Transcript Policies for Young People - Childhood Development Initiative

Theories of Youth and
Adolescence
Maurice Devlin
NUI Maynooth
CDI Seminar
29 April 2010
Legal definitions: when does a
“child” become a “youth”?
Child Care Act 1991
• ‘Child’ means a person under the age of
18 other than a person who is or has been
married.
Legal definitions
Protection of Young Persons (Employment) Act 1996
• ‘Young person’ means a person who has reached 16 years of age or
the school-leaving age (whichever is higher) but is less than 18
years of age.
• The First Schedule to this Act consists of the EU Council Directive
94/33/EC, according to which:
• ‘Young person’ shall mean any person under 18 years of age…;
• ‘Child’ shall mean any young person of less than 15 years of age or
who is still subject to compulsory full-time schooling under national
law;
• ‘Adolescent’ shall mean any young person of at least 15 years of
age but less than 18 years of age who is no longer subject to
compulsory full-time schooling under national law.
Legal definitions
Children Act 2001
• ‘Child’ means a person under the age of
18 years.
• Age of criminal responsibility to be raised
to 12; ‘rebuttable presumption’ that 12 &
13 year-olds incapable of committing a
crime [this section of the Act never
‘commenced’]
Legal definitions
Children Act 2001 as amended by the
Criminal Justice Amendment Act 2006
• Age of criminal responsibility raised to 12
except for crimes of murder,
manslaughter, rape and aggravated
sexual assault – raised to 10. ‘Rebuttable
presumption’ abolished.
Legal definitions
Education (Welfare) Act 2000
• ‘Child’ means a person resident in the State who
has reached the age of 6 years and who
• (i) has not reached the age of 16 years, or
• (ii) has not completed 3 years of post-primary
education,
• whichever occurs later, but shall not include a
person who has reached the age of 18
Legal definitions
Youth Work Act 2001
• A ‘young person’ means a person who has
not attained the age 25 years
Legal definitions
• Complexity of law reflects complexity of
– The nature of youth
– Attitudes of adults towards young people
(‘…the
ambiguities of the law reflect the ambiguities of the society’s
conception of youth’ - Berger & Berger, Sociology: A
Biographical Approach, Penguin 1976)
• Attitudes characterised by ambivalence
– related to stereotyping
– See M. Devlin Inequality and the Stereotyping
of Young People (Equality Authority 2006)
Theoretical perspectives
• ‘There is nothing as practical as a good
theory.’
• Kurt Lewin, American psychologist
Theoretical perspectives (1)
• The key thing to understand is that there
are major changes – physical, emotional,
intellectual – happening for individual
young people, and therefore for
adolescents as a group.
Theoretical perspectives (2)
• The key thing to understand is that there is
a distinctive “youth culture” which marks
young people out from adults, leading to a
“generation gap”. This is not always a bad
thing.
Theoretical perspectives (3)
• The key thing to understand is that
people’s experiences are shaped not so
much by the age they are as by their class
background, their gender, ethnicity and
other major types of inequality.
Theoretical perspectives (4)
• The key thing to understand is the
transition(s) young people are going
through in the roles & positions they
occupy both in their private lives (e.g.
family) and their ‘public’ lives (e.g. school
to work)
Theoretical perspectives (5)
• The key thing to understand is that
“adolescence” or “youth” isn’t something
fixed and solid, waiting to be discovered,
like a room for which we just need the
door key. It is something that gets created,
constructed and changed over time
through individual and social actions.
Putting names on the perspectives
• Developmental (emphasis on individual
development)
• Generational (emphasis on youth culture and
intergenerational relations)
• Structural conflict (emphasis on different
experiences of young people in different social
groups)
• Transitional (emphasis on changing roles and
positions)
• Constructionist (emphasis on how ideas and
practices get constructed and changed)
Developmental perspectives
• Physical change
• Cognitive development (e.g. Piaget’s
‘formal operational’ stage)
• Moral development (e.g. Kohlberg’s ‘preto post-conventional morality’)
• Overall personal, social and emotional
development (e.g. Erikson on identity)
• Ecological dimension (e.g. Bronfenbenner)
Generational perspectives
• Distinctive youth culture in modern
societies
• Performs positive social functions
• Socialisation – both “conservative” and
“creative”
Conflict perspectives
• Inspired by Marx (1818-1883) and other
radical political thought in e.g. feminism;
Black movement; dis/ability; queer theory
etc
• There is no single “youth culture”
encompassing all young people
• Consider the different experiences of
different classes, young men vs women
etc
Transitional perspectives
• Transition for school to work (“TSW”)
• Transition from family of origin to “family of
option”
• These transitions used to be parallel and
unidirectional for most young people
• But there were class and gender
differences (and others)
• Now much more complex
“Traditional” transitions
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End of studies
Education
Employment
____________________________///____________________________ \\
//
Education-employment axis
Leaving home
Living at home
Living with partner
____________________________///_____________________________\\
//
Family-marriage axis
Childhood and adolescence
Adulthood
Constructionist perspectives
• “The adolescent was invented at the same
time as the steam engine” (Frank
Musgrove)
• Link with Peter Berger, cited earlier
• Ideas like “youth” and “adolescence”
should not be seen as “essential” and
fixed (leading to stereotyping)
• Both societies and individuals can
create/construct change
“Lenses”
• Each perspective is like a set of lenses
through which to apprehend and
understand ‘youth’ in contemporary
society, and depending on which set we
choose, our attention will be drawn to
some features rather than others. Indeed
some features will remain virtually hidden
unless a particular set of lenses is chosen.
No one is the “right” one
• The point…is not to choose one of these
perspectives, but rather to weigh their
arguments one against the other (in the
light of our own experience and that of the
young people we work with) and draw on
them as appropriate in different settings
and contexts.
Conclusion
• ‘Young people are as complicated as
adults!’ – Jimmy (17)
Further reading
• ‘Theorising Youth’, ch. 2 in Youth &
Community Work in Ireland: Critical
Perspectives, edited by C. Forde, E. Kiely
& R. Meade (Blackhall Publishing 2009)
Males 15-24 PES by single year of age, 1981
Other
1981
90
Unable to work due to
permanent sickness or
disability
80
Retired
percent of males
100
70
60
Looking after home / family
50
40
Student
30
20
Unemployed having lost or
given up previous job
10
s
ye
ar
23
22
21
20
19
18
17
16
Looking for first regular job
24
15
ye
ar
s
0
At work
Females 15–24 PES by single year of age, 1981
1981
100
90
Other
80
Unable to work due to
permanent sickness or disability
percent of females
70
Retired
60
Looking after home / family
50
40
Student
30
20
Unemployed having lost or given
up previous job
10
Looking for first regular job
ye
ar
s
23
22
21
20
19
18
17
16
At work
24
15
ye
ar
s
0
Males 15-24 PES by single year of age, 2006
2006
100
90
Other
80
Unable to work due to
permanent sickness or disability
percent of males
70
Retired
60
Looking after home / family
50
40
Student
30
20
Unemployed having lost or given
up previous job
10
Looking for first regular job
ye
ar
s
23
22
21
20
19
18
17
16
At work
24
15
ye
ar
s
0
Females 15–24 PES by single year of age, 2006
2006
100
90
Other
80
Unable to work due to
permanent sickness or disability
percent of females
70
Retired
60
Looking after home / family
50
40
Student
30
20
Unemployed having lost or given
up previous job
10
Looking for first regular job
ye
ar
s
23
22
21
20
19
18
17
16
At work
24
15
ye
ar
s
0