Youth and Human Rights Discussion
Host Mike Males

Participant
I guess the simple answer for why fear, loathing, and discrimination towards youth exist would be the same reason it all existed for women and racial minorities. The power structures were created at one point in our history (going way back with women and children, and not so far back with blacks) based on strength and physical power. Men were able to dominate in the family because they were physically stronger. Likewise the more technologically advanced Europeans were able to dominate the Africans.

In order to justify this unequal relationship in our minds, a rationale was created to make the situation seem natural. Scientists proclaimed women, racial minorities and youth to be inferior. All aspects of the culture found ways to justify the current situation; these became ingrained and turned into racism, sexism and ageism.

Currently we are dealing with ageism. At times it is irrational, other times it uses (junk) science to back up its claims, some times there is a legitimate basis for it.

Of course it’s far more complicated than that, but for a universal rationale, it works.

As for differences over the last few hundred years going from the situation Richard described where children were included but neglected to the situation we have today I have a bit of an explanation. Taken somewhat from Lloyd Demise’s "Nightmare of Childhood". When survival of children was a big question the strategy of parents was to have as many as possible and hope some survive. Parents never got too attached to any because it was never known how long they would last (and perhaps there were too many).

Things have changed now that technology and medicine is to the point where there is a very high chance children will survive to adulthood—in the developed world, at least. This, together with contraception and economic considerations, has changed child-bearing strategy and parents have far, far fewer children. This creates the situation where all their eggs (no pun intended) are in one basket. Thus parents are far more protective, controlling, and restrictive to their children.

Can this be undone? Should it be? How?

Participant
Putting connotations on words is a tricky thing. I never felt that our use of the word "kids" was "putting down our children". I recall the joy of our friends when we issued an invitation with "bring the kids", and more often than not expressions of joy when our "kids" heard the same invitation.

I repeat my statement in #9 "a person of 15 is quite different from one of 25". What word would you think would be better for informal invitations that include the whole family?

Participant
I use "children". But even that term has its bad connotations. Some of the other advocates for the rights of minors use "youth" to distinguish between elementary school children and adolescents. They fear that lumping all young people together would make it difficult to secure rights for adolescents, and no doubt they're right. I tend to feel, however, that full Constitutional protections should be extended to all ages.

I think Mike will probably have some comments about how we distinguish between fifteen year olds and twenty-five year olds.

Participant
One of the problems in studying or assessing the capabilities of children and youth is that they are a subjugated class. It would be like studying blacks before the fifties or women before the seventies.

Participant
Referring back to a remark Doug Carmichael made about our continuing use of the term "kids", I too have often wondered why even those of us who advocate their rights sometimes use that mildly pejorative term, when we would be careful not to use "gals". It is a catchier word, surely. An advertising copywriter would point out the power of short words starting with "k". While a member of the board of the International Design Conference in Aspen wrestling with the problem of what to title a conference devoted to designs for children, the program chairmen wanted just the title, "Kids". Easy to understand their desire, but we ultimately didn't use that word, because of its pejorative nature.

Participant
Maybe you could get a more realistic handle for thinking about the maturity and rights of young humans by starting at birth. Wouldn't everyone agree that the term "subjugated class" does not apply to babies?

Then move up the age scale to where a first application of "subjugated" seems to have some validity. Try to define when and how it does apply and what might be valid mitigations of these "injustices". And then continue up the age scale until adulthood -- would that be 21?

What I am trying to get at is what appears to me to be a flawed application of "subjugated class" to both blacks and kids.

Participant
The term subjugate refers to the exercise of power by one group over another. Most people do not believe that blacks or women were subjugated, so that term may be too loaded, but of course they were held under the power of whites or men, or in the case of children, adults. When we hold such a group out of power, we cannot help but blind ourselves to their potential. We do not really see them, and paradoxically the more interdependent we are with children, the less we can see their potential, because of that particular blindness that comes from our attitudes about what they are capable of. That's why it was Southern whites who were most resistant to black liberation, and husbands and employers who were most resistant to women's liberation.

So, of course, babies are the most subjugated.

This may be just the kind of discussion Mike would want to avoid, but the question of when a person needs the full protection of the Constitution probably starts before birth. The fact that babies are dependent upon others, does not mean that they should not have the full rights, even if they would need help in exercising them, as do the elderly, disabled, etc. Any arbitrary age limit is going to eliminate some highly talented and capable individuals. The younger children will always need advocates. But I think Mike is trying to focus on adolescents, where the differences between adults and youth are almost meaningless, and would even be less so if discrimination weren't so great.

Participant
Dick: do you mean to apply the word "subjugate" and apply it to ALL children. I would accept "subjugate" as valid for many cases of child rearing, but for these discussions feel the need to include the words loving and mentoring as equally valid.

I would be surprised if there were not many of our fellow ILFers who could give us valid stories of my words and which would give targets to aim at along with actions and attitudes to be avoided.

Participant
Don, it isn't that we don't love children. We do. Subjugated populations often are treated with love and attention. Women were adored. Southern plantation owners often loved their slaves. It's not a matter of denying them love, but denying them full personhood under the law.

Most subjugation is done in the belief that it is "for their own good". We can't let our benign intentions blind us to the realities of the condition of childhood in America. In America, childhood is nothing short of a disability. And yes, that applies to all children: in compulsory education, in the juvenile justice system, in libraries where they cannot obtain certain kinds of information, in employment, in curfew laws, in the economy, in their de facto segregation, in many circumstances beyond the control of loving parents.

Civil rights are not meant to protect us only from bad people; they exist mainly to protect us from people who think they know what's good for us.

I'm sure Mike will get to the research evidence comparing teenagers with young adults. It is quite illuminating.

Donald Pelz of the University of Michigan's Safety Research Institute advised that we would be better off if children were taught to drive at age ten, rather than waiting until fifteen or sixteen. I think we have to give children more than just rights. I don't see that it is up to the child to figure out how to drive, or to do anything else now prohibited. I think we need to redesign much of physical and social America to accommodate the potential of children, just as we are doing for the disabled. It is a matter of concern to all of us, and we will all benefit.

As an aside, in response to Alex's note about drinking, in America, before child labor laws were passed (not so much to protect children as to get women out of the labor market) it was common for ten year olds to stop at the local tavern after work and knock back a beer.

Mike Males
Richard-- True overall, but I have to admit some disagreement. I don't think

Americans love children at all. Certainly, most parents love their own children, but as a society, I would say Americans' general attitude toward children and adolescents varies from indifference to outright hostility. The intensity of anger with which Americans describe youths in forums and the media are flabbergasting, and we back them up with harsh policies. We are willing to subject other peoples' kids (opk) to dangerous, debilitating, even deadly conditions.

There are some similarities between the subjugation of children and teens and those of blacks or women (certainly, the terms we typically use to discuss youths would be called hate speech if applied to any other group) which other discussants point out well, but one difference is paramount--subjugation based on young age is temporary. Turn 21, and suddenly your drinking becomes an individual matter, not a behavior reflecting the collective sins of your entire age group; after age 25, drinking problems are seen as entirely individual. It’s the same with other behaviors. Last week, Knight-Ridder ran a piece by the usual gang of panicky expert sources excoriating teenage girls for being (supposedly) more aggressive with boys today, implying all sorts of sexual disasters from this "new" pushy girl--well, wasn't gender equality seen as a goal for adults? Alex's work organizing teens as a political force is hampered by the fact that youths "pass" into adult privilege simply by aging, making the rare "Clarence Thomas phenomenon" of blacks identifying with white oppressors routine for teens as they age into identifying more with adult interests. The fact that teens know they will become adults leads many teens to identify with adults even during younger years--what I call the "teen panel syndrome," or the tendency of youths appointed to panels to side with adults in asserting terrible behaviors by their peers. Lots of disputable theories there, but then, I am a sociologist.

Participant
We're not in disagreement in the least, Mike. When I said we love children, I was responding to Don's comment about good childrearing, and I should have said that we love our own children. And we can love other children too. But children as a class, particularly adolescents as a class, are regarded negatively by U.S. adults, particularly when it comes to policy matters, legislation, control, etc.

And, yes, the fundamental difference between children and women or blacks is that children grow out of their discriminatory status. That's no doubt why they are less concerned, and why adults are less concerned for them. In designing our society, however, we need to remember that childhood lasts many years, and when a child reaches maturity there is a new one to take his or her place. There will always be a class of people called children that represents a huge proportion of our U.S. population, more than half in some other cultures. So we need to design for children, even though they do grow out of it.

The fact that children on "teen panels" speak in ways that denigrates their peers is surely identification with the power group. We saw some of the same behaviors in the early days of women's liberation. While we tend to forget now, women were their own worst enemies in those days. Perhaps that is true for any group caught in between oppression and liberation.

Participant
Noah cursed his son Ham and cast him out simply because Ham accidentally saw Noah naked—as he really was. Perhaps adults just hate kids to see the adults as they really are. Perhaps teenagers are particularly aware of the injustices, the hypocrisy, the exploitation, etc that underlie our adult society. Most of the adult efforts in child rearing seem geared only to keep children relatively safe from severe harm and to ensure that when the kids reach adulthood they will embrace our cultural norms—be able to function within our system.

Given that the norms of behavior on which our country was founded include conquest by force, legalized injustice, exploitation, subjugation and slavery, perhaps we are right to fear what our children will see in us. Maybe it's even understandable that we would hate them for seeing us.

Derrick Jensen, in his book The Culture of Make Believe, has done an outstanding piece of research into the underlying behaviors and hatreds that characterize America. While the subject matter is terrible and is presented with no gloss, making it uncomfortable to read, it is a worthy book. The bibliography alone runs something like 30 pages.

Participant
There is, of course, no way for me to step into this flow of ideas as if I had been here from the beginning—so I won't try to do that. I've read only the introduction and a half-dozen of the early responses to get some sense of direction.

Two thoughts I'll dare to put on the table, and then I'll go back to recent comments and do a bit of homework.

1. I've found Dick's oft-expressed views about the rights of children rather hard to relate to, and now I find the same think about Mike's. This is because, I suppose, the children and grandchildren and their peers to whom I have been exposed seem not to fit the descriptions I'm hearing about the distress of youth. For the past ten months we, in our 80's, have had the care responsibility for a 14- year-old granddaughter. (Mercifully, this will soon change!) I've learned much from her, but none of it fits the patterns I'm reading about here. For example, she reads ten books for every one that I read; her favorite magazine at the moment is the Atlantic; etc. Not long ago I playfully recited about half of the Gettysburg Address, after which she pointed out that I had left out a line. Is she suffering in some ways that I do not, but should, understand?

2. An observation of Mike's, 'way back there, was: "The problem is that I believe American society rewards immature behavior in adults--self-indulgence, primarily--and tacitly demands that adolescents fulfill adult roles while punishing them for doing so."

This I resonate with! And where I see it is in snatches of TV and movies. We are setting up role models of which we do not approve. Isn't this somewhat like shooting one's self in the foot?

Glad to be back in harness!

Mike Males

Raymond-- my experience with teens largely has been positive as well, and I don't get why so many adults lose all perspective when "teenager" is mentioned. The Youth Conservation Corps youths I worked with as an adult crew leader in national park backcountries for months on end during several summers--a random, computer selection of high schoolers ages 14-18--were great workers (on hard-labor projects such as trail maintenance, bridge building, revegetation, and painting), regulated themselves well, and were wonderful company. I'd be curious if you have any observations about the CCC's of the 1930s, a great book about whom is Soil Soldiers by Leslie Warren.

A few teenagers were jerks, just like a few 40-agers are jerks. I recently reviewed a number of objective surveys of modern adolescent attitudes and values by various institutions and they consistently show that 80-90% of teens are happy, self-confident, get along well with parents, like their friends, and like their lives. Now, maybe they're delusional, but I find the relentless campaign by so many authorities to brand youths as miserable, suicidal, rebellious against parents, betrayed by backstabbing friends, and self-hating to be truly pathological--what kind of responsible grownup authorities TRY to make their kids feel terrible about themselves?

I think the fear campaign to commodity adolescents as crazed and fearsome is

profit-driven. Scaring parents and teachers means ka-ching! for a greedy cabal of otherwise unemployable treatment-industry, drug-war, prison, addiction, consultant, and institutional fear mongers and poll points for politicians. A few kids need heavy services, but they tend to be obvious--there is no "hidden" teenage dope or killer devil-cult conspiracy lurking in the shadows of the suburbs. There are 'way more spelling-bee achievers than addicted trainspotters, but guess who News at 11 would rather feature as the typical youth.

Frankly, I don't believe in free speech for fear entrepreneurs seeking to profit from scaring people about their kids. If even a semblance of their terror tales were true, every teenager in America would be dead ten times over. I'd like to see the fraudulent claims by youth-fixing-industries hyping mass teen suicide, addiction, and like pathologies prosecuted under the same false-advertising regulations that (supposedly) govern lying marketing schemes by other medical industries. No, in a word, trust your own judgment and don't believe the scare campaign--your kid and grandkid are a lot saner than the image self-interested crazies dominating the media are trying to sell.

Participant
The battle for youth rights has been a long and difficult one. Part of the reason is that we know many children like Ray's granddaughter who do not seem, as individuals, to be the least oppressed. I remember in the mid-sixties, when I first became aware of the deeply entrenched discrimination against women, and began writing and speaking about it, the major obstacle to progress in that movement was the feeling, on the part of both men and women, that women were not at all victims. Indeed, they were protected, accommodated and adored—on a pedestal. They loved having their cigarettes lighted and doors opened. Some few were able to achieve high positions as professors, doctors, architects. What was the big deal?

A new consciousness about the plight of women was slow in coming. Women, themselves, took a long time to develop an awareness of the unfairness of being held out of leadership roles, of receiving half of mens' pay for the same job, of discrimination in hiring, admission to professional schools, etc. etc. Graduating MBA's were not surprised or even insulted by being asked how fast they could type. Thanks to pervasive consciousness-raising, those days are behind us, and considerable legislation and practice has made a significant difference for women.

It has been more difficult for youth. Not only are they unaware, and consequently, like women, were their own worst enemy, but they are so without power, and seemingly in need of protection, not rights, that progress is slower. For those of us who often see such high achieving and delightful youngsters as Ray's granddaughter, it is only when we start examining the institutions that deal with youth that we can see the problem. We have to look hard at the media images that Mike is talking about, compulsory education, corporal punishment, juvenile justice, labor legislation, voting rights, age discrimination in practically every area, to say nothing of rampant child abuse, that we can appreciate the need for change. We need intensive education and consciousness raising on youth issues similar to that which women experienced.

It would be beneficial for all of us. Until recently, we were systematically denying the leadership, creativity, and professional contributions of women, half our population. Children and youth, again almost half our population, are similarly excluded from such contributions. So, failing to heed the condition of childhood in America isn't just about the victimization they experience in classrooms and juvenile jails, but the resources they represent that we are denying ourselves as a society.

Participant
Is there something wrong with these sentences?

Women "were protected, accommodated and adored--on a pedestal."

"A new consciousness about the plight of women was slow in coming. Women, themselves, took a long time to develop an awareness of the unfairness of being held out of leadership roles . . ."

Have we, perhaps, lost sight of the objective and therefore redoubled our efforts?

Certainly women are better off—by men's standards—as a result of these efforts. Are they any happier—collectively?

And so, I have to wonder—at least a little—about:

"We need intensive education and consciousness-raising on youth issues, similar to that which women experienced."

"It is only when we start examining the institutions that deal with youth that we can see the problem."

Then I wonder if we are looking in the right places? Do we, perhaps, see the end result of the problem rather than the problem itself? Does the problem lie deeper or further back? Are we trying to fix it by treating the symptoms?

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