The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

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Summary: How the Teen Culture Came to Dominate America
Review:
Today, because of the massive American youth culture, we take the descriptive term "teenager" for granted. Young people enter their teenager years and seem to become part of another world, children no longer, but not full participants in the adult culture of work and responsibility. At one time, teenagers wanted to grow up rapidly, aspiring to take on the trappings of adulthood as quickly as possible, but today millions of young men and women seem dedicated to hanging on to their youth through their thirties and forties. Because of the pervasiveness of the youth culture, we have forgotten that the concept of a teenager is a social development and a relatively recent one. The idea of the teenager only occurred as America began to achieve relative affluence, when parents - whether farmers or shopkeepers - could afford to have their offspring attend school for a longer time. As these young people began to attend secondary school - and it was only in the 1920's when more than half of our children were educated through high school - and to have more leisure time, the term "teenager" was coined. It was this combination of time and affluence that made the teenager a young consumer to be marketed to. In "The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager" Thomas Hine shows the evolution of the concept of the teenager and the history of American youth culture. He is a professional journalist who writes with a strong narrative drive. He has an eye for detail and is particularly adept at choosing interesting subjects for his books and articles. By following young adults throughout American history, he has shown a light on a subject that has not been illuminated in the same way before.


Rating:
Summary: A must
Review: Anyone who wants to understand the American teenager or American culture of the 20th century must read this book. Essential to any student of anthropology, archaeology, sociology, architectural history or popular culture. Extraordinary insights which reflect a remarkable and creative understanding of our own history and place in time.

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Summary: Wow.
Review: I could not put this book down once I began reading it.
It was entertaining, informative, and really made me question the way teenagers are classified today. The amount of both freedom and responsibility granted to younger adults in earlier generations is amazing in comparison to the idleness and lack of direction granted to them today. I'm fascinated by the evolution of the high school--beginning as an actual *useful* place for building work skills and as a replacement for college and how it has evolved into a glorified babysitting service that regurgitates information. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the varied places of youth in America across history.

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Summary: nothing more than a boring textbook
Review: I found Thomas Hine's work to be fairly well-written. The sections on 18th and 19th century realities for young men and women was particularly interesting. I do wish that Hine would have footnoted his sources, as many historical and psychological assertions are made without the reader being entirely sure as to the origin of the material.

My biggest concern about the book is that I was unable to see, after careful reading, where the "rise and fall" actually was. Despite societal changes and historical trends, it appeared to me that teenagers have simply risen (or fallen depending on your perspective) and there has in actuality been little fluctuation at least within the 20th century in the degree of their powerlessness. Hine's writing becomes a tad more flamboyant when speaking of the 60s (as he confesses this was his own coming-of-age period) and there is very little contemporary information for the 1980s onward. This book would probably be more helpful for the researcher looking for information on the 1800s and early 1900s, but would not lend itself to someone looking for insight into adolescent culture of the last 25 years.

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Summary: Interesting in parts, but spotty
Review: I found Thomas Hine's work to be fairly well-written. The sections on 18th and 19th century realities for young men and women was particularly interesting. I do wish that Hine would have footnoted his sources, as many historical and psychological assertions are made without the reader being entirely sure as to the origin of the material.

My biggest concern about the book is that I was unable to see, after careful reading, where the "rise and fall" actually was. Despite societal changes and historical trends, it appeared to me that teenagers have simply risen (or fallen depending on your perspective) and there has in actuality been little fluctuation at least within the 20th century in the degree of their powerlessness. Hine's writing becomes a tad more flamboyant when speaking of the 60s (as he confesses this was his own coming-of-age period) and there is very little contemporary information for the 1980s onward. This book would probably be more helpful for the researcher looking for information on the 1800s and early 1900s, but would not lend itself to someone looking for insight into adolescent culture of the last 25 years.

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Summary: Is the idea of the 'teenager worth keeping?
Review: I was quite anxious to read this book when it was assigned to me by my history professor at the University of Nebraska. It was hot off the presses when we had a chance to read and study the book as part of a Family History course. In that context, Thomas Hine's book helped to show how concepts of the American family make their way into our cultural mythos. The idea of the teenager has been around for little over 60 years and it seems well on being a somewhat permanent fixture. Yet, I think he is right to point out the problems that exist with this term. (What irony that the word 'teenager' caught on because it was easily marketable!) Contrary to one's expectations, this book doesn't talk about how teenagers have 'gone bad'. Instead, he suggests that this category might not be as useful as it once was. His theory is almost as economic as it is sociological. Certainly I hope we might expect more from 'teenagers' than for them to act like 'teenagers'. I certainly hope to see the downfall of the modern 'teenager' in my lifetime, in the sense of Hines' vision. His ideas are stimulating nonetheless and I would recommend this book to anyone who has been specifically trained to work with adolescents. It will make you rethink the entire approach to educating and nurturing our nation's youth.

Rating:
Summary: Is the idea of the 'teenager worth keeping?
Review: I was quite anxious to read this book when it was assigned to me by my history professor at the University of Nebraska. It was hot off the presses when we had a chance to read and study the book as part of a Family History course. In that context, Thomas Hine's book helped to show how concepts of the American family make their way into our cultural mythos. The idea of the teenager has been around for little over 60 years and it seems well on being a somewhat permanent fixture. Yet, I think he is right to point out the problems that exist with this term. (What irony that the word 'teenager' caught on because it was easily marketable!) Contrary to one's expectations, this book doesn't talk about how teenagers have 'gone bad'. Instead, he suggests that this category might not be as useful as it once was. His theory is almost as economic as it is sociological. Certainly I hope we might expect more from 'teenagers' than for them to act like 'teenagers'. I certainly hope to see the downfall of the modern 'teenager' in my lifetime, in the sense of Hines' vision. His ideas are stimulating nonetheless and I would recommend this book to anyone who has been specifically trained to work with adolescents. It will make you rethink the entire approach to educating and nurturing our nation's youth.

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Summary: Jonathan Yardley's Washington Post Book World review
Review: In the Sunday, September 12, 1999 Washington Post Book World, Jonathan Yardley presents an extensive review of Thomas Hine's THE RISE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER, praising it as "useful documentation of the ways in which our culture has prolonged the period of youth well past it's natural limits" and saying "...it's worth making the trip.... a pretty generous helping of food for thought."

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Summary: Additional reviews and information about the book
Review: Library Journal says THE RISE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER is "...a welcome and timely antidote to the current wave of bad press about teens and violence... . Interesting,enjoyable and multifaceted, Hine's work defies pigeonholing...a valuable teaching tool...it is well-researched...highly recommended."

Booklist says "[Hine] takes on an all-too-timely subject, with an unusual--and likely to be controversial slant. ...An intriguing, thoughtful, historical perspective... ."

In her nationally syndicated column, Molly Ivins says "Hine, most helpfully, rather likes teenagers...He offers perspectives rather than prescriptions...suggest[s] some useful things we can do about teen-agers to make their lives better."

Tom Hine's earlier work has garnered praise from Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times for his "wealth of historical knowledge...[and] his wit and nimble intelligence" and from John Updike in The New Yorker for his "mischievously alert sensibility."

Journalist and author of the highly acclaimed POPULUXE, Thomas Hine is a frequent contributor of articles and commentary observing and chronicling cultural and social shifts for publications such as The New York Times, Esquire, GQ, the Phildelphia Inquirer and Slate.

Now, in THE RISE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER, Hine has studied the historical role of the "teenager" in America, juxtaposing it with the state of contemporary teens. As a result, he asks the sea of adults who control, complain about, guide, fear, loathe, love, embrace and inspire the nation's teens to find ways of making the teenage experience more satisfying and effective. If not, he suggests an alternative, saying "we can decide that the idea of the teenager is one that has outlived its usefulness" and move on to other possibilities.

In his 400-year overview of teenagers' places in American society and the unique role they play in contemporary life, Hine charts the course of young people in this country from the trials of young Puritans and the vision quests of Native Americans to the media-blitzed consumerism of contemporary thirteen-to-nineteen-year-olds. He examines the ways in which young people have adapted over the geneations to meet the expectations and mores of the times. He points out that the term "teenager" is a relatively new invention, dating from just before World War II. He shows that contemporary families' efforts to provide their offspring a prolonged, protected period of childhood and youthful preparation--even as both parents work--is novel and fraught with problems.

"When I speak of the rise of the teenager, I'm really talking about the acceptance of the idea that youth is a time for experimentation and protracted preparation, usually in school" says Hine. "Youth is seen, especially by adults, as a time without compromise, when you don't have to become someone you don't respect in order to make a living, please a boss, and meet your obligations to others. This potential nobility becomes mock-heroic, however, when you realize that the young person's quest for self is going to be played out not in Valhalla but in high school...hardly an exalted place."

In THE RISE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER, Hine examines the state of teens at the turn of the 21st-century, pinpointing the "fall" of America's teenagers as beginning in the 1970s, with the advent of the two-paycheck family. He raises provocative issues that have an impact on all of society, questioning its perception of teens and teens' perceptions of themselves. He notes that:

*nearly all the conditions that produced the classic teenager have changed, though it is still assumed that high school is the answer for everybody

*teenagers are not protected-when they are home, they're often alone

*teenagers spend $100 billion a year, just on things for themselves

*marketers find that people under twenty buy products based on their "aspirational" age, usually about five years older than their real age, which means young Americans become part of the "teenage" market around the age of nine

*the idea of training in youth for a life's work is increasingly obsolete

*as more and more years of schooling are required for even minimal participation in the economic mainstream, the chances increase that greater numbers of young people will fall by the wayside

*an ironic result of age limits established to keep young people from endangering themselves, such as the minimum age for drinking liquor, smoking cigarettes and gambling legally, is that they've become important passages to maturity-the mark of adulthood in America is the license to indulge in bad habits

*it is widely-and inaccurately-believed that there has been a massive increase in antisocial behavior, risk-taking and sexual activity by teenagers in recent years

*the degree to which adults fear teenagers as a group has unquestionably increased-the result has been, among other things, the enactment of laws that deny teenagers, as minors, the freedom to move, gather, and express themselves, and other laws that require states to prosecute them as adults for a wide variety of serious crimes

*people in their teens, in all income classes, are victims of violence far more frequently than adults

*young people who work are more likely to use drugs, alcohol and tobacco and to be sexually active

*young people are told how important it is to find their identity, yet are offered few avenues in which they can do so

"Once we understand," asserts Hine, "that the teenager-this weird, alienated, frightening yet enviable creature-is a figment of our collective imagination, the monstrous progeny of marketing and high school, all generations will benefit." In calling for a reevaluation of the role of teens in today's society, he suggests such possibilities as abolishing the requirement that all must attend high school, reintroducing education that integrates "acting and doing" and, most importantly, viewing the teen years as a productive time of life, rather than simply a long wait for adulthood.

"The job of young people is not, as we sometimes assume, simply to go to high school," states Hine. "It is to imagine and begin to construct their lives. They need to understand both their interests and abilities, and the society of which they are part. And they need to make a self that makes sense for the times in which they live."

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Summary: A very enlightning book.
Review: The information presented in this book is very interesting in that it explains a lot of what I went through in my own teen years as well as what my two children went through in theirs, and what my grandson has faced and the others will face. At this present moment I believe everyone, especially news reporters should be made aware of the contents of this book. My son, a Police Officer, has found the informaiton helpful, and my wife a school teacher has found this to be true also.