Adolescents

            Living about 1900 years after Mary and Peter, Martha and Mark were also teenagers and third culture kids (TCKs).  However, they lived in twentieth century western culture, so they were adolescents as well.  Because they were 13, 14, …, 18, and19 years of age, they were teenagers.  During their developing years they lived many years in a culture other than their parents’ passport culture, so they were TCKs.  Their passport culture was twentieth century United States of America after western culture had invented adolescence.

            Martha and Mark were not their well-known namesakes mentioned in the Bible.  However, their parents chose those names in honor of those two people mentioned in the Bible.  Both Martha’s parents and Mark’s parents were missionaries who began their missionary service in the early 1940s.  Martha and Mark were my cousins.  Martha and I shared a set of grandparents on my mother’s side.  Mark and I shared a set of great-grandparents on my father’s side.

Martha

            Martha’s parents were called to be missionaries in Africa, but war was brewing across the Atlantic in Europe.  To avoid those hostilities, in the spring of 1941 they set sail on the Zamzam, a neutral Egyptian passenger ship heading south along the coast of South America.  When the captain thought they were finally far enough south to be out of danger, he turned the Zamzam east across the Atlantic heading around the Horn of Africa.  However, on April 17, 1941, A German warship hit the Zamzam with 55 shells, and the ship sank within a matter of hours.  Picked up by the very ship that had sunk them, not one of the 144 missionaries and 33 TCKs on board was lost.  They spent 32 days on another German ship that dropped them off in Occupied France after running the British blockade.

After the war, Martha and her parents made it to the heart of Africa where she grew up with Burundi as her host culture.  She and her four siblings grew up between America and Africa, first crossing the Atlantic by ship, and later flying between her two cultures.  She returned to the USA to stay only when she went to college, as is the case with so many TCKs.  However, since it was the mid-twentieth century, Martha was not only a teenager and a TCK, but she was also an adolescent.

Mark

            Mark’s parents were called to be missionaries in Asia.  To reach Asia they set sail across the Pacific in the fall of 1941.  Although war made travel across the Atlantic very dangerous, reaching Asia across the Pacific seemed possible.  Rumors circulated about potential problems in the Pacific, but that region of the world seemed, like its name, peaceful.  They were making good progress in crossing the ocean planning to stop in Hawaii as so many ships did.  They sailed into Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the very day that Japan had attacked it!  Though unharmed by the Japanese attack, their way to where God had called them was blocked.

            Mark and his parents later made it to Asia where he grew up with India as his host culture.  He and his brother grew up between America and Asia; first crossing the Pacific by ship and later flying between his cultures.  He also returned to the USA to stay only when he went to college.  However, since it was the mid-twentieth century, like Martha, Mark was not only a teenager and a TCK, but he was also an adolescent.

            What had changed that both Martha and Mark were now adolescents?  What had happened was that between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century western culture had invented adolescence.  This new “stage” of development was a cultural creation.

What is an adolescent?

            The dictionary defines an adolescent as a boy or girl between childhood and adulthood, the period of life between puberty and maturity.  Adolescent comes to us from the Latin word adolescentia, which is from adolescens, which is the present participle of adolescere from ad (to) and olescere (grow).  So, adolescent literally means the growing one.

            When people come to a lot of Latin words and grammatical terms like “present participle,” they tend to skip over all that “technical stuff.”  If you did that with the last paragraph, go back and take a close look at it.

Yes, please go back and look at the Latin!

Does it sound familiar? 

It should—(unless you skipped over a similar paragraph in the first chapter)!

            Those sentences are from the first chapter:

            Adult comes from the Latin word adultus which is the past participle of adolescere from ad (to) and olescere (grow).  So adult literally means the grown one. 

            Look at that!  Although they appear to be very different in English, adolescent and adult both come from the same Latin root.  The only difference is that adolescent is the present participle and adult is the past participle.  An adolescent is a “growing one” and an adult is a “grown one!”  For the Romans, adolescents were people in their growth spurts and adults where people who had finished their growth spurts—even if they were still teenagers. 

            Does that mean that Jesus (and Mary, and Peter, and everyone who lived then) were adolescents?  Yes, if you use the literal definition, that they had growth spurts.  For about a year they would have been called adolescents, and when their growth spurt was over they would have been called adults.  However, adolescence no longer means only that time of rapid growth.  Its meaning has changed radically.

Changes, changes, changes!

            Several changes took place between the middle of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century.

• Puberty originally defined.  If puberty marks the end of childhood (which everyone agrees it does), what does puberty mean?  Take one more look at the Latin root!  Puberty comes to us from the Latin pubertas which means “of ripe age, adult.”  Look at that!  Puberty literally means the beginning of adulthood.
• Definition of puberty changed.  Just as the meaning of adolescence has changed, so has the meaning of puberty.  Today the dictionary defines puberty as the age of sexual maturity, the age at which people are capable of having children.  It is now the beginning of adolescence, not the beginning of adulthood.  The dictionary goes on to say that the law generally fixes the age of puberty at 14 in the male and 12 in the female—about the ages at which the Talmud stated people could marry.  Does that mean that Jesus (and Mary, and Peter, and everyone who lived then) went through puberty?  Of course, they did.  That was the end of their childhood.  However, rather than entering into our culturally created stage of adolescence, they entered into adulthood because they were “of ripe age, adult.”  As noted in the first chapter, they could marry, participate as adults in religious ceremonies, and were held legally responsible for their behavior. They were adults and no longer children.

• Age of puberty changed.  The meaning of adolescence has changed.  The meaning of puberty has changed.  Has anything else changed?  Yes, the average age at which puberty occurs changed between the middle of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century.  Reviewing more than 200 studies including more than 200,000 women over a period of nearly 200 years, two individuals at Harvard Medical School (Grace Wyshak and Rose Frisch, “Evidence for a Secular Trend in Age of Menarche,” The New England Journal of Medicine, April 29, 1982, pp. 1033-1035) found a dramatic change in the age at which women in the western world began menstruating.  Of the 65 studies before 1880, not a single one found an average age below 14.5.  Of the 24 studies done since 1950, only one found an average age above 14.5.  The same thing has happened in men.  When Bach was choirmaster in Leipzig more than 200 years ago, boys sang soprano until they were about 17; today their voices change at 13 or 14. 
• Age of adulthood changed.  The meaning of adolescence has changed.  The meaning of puberty has changed.  The average age at which puberty occurs has changed.  Has anything else changed?  Yes, the final change that created adolescence was the change at which people are considered adults.  As noted in the first chapter, before adolescence was invented people were considered adults at 12 and 14 (for women and men) and could marry and work and were expected to provide for themselves and their families.  Those ages did not change over a 3000 year period.  The changes have taken place only during the last 200 years.  Today in western culture people are often not allowed to marry and work until they are at least 18 years of age.  Just as the age of puberty was dropping, the legal age of adulthood was increasing.

If adolescence is defined as the time between puberty and adulthood, that time did not exist until the last two centuries.  People went from childhood to adulthood at the age of puberty, so there was no time between them.  The changes in the age of puberty and the age of adulthood that created adolescence are shown in Figure 1.

 Figure 1.  The invention of adolescence during the last two centuries

            Defined as the time between puberty and adulthood, adolescence simply did not exist before 1850.  People became adults at about the age of puberty, so they went directly from childhood to adulthood at that time.  Only with the combination of the decrease in the age of puberty and the increase of the age at which people became adults do we have modern adolescence.

What can adolescent TCKs do?

            You, as adolescents (really adults), have been changed into “children” by your culture.  People your age in the past (until 150 years ago) were full adult members of their cultures, but you are required to remain dependent “children.”  Of course, this makes little logical sense, but you are powerless to change your culture right now.  Talk it over with your parents and develop ways to handle this situation in your own family, and perhaps talk it over with others in your mission agency and/or church as well.

            Ask your parents and others in your agency to treat you as adults, to hold you responsible for whatever you do.  If you act like adults, they will continue to treat you as adults.  However, if you do not act responsibly, they will stop treating you as adults.  If/When that happens, accept it and begin acting responsibly even though they are treating you as children.  When you have proven to them that you are acting as adults, ask them to give you another chance to be adults.

            If you have lived in a culture where adolescence has not yet been incorporated, you probably find this chapter easier to understand than those who have lived in only one culture.  That is a distinct advantage you have.  Your parents also have a broader view of development in other cultures, so you should find it easier to work out a compromise with them.