Is "Adolescence" Artificial?

Psychology Today has up an interesting article by a psychologist who claims that adolescence is an artificial construct created by Western societies, and that we'd all be better off if we treated children as adults as soon as they are reproductively capable.

Imagine what it would feel like—or think back to what it felt like—when your body and mind are telling you you're an adult while the adults around you keep insisting you're a child. This infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed, with their distress carrying over into their families and contributing to our high divorce rate. It's hard to keep a marriage together when there is constant conflict with teens.

We have completely isolated young people from adults and created a peer culture. We stick them in school and keep them from working in any meaningful way, and if they do something wrong we put them in a pen with other "children." In most nonindustrialized societies, young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable, and there is no sign of teen turmoil. Many cultures do not even have a term for adolescence. But we not only created this stage of life: We declared it inevitable. In 1904, American psychologist G. Stanley Hall said it was programmed by evolution. He was wrong.

I find his arguments new and different, but I have to say that in my experience the ability to reason of the average 14 year old is generally far below that of even unintelligent adults.

What makes for a "Moderate"?

Apparently, I missed it when the first batch of articles about a recent study came out. But Psychology Today's summary of the study and the reactions to it is worth reading. The part of the article which gets the most attention is this snippet

As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.

And of course, that quote, as phrased, is at least moderately insulting to Conservatives. It implies that Liberals are intelligent and popular, while Conservatives are the nerdy prudes in the back of the room.

But the more interesting section of the article is on the effect of 9/11 on politics, and what our awareness of our mortality does to the voting behavior of a democratic republic. They argue that 9/11 really did change my Liberals into Conservatives, by making them aware of death, and that even small reminders of death - like the Bin Laden letter released shortly before the 2004 election - can have far-ranging effects on voter behavior.

Personally, I am offended that they gave no clue what childhood behavior lead to Moderates. I assume it will be something like a passion for both chocolate and skim milk in the school cafeteria