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Trish is thirteen going on fourteen, and facing a long summer in a new city. Her mother worries that she will try to act more adult than she is in order to break into the social circles there, and impress the other kids. It is difficult to be the new teenager. Choices that Trish might feel she can wait to make in a few years about sex, drugs, and alcohol in the small town where she has lived for many years may come sooner in the big city. Her mother’s worries include wondering what Trish will do if she is pressured to go through teen “rites of passage” in order to belong.

Rites of passage are nothing new. Cultures around the world have typically used formal rites of passage, organized by elders in the community, to mark the transition from adolescence to adulthood. In many, youth are separated from regular society for a period of time ranging from a month to two years. During this “liminal” phase, when they belong neither to the world of children, nor to the world of adults, they are treated without social distinctions, dress alike, go through adult-directed training, and are exempt from some social expectations they will face as adults. At the end of the training period, after a challenge of some kind, they don ceremonial dress and the community celebrates their new adult status.

Some cultures, ranging from the Maasai to the Amish, allow all kinds of risk-taking behavior, including experimentation with sex and alcohol for older teens during that period, at least for the boys, but at the end of the liminal period, they are expected to behave with the moderation characteristic of a mature, responsible adult. They are then readmitted to society with new responsibilities and new privileges. Even in mainstream American cultures, until recently, many adolescents passed through rites of passage through their religious institutions, including church confirmation and Bar and Bas Mitzvah preparation and celebration.

But lacking the formal rites of passage that in traditional cultures have marked the transition from adolescence to adulthood, teens are inventing their own rites of passage. Many of these can be risky, and sometimes even life-threatening. They involve sex, drugs, alcohol and driving, sometimes in dangerous combinations. In rural communities, sometimes successful hunting – “killing your first deer” counts as initiation, which can add guns to the mix. Gangs in larger cities have rituals that may involve fighting, breaking the law, or other transgressions of mainstream mores. Even in Trish’s seemingly safe small town, teens may dare each other to try “adult” behaviors to prove that they are no longer just children or immature adolescents.

As summer approaches, teens and young adults light driftwood bonfires on the beach in this coastal town. Under the warming sun, in the long evenings they gather to celebrate graduation, or moving on to the next grade, the end of school, and the freedom of the beach. They hang out together, partying, drinking beer and sometimes smoking pot or doing other drugs. Couples go off together, teens with trucks drive up and down the beach until people complain, and middle-school aged teens visit the parties surreptitiously, wishing they belonged.

For the older teens, many times, experimenting with drinking and sex seems a normal part of growing up, presenting some risks and rule-breaking, but in a group of supportive friends, in full view on the beach, relatively safe. But for immature teens, and younger teens wanting to gain acceptance, the “rites of passage” of experimenting with sex, drugs and alcohol pose serious risks ranging from pregnancy and contracting diseases, to brain-damaging binges or drug-use, or passing out and then being vulnerable to abuse.

Some teens are more at risk than others during these teen-driven rites of passage: the over-confident, and the under-confident. The over-confident may come from excellent family backgrounds where they had lots of support, may be used to easy success at school or sports, or anything else they do. They are used to challenges, and to winning at those challenges. They can’t imagine that they would really suffer or get hurt from getting drunk a few times, or trying drugs, even hallucinogens or other hard drugs. They say yes because they are over-confident. The under-confident may come from struggling families where it is hard to get the emotional or material support they need, from abusive or neglectful families, from families under a lot of stress or in crisis, or simply from families where they are the odd one out, the sibling with a really different personality. These teens become less sure of their footing socially, and the desire to fit in can override common sense and good choices. They may need the support of the peer group more because they have less support at home. These teens would benefit from intervention, before they engage in risk-taking that damages them emotionally or physically. Personality and genetic factors may also play a large role in determining which ones are most at risk.

In addition, “the average age at which children reach puberty (as defined by hormonal change) has dropped at least two or three years over the past two centuries . . .If through most of human history puberty began later, then we now face a mismatch between our evolutionary design and our current environment, “ writes Melvin Konner, professor of anthropology and behavioral biology at Emory University, in his article, “How Childhood Has Evolved”. Given that we now know that brain development continues at least until age twenty, on average, and that the frontal cortex, vital for planning and decision-making, is not mature until the end of this period, it is critical that we rethink the issue of rites of passage, and whether we should leave them up to the teenagers.

Whereas traditional rites of passage often exposed young people to dangers or challenges, adults trusted by the community moderated those effects. The goals at the end of the training and rite of passage were readiness for adult responsibilities, rights, and participation in the full community. Teen rites of passage guarantee none of these goals.

As caring adults, we need to reinstate adult-driven rites of passage, where teens can pass safely through training and challenges to reach the shore of adulthood, as responsible and contributing members of the community, with recognition for their achievement.

Author Catherine Knott, Ph.D., teaches Anthropology and Sociology for the University of Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. She has a Ph.D. in Anthropology, Natural Resources, and Education from Cornell University and a B.A. from Yale University.

REFERENCES:
Konner, Melvin. 2010. How Childhood Has Evolved. The Chronicle Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Childhood-Has-Evolved/65401/ 5/14/2010

Hostetler, John A.1993. Amish Society, 4th Edition. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Triandis, Harry C. 1989. “The Self and Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts.” Psychological Review, 96(3):506-520.