Historians have noted that since World War II, well, since the turn of the (last) century, there has been a change in our view of adolesence. Before that, and you can see this in period pictures that capture the sense of the times before that... "Old Yeller" for example, and "How Green was my Valley."
Before that, young kids moved from childhood into adulthood very rapidly. The community expected them to take their stations of responsibility in the adult world, to make a contribution, and they prepared them for it. It was an expectation right from the get-go.
And many of those young adults not only could read, and write, and compose lucidly, they could do it in Latin, Greek as well as English. They knew a trade. They could play one or more musical instruments. They knew their Bibles. Sometimes they knew the Greek and the Hebrew. In other words, these are young people that were equiped to engage the world of grown-ups. It was a world they were hungry to be part of and, even though by even today's standards, they were still youngsters.
But something changed at the beginning of the 20th century. And expectations began to change. A whole new developmental concept began to emerge and it's called "teenagers". And what is a teenager? It's a person form 13-19 that, from our perspective now -- and here's what I want to emphasize, that what is changed is our perspective. Human beings haven't changed, our perspective has changed and our expectations have changed.
