Adolescence

Throughout American history, parents, journalists, educators, politicians, and young people have debated the meaning of the transitional period between childhood and adulthood. Views of adolescence have had powerful but varied gender implications, shifting between the extremes of applauding youthful male vitality and condemning youthful male rebellion. Debates about adolescence often showed the concerns of adults who hoped to train young men to use their energies to assume their proper place in public life, but also feared that those energies could lead to various crises.

During colonial times, both the ideas about the roles of young males and their actual experiences differed significantly by region. In New England, boys were sent away to learn a trade, a practice intended by parents to undercut their sons' rebellious tendencies, teach them Puritan values, and lead them to their calling, all of which were considered essential to the achievement of manhood. But young men's dependence on the patriarchal family often lasted until their late twenties, when marriage marked their postponed entry into the adult world.

In the South, where church and family were less central aspects of society, many young, unmarried males labored as indentured servants, thus lacking independence for an extended time. Even in later decades, when native-born men grew up in family settings, adolescence in the colonial South remained a stage of life associated with great insecurity. Only in the early to mid-1700s did large numbers of elite southern parents begin to train their sons to assume roles of power and mastery.

The situation was considerably different for young African Americans. Growing up in slavery, most of them felt the brutal reality of bondage early in life. Slave communities usually discouraged youthful male rebellion and established norms that emphasized family stability. Though evidence on slave courtship is rare, some sources point to young male slaves gaining self-esteem through competition for the attention of young women.

After the American Revolution, parents wanted their sons to aspire to the values of a republican citizenry, and young men themselves endorsed this spirit of national strength, liberty, and virtue. But in the long run, republicanism encouraged young white men to challenge parental authority. In the early nineteenth century, college students confronted traditional rules at their institutions, and many young men moved to urban centers and created a youth subculture with clubs and fraternal organizations. Many conservatives attributed this subculture to a decreasing influence of traditional institutions, such as church and family, and viewed this “urban youth crisis” as a symbol of national decline.

Mid-nineteenth-century attempts to socialize and control young men were inextricably intertwined with the anxieties of an emerging middle class. As industrialization and growing immigration swelled the ranks of the working class, middle-class reformers, who viewed young working-class men as a social danger, established houses of refuge and reform schools to teach middle-class values and morals to working-class youth. With regard to their own sons, middle-class parents began to stress prolonged education and insisted on their sons living at home until their early twenties. This practice promoted a stronger relationship between mother and son, with the intention of fostering morality, self-restraint, and sexual fidelity. The ideal of Victorian manhood thus emphasized a devotion to mother and family as a counter to youthful male impulses, and as a prerequisite to fulfilling manly independence in the public sphere of business and politics.

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