Thomas Hine/The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

In this article, Thomas Hine expresses his own ideas about the hardships of raising teenagers. He emphasizes that it is difficult to put parents into their kids' shoes. The parents cannot relate to their kids because they only remember when they were teenagers themselves. Some parents do not see teenagers as being competent. They feel like they are bound to make mistakes everyday of their lives until they become adults. As far as the positive side of teenagers go, Thomas Hine feels that teenagers need to enjoy their lives while they are still young. He emphasizes that certain values can help teenagers create better futures for themselves. He says, "For many individuals, such a long period of education, exploration, and deferred responsibility has been a tremendous gift". He also says, "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". I have to say that I agree with that statement.
Thomas Hine expresses that, overall, teenagers are very difficult to deal with. Some parents have learned how to deal with them and some parents still have had trouble with learning how to accept them. Whether teenagers are doing criminal activities or having sex, parents have a hard time of preventing all of it. Some parents just let it happen and do not even care what happens in the aftermath. Overall, teenagers adapt to their own worlds in which they choose to live in.

Personally, I did not get confused by this article at all. I thought that Thomas Hine gave some really strong points in this article and I enjoyed reading about them.

I think that this reading does not relate to anything we have covered in class so far. However, I have a feeling we will talk about certain things pertaining to this article in further detail as we have more class discussions. There is a question that popped into my mind once I was done reading this article and that question is "What are teenagers' lives' going to be like in the near future?"