Their stage of life defies clear categorization.
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Teens exist in the murky space between youth and maturity—and in decades past, when the teen babysitter was a staple of American life, adults seemed to understand that. They recognized, my colleague Faith Hill writes in a new essay, that the teen babysitter “was grown-up enough to be an extra eye in the home—but childlike enough to go looking for snacks.”
Faith reports that, today, the teen babysitter has all but disappeared: Many parents now believe that kids who are 12 or 13, once a standard babysitting age, shouldn’t even be left alone at home. “People seem to worry less about adolescents and more for them, and for their future prospects,” she writes.
As Faith traces the decline of the teen babysitter, she hits on the particular nuances of adolescence. Adolescents are intelligent, reckless, ambitious, naive. And, as I wrote in this newsletter last year, everyday life experiences—eating lunch, talking to other human beings, deciding what to wear—carry tremendous emotional intensity at that age. Their stage of life defies clear categorization, but, as Faith notes, they can be capable of more than adults give them credit for.
On Adolescent Brains
Don’t Tell America the Babysitter’s Dead
By Faith Hill
For decades, sitting was both a job and a rite of passage. Now it feels more like a symbol of a bygone American era.
Teen Brains Are Perfectly Capable
By Emily Underwood
Teenagers have plenty of cognitive control. They just don’t always use it.
We’re Missing a Key Driver of Teen Anxiety
By Derek Thompson
A culture of obsessive student achievement and long schoolwork hours can make kids depressed.
Still Curious?
- Dopamine and teenage logic: Young minds are often portrayed as stews of hormones and impulse, but the decisions they make are often deeply rational and deserving of greater consideration, Daniel Siegel wrote in 2014.
- Why American teens are so sad: Four forces are propelling the rising rates of depression among young people, Derek Thompson wrote in 2022.
Other Diversions
P.S.
If you’d like to spend time with those on the cusp of adulthood for just a bit longer, I recommend my colleague Amy Weiss-Meyer’s profile of Judy Blume—or, as Amy dubs her, “the poet laureate of puberty.”
— Isabel
