Teenage Culture in a Different Culture

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24schalet.html

This article discusses several issues that can be related to our class discussions. Early on we discussed American teenage culture and the relationship between adults and teenagers and how this relationship often creates certain ideas about acceptable and unacceptable social behaviors as understood and portrayed in the media by Americans. This article contrasts the Dutch view of teenagers and sex with the "typical" American view. The writer portrays American parents as viewing teenagers in a way that reminds me of the negative attributes of teens such as those mentioned by Hine in his article. Schalet writes, "Here [in America], we see teenagers as helpless victims beset by raging hormones and believe parents should protect them from urges they cannot control." This description--by no means uniform--does however illustrate teenagers as immature, and incapable of controlling their "hormones". The writer also adds a view of Dutch parents saying,"The Dutch parents I interviewed regard teenagers, girls and boys, as capable of falling in love, and of reasonably assessing their own readiness for sex." Here, I see the big differences being  contrasting views of Dutch and American parents regarding the emotional maturity, responsibility, and autonomy of the teenager to make decisions without parental guidance. What does everyone else think? There's definitely room to extend this issue in to our more recent debate about the various impacts of nurture, namely, parental involvement in adolescent development...