All in North America (and probably in other “Western” countries) know about teenaged angst. Bart Simpson said, I think quite accurately, “Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel.”
Being a teenager is commonly associated with feeling sad and lonely, feeling like nobody understands you, often accompanied with questioning your own self-worth and “lovability”. I know that I went through many of these things when a teenager, as did most of my friends.
Is this a human condition, perhaps spurned on by body changes, or is it cultural? Do teenagers in China, India, Bangladesh, U.A.E., Uzbekistan or any other non-Westernized countries feel this way, or is theirs a different experience?
Here in Hong Kong we must get at least one teenage girl a week jumping off a building because of her grades. But that may have more to do with the pressure of that phase than the age.
My guess is that it is of course hormonal, but the degree to which it is expressed is cultural. From my (limited) experience in 3rd world countries, it doesn’t seem to be quite as much as a problem, mainly because there are more “real” problems to be concerned about, and also perhaps because family bonds tend to be tighter there. Not to mention that it’s hard to be alienated from your parents if you are expected to take over the family business, which is quite common in 3rd world countries.
On the other hand, there are problems, and the “kids these days…” sentiment among adults seemed constant to me.
The question that you ask was the subject of study of one of America’s most famous anthropologists, Maragaret Mead, in her book Coming of Age in Samoa: a psychological study of primitive youth for Western Civization (1930). Mead claimed that in Samoa, the stress and angst associated with adolescence here was absent. This she attributed to a number of factors: a living pattern that allowed a teen to stay with another family member when stress arose with parents or other family mebers, a social structure that placed raising of the children on the extended family and demephasized the role of the parents, differing attiutudes and psychology regarding sexuality, etc.
Some anthropologists today dispute her findings, especially Derek Freeman, who has written two books on the matter. Freeman claims that for one, Mead was hoaxed by the Samoan girls, not uncommon in an ethnography. Perhaps more importantly, Mead had an agenda. Mead was a student of Franz Boas, the “father of American anthropology”. Boas considered it his life’s work to debunk eugeniscists who claimed that race was determinitive of behavior; Boas believed in cultural determinism. Critics say Boas sent Mead to Samoa with the agenda of proving cultural determinism. She was to demontstrate how differing social orgaizations led to radically different psychological makeups, and that culture was more determinative of human behavior than race. So, she went looking for a lack of “teen angst”, found data that supported her theory, and ignored that that didn’t. Debunking eugenics is a noble endeavor, but Freeman claims mead and Boas went too far, to the extent that they did bad reasearch and misrepreseted a culture. Freeman claims that Samoan culture is far from the idyllic peacefulness described by Mead, and that violence, sexual repression, and teen angst was just as common there in Mead’s time as it was and is America.
Most modern ethnographers and anthropologists haven’t come to any more agreement than Mead and Freeman. Some say teen angst is a universal, some say that certain conditions cause it in certain cultures, etc. etc., with every mix between the two, part of the problem being the subjectivity of the observation being made. My broadly stated WAG: the changes in body and life associated with adolesence create the possiblity of psychological distress that is acted on in countless ways within and across cultures.
I think it is the change from being a kid to an adult that can cause these problems. Right now, I’m 22 years old, and I am still having these problems. Major life changes cause these type of feelings, no matter how old you are. They used to think that kids were too young to get depressed, and that adults were the only ones who could get depressed. How wrong they were!
There are cultural differences. Teens in this country are looked down on and are called stupid. How many times do you hear that in the news? That sure doesn’t help anything. Also, the family isn’t stressed enough in this country, and there are a lot of lamo parents out there who don’t provide the support and structure that every kid needs. I think that goes back to the primitive thinking that kids cannot get depressed or have high levels of stress. Throughout my teen years, I’ve experienced depression, moderate levels of stress, moodiness, and apathy. My parents understood the depression part, but they were like, “We experience more stress than you do because you are only so old”. Well, everyone handles stress differently, and teenagers don’t handle stress as well as adults do because they are still young and it is something they are still trying to get a grip on. A person in thier 40’s have a much greater hold on stress and anxiety than teenagers do just because of life experience and they grow tougher to things probably once very stressful in their lives. However, I think there might be a bioligical link also, but I don’t have any proof for that.
Phew. I was worried that it was my question that was at fault!
My completely uninformed opinion going into this was that Western society emphasizes teen angst by excusing it as a natural function. It may well be so, but I have suspected that excusing it gave teenagers a reason to act out irrationally upon their thoughts and feelings rather than dealing with them.
One thought I have is that the teenagers of Western society are rather “lost” in society, now more than ever. These kids are not really children any longer, yet are certainly not adults. They are given many rights, both by society and by their parents; such rights including a certain degree of self-reliance (permitted to make serious decisions without any guidance or control). However, I’m not certain that the responsiblities that come with the granting of rights are properly emphasized or explained. I’ve known many teenagers who seem to think that they are “owed” a certain standard of living or whatever (this is by no means meant to suggest that there are not many, many adults who think the same way or that there are not many, many teenagers who don’t).
pravnik, your detailed reference was very helpful. I think that information will give me a little direction so that I can read further into the subject and try to formulate my opinion on something other than my own WAG.
I’ve never been to India, U.A.E. or most other places, but I suspect that you are far less likely to find teens “acting out” in order to “discover themselves” or express their individuality. Then again, I may not know what I’m talking about. I’d sure like to hear from others with direct experience in other cultures.
There’s a book called “The Rise and Fall of the American Teeneager” that’s been in my to-read pile for a while now. According to the book jacket, the whole “idea” of teenage-dom (a period of transition between child and adult) is a relatively new concept. In the past relatively youthful people took on the full rights an responsibilities of adults.
When I was a teenager in the '80s, people were just starting to grasp the idea that teen issues should be acknowledged and dealt with, rather than shrugged off because “s/he’s at that age”. Of course, there was some resistance to this among adults, one of whom was a teacher of mine. “I don’t know what teenagers have to be ‘stressed’ about. You think it gets easier?” he growled.
What I didn’t get to say because he didn’t let me was that I thought that was hilarious, coming from someone of the generation that invented the midlife crisis. I thought, and still do think, that it’s a good idea to work through problems while your personality is still being formed, rather than establish a pattern of negative behavior that will crush you when you get into your 40s or 50s.
The years between 13 and 18 have never been easy, but they did used to be livable. What changed first, in the mid-20th century, was a lack of productive ways to channel one’s energy and mature through growth. What changed second, in the late 20th century, was a recognition that it shouldn’t be that way.
