Work Forbidden/School Required
Although the loss of identity and the forbidding of marriage are probably the two most important aspects of the invention of adolescence, this whole cultural phenomenon has many other implications. Turning adults into children influenced every part of teenagers’ lives. In these final chapters we will consider three other aspects of adolescence.
First, to turn teenagers from adults into children (adolescents), western culture passed laws against their working to support themselves and made them dependent on their parents. We will look at this in Chapter 15
Second, these newly created children were unemployed and getting into trouble, and adults felt that it was unfair to expect children to obey adult laws, so they created juvenile delinquency. Basically a delinquent act was defined as an act that would be a crime if an older person did it. We will look at this in Chapter 16.
Finally, since these newly created children were not allowed to work, the culture had to find something for them to do, so it invented high school. Then the culture required the adolescents to spend a particular number of hours in school each day for a specific number of days each year.