My daughter really had no interest in driving and didn’t get her license until she was 20 or so. She couldn’t afford a car, much less insurance and upkeep so she saw no point. She has a few friends now around that age who don’t have licenses either.
It’s very strange to me too. In my day *everyone *wanted their license.
I’m 30 and have no license. As an adult, I’ve consciously chosen to live in cities with good transit options (and I prefer cities.) As a teen, all my friends lived within a couple of miles of me so I could walk to visit them, and I took the bus into the city to work and hang out. Asking for rides was never really an option for me, and I was very independent.
Why? One is money. Cars are money sinks, and they tend to generate unexpected multi-thousand dollar bills. I figures I would put the thousands I’d spend maintaining a car into travel- and I’ve had some good adventures.
The other is health and sanity. I can easily walk 2-6 miles a day just doing ordinary stuff. Its a lot easier to keep active when physical activity is a seamless part of your day. If I had a car, I’d have to go out of my way to get active, and realistically it probably wouldn’t happen. Its also important to me to be mentally engaged in my surroundings, and public transit gets me out in public, experiencing my community, and generally just being in the present.
Are we really “chauffeurs” just because we choose to drive our children where they need to go? It seems like the sensible thing to do when they aren’t ready to drive themselves for one reason or another.
I got my license when I turned 16 (7 years ago) but some of my friends didn’t get theirs until their senior year of high school. It seemed like most of them were either afraid or didn’t want to bother when parents/other friends would drive them. I didn’t understand it at the time and still don’t. I love driving and at the time enjoyed the freedom of effectively being able to do whatever I wanted (my parents weren’t really interested in where I was unless it was excessively late at night).
ETA: I shared a car with my mom (who was a stay at home mom and has epilepsy, and as time went on became more and more unable to drive) so I was lucky in that I only had to pay for gas, not insurance.
It’s true that some people live in big cities where having a car is not only not necessary, but a bit of a nuisance. BUT that does not address the point of the article.
*DISCLAIMER: What follows is not a nostalgic tribute to the Good Old Days. Just a description for those who are too young (and even whose parents may be too young) to remember this time. Decide for yourself whether it was better or worse. *
This is the crux of it, I believe: When I was a teen (late '60’s) living with your parents was restrictive, and independence required that you move out and get your own place. Parents were, if not actually The Enemy, then at least The Other, and there came a time as one approached chronological adulthood that we wanted to be on our own. We wanted to get out and away. And yes, support ourselves so that no one could tell us what to do.
Today teens have plenty of independence while still living at home. They certainly have a better lifestyle with their parents than they could afford if they moved out on any kind of starter wage. Back yonder you could move into a cheap apartment and get by even without a TV (although you probably needed a phone). Today, you really do need a cell phone and internet access, which means a decent computer, and on from there. Although I don’t think this phenomenon of boomerang kids (or kids who never left) can be blamed solely on the economy. There’s just less reason to go and more reason to stay.
For this generation, there’s plenty to do without ever leaving the house, or the sofa. Be in touch with your friends, watch movies, listen to music, skype/facetime, fall in love and get married, I guess. With cybersex available, you never have to leave home, PLUS no pregnancy worries! There was a time when one had to go outside the house to be in touch with anyone who didn’t live under the same roof (well, you could sit on the phone with the really short cord and talk until one of your parents yelled to get off the phone because they were expecting a call), to see a movie, and to buy records. [Lest you think I’m calling the kettle black, I’m perfectly capable of sitting on my own sofa for 12 hours at a stretch with my laptop and the TV remote.]
I’m now wandering off topic a bit… My generation was the one that decided we had to be like our kids and be friends with them-- to dress like them, talk like them, listen to their music, and be part of their culture. My parents’ generation was adult, which was different from being a kid, and when we were kids/teens, we aspired to grow up so we could be like them and enjoy the privileges that were denied to us because, well… because we were KIDS and kids didn’t get to do whatever they wanted. Our worlds/cultures were separate and didn’t intersect much.
It is my impression that now there is no strong distinction or delineation between the world of adults and the world of teens/children. I believe this change is at the root of the fascination with the world of Mad Men and other retro shows/films-- kids today are amazed at how different grown-ups were back when there was a grown-up culture. **We **were fascinated by the “Otherness,” too, which fueled our desire to wear makeup & heels/suit & tie, smoke, drive, travel, and be independent. To experience the Mysteries of Adulthood that were closed to you until you reached that magic age. Now the situation is reversed and adults are dressing like grade schoolers, getting tattoos/piercings, wearing jeans all the time. I can remember as a married adult, being turned away from a nice restaurant because one of our party was wearing jeans. Jeans were for kids, not adults. I still have some older women friends who don’t own any jeans. [/ramble]
man, Yogi Berra’s just phoning it in these days.
I’ve noticed it and it is strange to me. My son is almost 17 and doesn’t want a license. Same with a friend’s son who is the same age. We are in the county with almost no public transportation so the only options are to walk or get a ride. I know other teens and even older who don’t want to drive. Boggles my mind. I couldn’t wait to drive and once I got my license I volunteered to run all the errands. Any excuse to use the car.
I didn’t get my license until I was 18. Why did I wait? Because I didn’t want to have to pay the 2-300 dollars in order to take the drivers ed class.
But, if I tested after 18, it was free.
That depends. I don’t know what public transit is like in Memphis, or how old your kids are, it may well be perfectly appropriate for you to drive them where they need to go.
In the situation I described upthread the kids in question are 16 and 18. IMO, driving them around when they have access to public transportation is babying them to a degree I find both absurd and counterproductive to the whole purpose of raising children, which is to teach them independence.
y’know, a couple people here brought up gas prices. That actually might be a good point. When I got my license, gas was still under a buck a gallon. Now, even my small-ish car (a Neon) takes about $36 to fill the tank. with the jobs available to someone under 18, that can represent a significant expense.
I got my license at 16 (in 1985-ish), but didn’t own a car or have access to one on a regular basis for 10 years after that. But I lived in a place with public transportation. How did I get around? Train/bus, bike, and my own two feet. My mom certainly didn’t chauffeur me around - she was working full-time, and even when she wasn’t, she thought I should be independent.
I touched on this issue in my topic last year of At what point does a grownup not doing grownup things seem strange to you? I drive, but the vast majority of my friends - who are all in their early 20’s - do not have driver’s licenses. Believe me, I don’t quite understand it either.
Still, I think a lot of it can be boiled down to a few things. I mean, I got my DL at 18 in a state in which the legal age for driving begins at 16, so the fact that I was slightly late to the table on this one can attest to the idea that I can at least relate to these issues:
General uneasiness with learning to drive - Nowadays, whenever I sit behind the wheel of my car I encounter no nervousness & driving itself is second nature to me; still, when I first started to drive I was very uneasy about the whole process. Compound that with my second point and it becomes an even greater issue.
High schools generally don’t offer driver’s ed anymore - In the school district in which I was enrolled, there was only a single HS (out of about five) that actually offered driver’s ed, and mine obviously wasn’t one of them. This means that kids (and the parents who finance them) will have to take the extra step of seeking outside driver’s training if they want to learn to drive, and those classes can cost quite a bit of money.
Kids just generally aren’t motivated to drive - Things like the internet and social media sites have made kids a lot more content to just sit on there asses at home; they actually have shit to do that will occupy their time in their rooms instead of feeling bored and anxious to get out of the house.
Parents are more accommodating - Just look at some of the posts in this thread; parents seem to be more willing to chauffer their kids around whenever they want to go anywhere. If those kids always have rides when they need them, then why would they need to drive in the first place?
Driving is expensive - This is probably the clearest point. In the absence of driver’s ed in schools, learning to drive is expensive; buying a car is expensive too, and the gas money involved in driving, when coupled with the upkeep costs of the vehicle and the insurance payments, can potentially make the prospect of driving prohibitively costly. Unless a kid has parents who are willing to finance all of that (or at least a substantial amount of it), he or she might choose not to drive because the costs are too great.
There’s a whole swath of issues I could still touch on. Let me just say, though, that in my case the motivation for learning to drive wasn’t an issue; I took the public bus to school the ENTIRE four years of HS and I absolutely fucking HATED it, so driving freed myself of that nuissance.
Seriously, public transit, at least where I live, is a fuckin’ nightmare. I wouldn’t wish that shit on anybody.
I never learned to drive. I got as far as the class, which I passed – but the driver’s ed teacher said he was going to pass me “on the condition that he wipes his hands of any blood that it will cause”.
Yeah, that didn’t inspire much confidence in me so I never went in for the official test. I never liked driving - it was nerve wracking. The only reason I took the class was because it was required to graduate. Yes, I got a lot of rides from my parents. I was spoiled - the only time I didn’t get a ride to/from school was middle school when it was within easy walking distance.
These days there is no way that I will pay for insurance or gas, and I live in a smallish town that still manages to have easy access to NYC and the local shopping mall via buses or trains. I also take the bus to work (not NYC).
And now that I am moving in December to a major European city with ridiculously easy public transportation… I doubt I will ever learn to drive. Fine by me. 
I was thinking about that too.
I mean time was if your three friends could scrounge together $5 they could drive around all afternoon. Now that would barely cover getting to a friend’s house and back, much less “going somewhere.” And depending on state law, you might not be allowed to drive a carful of your friends at all.
I myself grew up in a highly urbanized area (my parents don’t even own a car for me to borrow, and my HS didn’t give driver’s ed – I had to use a driving school to get my license). However I remember one summer after my freshman year of college (1994) my friend and I drove 620 miles to Ann Arbor MI just for shits & giggles. We took her 1982 Corolla – ~35mpg highway. The trip cost $17 each way in gas! (gas was like $1/gal for regular). I had a job making $8.25/hr! The open road, the Ohio turnpike… The world was our oyster!
Gas is up, wages have stagnated. That trip would cost $70 either way today, and represent 9 hours of work at $8.25 – which is still above minimum wage.
Why the question even needs to be asked when this is so obviously the answer boggles my mind. Back when I got my license in 98 (at the age of 16, for the record), gas was a buck a gallon. I even didn’t have to buy a car because I inherited one from a relative. All I had to pay for was the insurance.
But without that specific set of circumstances I would definitely have been biking it a lot longer than I did.
Today, in addition to cost, laws have made it harder for teens to drive. Some restrict how long you have to wait between your permit and your license while others make it illegal for kids under 18 to drive anywhere after 9 PM. What’s the point in having a license if your parents still have to drive you if you want to go somewhere on Friday night?
Another thing to think about is that nowadays a lot of teens share a car. I don’t mean they pool their money and buy one car for ten people, but I’ve noticed that one teen will have a car and they become the driver for all their friends. So all of the independence, but a lot fewer licenses. Back in my teenage years, the situation was more or less the same, but we all had licenses too.
Growing up in the 80’s, I counted the days until I could drive by myself, even though I had no real reason for one. But this was for 2 reasons that may not apply to this generation:
Access to unsupervised socialization and discovery of the world. Half the reason I got a drivers license was to investigate boobs. With all the porn out there now, the phenomenon is sufficiently documented that many young men probably see no need to rush into independent verification. (on the flip side, same thing for girls, but maybe porn is more of a warning about intimacy than a surrogate for it).
It was a rite-of-passage thing and a status thing… everybody else got theirs, you didn’t want to send the signal that you weren’t of age, or weren’t of means.
So once you get enough people foregoing licenses for practical purposes, then the peer pressure aspect starts to fall apart.
When I turned 16 my mom tried to teach me to drive. It turned out that I had a phobia . . . totally froze at a 5-way intersection; we had to switch seats so she could drive through . . . and home.
I finally took lessons when I was 30. Since then I’ve absolutely loved driving. Sometimes I just go out and drive, with no destination in mind.
This is the reason for me. I wanted my license, I got my learners, but it’s hard to take the test when you can’t afford lessons and no one willing or able to teach you, and when I was 16 it was significantly cheaper to do so than now. 500 or so for lessons, plus learner permit fees, plus test fees, plus license fee once you pass the test.
I couldn’t afford that, how would I afford a car? Even a beater?
I finally got my license about four years ago and it was more than that for lessons, tests went up and it became a graduated license so I had to pay for more tests than if I’d done it when I was 16. It helped I had a friend who also was getting her license at that time and her fiancé was willing to let both of us practice in his car.
If my job was downtown I wouldn’t have had the same impetus to drive. 3 hours a day commute (minimum) was enough for that.
yes, but I doubt if that’s the reason.
I remember when gas cost a buck a gallon. I was working my first mcjob—for $1.20 an hour. I remember my first paycheck–it was for $8. (one day’s work in that payperiod).
Okay folks…thanks for so many responses! But I’m still confused.
So far this thread has given 3 types of answers to my question, but no good explanation
people who live in big cities with efficient trains/busses. (a nice excuse, but irrelevant for 85% of American teenagers)
financial issues like insurance and repairs. (a reasonable issue–but that is a reason for not buying a car…it’s not an explanation for teens who don’t want to drive in the first place.)
the social issues, so well described by thelmalou.
Those issues are all true, and I’ve noticed them too. But it still doesnt quite satisfy my curiosity.
Yes, today’s teens live much closer to their parents lifestyle than 1970’s teens; Yes, facebook and cell phones provide a social life that was impossible for 1970’s. And, yes, modern houses are less crowded, so there’s more privacy.
So I can see why today’s teens are not as “desperate” to leave the house constantly , the way that we were 30 years ago…
But they still need to go their own way…with the parties, the friends, the face-to-face socializing that made up so much of our teenage lives in the 70’s. ( And, for better or worse, the sexual hookups that were not so widespread for us poor 70’s kids.)
And a driver’s license is still a vital tool to get you on your way, isn’t it?
I get the impresssion that the kids who dont get their license , genuinely arent interested in getting it. I don’t see issues here about, say, teens worrying about expenses, and then feeling disappointment if they cant afford it. It seems like they don’t even begin by calculating the costs–they just dont even try for the license in the first place.
I’m 26 and I haven’t learned to drive yet. Had no interest as a teen, and I moved out on my own at 18.
First and most importantly, I live right outside Philadelphia where we have good public transportation. Secondly, I think cars are dirty and expensive and I’d rather never own one, though I do intend to learn how to use one just in case.
Anyway it works fine. I don’t need to get many places, I have a bike, I can take the train or bus if I don’t want to bike, and I make sure to work near where I live.