Between 1900 and 1930, the modern version of adolescence emerged in America. Today when we think of youth, we picture a time when children are gradually given more responsibility in preparation for their entrance into the adult world, after leaving either high school or college. Most children leave elementary school when aged 11 or 12, enter high school at age 14 or 15, and enter college or the full-time job market at age 18. A range of institutions exists, from juvenile courts to high schools, to help America’s youth through these transitions. Youth also live in common cultures partially determined by age. Youth is thus a shared experience among all Americans, differing only by race, class, and gender.
At the turn of the century, the lives of America’s youth differed a great deal from one another due to race, class, gender, educational, and regional differences. Growing up was not the normative process that it would become. Some youths went to work before their teenage years, for example, while others stayed in school through college. During the first decades of the 20th century, a number of factors combined to change the paths followed by America’s youths as they matured.
Youth is a socially constructed category. The definition of youth has changed over time in reaction to social, cultural, and economic changes in society. During transitional times in American history, society has placed great emphasis on youth. When the social order appears to be threatened, America has turned to its youth as the hope for the future. The first three decades of the 20th century were no exception. American society was dealing with the profound changes stemming from industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Many feared that the country’s youth were threatened by these changes. Large numbers of working-class youth were unable to find jobs that offered a chance for advancement. In addition, the increase in the number of immigrant children in schools and cities frightened reformers, who feared that the immigrant youth would pose a threat to the social order if not properly socialized. Reformers also feared that cities created a dangerous environment for young people. They bemoaned the lost opportunity for youth to experience the green pastures of the country and then started summer camps to expose urban children to the healthier rural atmosphere.
Actions taken by reformers helped construct the modern definition of youth. Efforts to simultaneously protect youths from the evils of industrialization and protect the social order from the poorly socialized youth created new ideas about adolescence. At the core of the conflict about modern youth was the struggle between authorities in defining youth and the actions of youths on their own terms. Society tried to maintain youths’ dependence on adults, while youths fought for their independence in a variety of ways.
The creation of the juvenile courts systems highlights this tension. The juvenile courts served both to help youths in trouble and to punish youths for independence from adult authority. Prior to the establishment of juvenile courts, youths who committed a crime went into the adult court system and, if sentenced to jail, served their time in an adult prison. Believing it dangerous to treat youths as adults, reformers established the juvenile court systems in the states. The idea behind the courts was that youthful offenders presented special circumstances. If they were simply placed in adult courts and adult prisons, they would be at risk either of physical harm or of learning criminal behaviors from adults. Reformers therefore sought to separate the youths from the adults. Special courts were created in which youths arrested for crimes went before a single judge who was supposedly better prepared to analyze their special circumstances. Judges also had new options available with regard to sentencing. As part of the new juvenile court system, states created youth reformatories or industrial schools as they were called in some states. Instead of sentencing youthful offenders to adult prisons, judges could send them to a child-only reformatory, where the authorities focused on behavioral, educational, and vocational training so that the inmates would be useful members of society upon their release.
The juvenile court system was undoubtedly an improvement over the sentencing of youths in their teen years to adult prisons. The courts were not, however, an unqualified success. The creation of special courts for juveniles led to new definitions of crimes for youths. Adolescents could be arrested for hanging out on the street corner, sexual promiscuity, or other acts of independence from their families. Once in front of the judge, youths often had no recourse to an attorney and did not receive a jury trial. Because the purpose of a sentence in the reformatory was to reform each inmate, sentences were often of indeterminate length, ending only when prison officials decided that an inmate had become reformed. The negatives of the juvenile systems tended to affect working-class and minority youths to a greater extent than middle-class youths because police and the courts often released middle-class youths to their parents instead of sentencing them.
Between 1900 and 1930, the number of American youths working full-time declined tremendously due to changes in industry and society. Reformers feared that factory work threatened the physical and mental health of America’s youth. To protect youth from these dangers, reformers passed CHILD LABOR laws and compulsory schooling laws. State legislatures across the United States passed compulsory education laws in reaction to economic changes. By the 20th century, the apprentice system for learning a trade was all but nonexistent. In addition, many of the jobs in new large factories, did not offer opportunities for advancement. Educators feared that the young men and women entering factory work faced a life of toil without the hope of advancing to a better-paid position with better working conditions. Educators also feared that the immigrants streaming into America would never adopt American ways and values if they never received an EDUCATION. To counteract these threats, educators undertook efforts to bring more children into school. Compulsory education laws were the favorite tools in their efforts. Most states passed such laws in the late 19th century and expanded the targeted ages in the early 20th century. By 1910, many states had passed laws that mandated education up to at least 14 years of age. Many of these laws exempted youths aged 15 and 16 only if they could prove that they could read and write at a satisfactory level.
Changes in the economy also decreased the number of youths working full-time. Mechanization replaced many of the jobs formerly done by child workers. The rise of large industrial corporations and a new tier of management increased the value of a high school education. Large corporations depended on personnel departments for hiring workers, and the newly created personnel departments often set a high school education as the minimum requirement for employment. Corporations also created new clerical jobs that required a high school education.
Compulsory schooling and child labor laws acted to dramatically increase school enrollment. American schools during this period witnessed an increase in the number of students attending school, and particularly high school. Between 1900 and 1930, the proportion of 14- to 17-year-olds enrolled in high school grew from 10.6 percent to 54.9 percent. Total enrollment increased almost 700 percent. The increase in high school enrollment for outstripped the growth of the high school-aged population. The percentage of 17-year-olds who had graduated from high school increased from 6.4 percent in 1900 to 32.1 percent in 1930.
The growth in the high schools had unintended consequences. By placing a greater proportion of teenaged youths together, it led to the creation of youth subcultures centered on the high school. Cultures based on the common experience of high schools were not necessarily new, but the number of youths participating was. Middle-class adolescence, defined by schooling through high school, was becoming democratized. The youth cultures that developed were based on peer interactions and sanctions rather than adult restrictions. New norms of dating behavior emerged, for example, because teenaged women spent greater amounts of time with men of their own age. Dating flourished under this system, because women felt safe to go on dates unchaperoned by adults. Commercial interest also played a role in the creation of youth cultures. As incomes rose for most Americans during the 1920s, youths, and in particular middle-class youths, had more money to spend. Marketers targeted youths and a youth market developed. One important consequence of the development of the youth market was that it gave teens power outside the family. Instead of relying on family consumption decisions, teens decided on their own how to spend money. The development of the teen market slowed during the Great Depression, but rebounded with a bang in the post-World War II era.
The rise of the number of high school students led to an increase in the power of youths to challenge the roles prescribed to them by society’s institutions. There was power in numbers. Youths who challenged the social roles often faced punishment, such as a sentence to a juvenile home or parental sanction. However, as the number of youths sharing common experiences increased, so too did the number of youths mounting challenges to certain restrictions. When a group of youths became powerful enough, they could successfully change their roles. In the 1920s, for example, middle-class teens used their purchasing power to successfully challenge the dependent roles assigned to them. Commercial interests began to market directly to this new group of consumers, bypassing the family. Youths thus gained a powerful ally in their quest for independence.
The rising role of the schools in the lives of America’s youths helped to establish age as a basis for social categorization. At the beginning of the century, students in most school districts moved through the school systems at their own pace. Educators, fearing that they were not meeting the needs of many of their students, created high schools that provided a differentiated curriculum designed to prepare each student for their future occupation. The curriculum became the same one offered today, with its separate tracks of vocational and college preparatory classes. Educators discovered, however, that many students were old enough to leave school before reaching high school and the vocational training it offered. In an effort to expose all students to the differentiated curriculum at the high school, educators began to promote students by age, instead of achievement. Age-based education played a key role in establishing age-based norms for growing up.
By the end of the 1920s, American youth went to school more, worked less, had stronger youth cultures, and were more tightly supervised by the state than their parents had been. The unemployment crisis of the 1930s pushed even more youths into high school, because they could not find jobs. The lengthening of adolescence through schooling set the stage for the development of the American teenager as a key consumer in the affluence of the post-World War II period.
See also CRIMINAL JUSTICE; Keating-Owen Act; Kelley, Florence.
Further reading: Harvey J. Graff, Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); Joseph Kett, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
—Michael Hartman
World History
