Adolescence: An Inescapable Reality...or is it?

People in today's world often take for granted the stage of development called "adolescence", the supposed middle-ground between childhood and adulthood.

Adolescence is the time when youth are expected to rebel against their parents; it's the time when youth are expected to be lazy, un-motivated, disrespectful, etc. Sadly, most Christians accept the concept of adolescence as a seemingly normal, unavoidable stage in a child's development. This is another sad testimony to the church's conformity to the patterns of this world. (see Romans 12:2)

Here is a portion of an excellent article that exposes the "Invention of Adolescence":

Adolescence is now accepted by most Americans as a strange and difficult period marked by wild swings of mood, outbursts of temper, rudeness, rebelliousness, and personality changes — all involuntary.

They would be surprised to learn that this period was unknown, unrecognized, and unseen in every previous civilization, culture, and society throughout the immensely long history of humanity. It is, even today, unknown in large areas of the inhabited world... There was even a time when there were no adolescents.

That was, of course, a time beyond the memory of even our oldest inhabitants: a time before the Civil War, during the First American Republic. Our great social changes began after that conflict; after huge waves of immigration came via the new, safer steamboats; during the period when many Americans anxious for a higher, more complete education, went to Europe — and especially to Germany — to study...

[G. Stanley] Hall conducted numerous “studies” of children during the 1880s and 1890s... It was a time...when — in the name of science — human beings were being redefined by various individuals who claimed to possess supernormal powers of observation and insight...

Dr. Hall argued that childhood consisted of “three stages, each with a parallel in racial history” and each requiring certain set teaching approaches. Infancy and early childhood were equal to pre-stages of culture, and parent/teachers should allow the child to play with blocks and to exercise freely. At six or seven, he believed the child experienced various crises leading to the “pre-adolescent” years of eight to twelve, when behavior is comparable to “the world of early pigmies and other so-called savages.’”[1]

At this point (six or seven) the child was, in Dr. Hall’s view, ready for school — and its discipline. But a new period of crisis, he believed, arrived between thirteen and eighteen — which he termed adolescence.

Hall compared this to ancient and medieval civilizations...

Read the rest of the article at the Vision Forum Ministries website.