“I’ve been really troubled by the excuse offered by too many that this was a high school incident, and ‘boys will be boys,’ said Sen. Chris Coons during testimony by Christine Blasey Ford before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27.
As accusations of sexual misconduct and assault mount against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Trump defenders like Kellyanne Conway dismiss his actions as merely those of a “teenager.” The adult Kavanaugh cannot be held accountable, such logic goes, because these alleged acts were only youthful indiscretions of a 17- or 18-year-old.
In the United States, the teen years are frequently assumed to be a time of experimentation, risk-taking and rebellion. But this notion of adolescence as a phase of irresponsible behaviour is a relatively new invention.
'Adolescence' was only invented last century
It was only in the first decade of the 20th century that U.S. psychologists carved out 'adolescence' as a chronologically specific phase during which a person prepared for adulthood while legally remaining a child.
It was around this time that U.S. educators came to a consensus that compulsory high school should extend until age 18. Before then, most men and women under that age could be, and were, expected to work, get married and even have children.
Double standards for white boys
Founder of the American Journal of Psychology, G. Stanley Hall, described adolescence as a period of rebelliousness, emotional turbulence, sexual recklessness and individualism. But here’s the catch. Many of these early descriptions of adolescence were written for and about boys of the same social background as the author – white and middle-class. It was primarily such boys who could enjoy an extended childhood characterised by social and sexual experimentation. Lower-class boys and most black boys were expected to grow up earlier by entering the manual labour market and assuming responsibilities in their teens. A prolonged preparation for adulthood was actually available only to wealthy families.
How Kavanaugh benefits
A similar double standard is echoed today in the way Kavanaugh’s supporters grant him leeway. Sympathetic accounts contextualise Kavanaugh’s behaviour as part of boys’ culture at the elite institutions where he studied and just “rough horseplay.” This reaction is part of a social tendency to see wealthy white boys’ actions as innocently naughty, rather than dangerous. Black boys, on the other hand, routinely experience “adultification,” as historian Ann Ferguson called it – the assignment of adult motivations and ability. We do not need to look far for contemporary examples: Trayvon Martin, age 17, was stalked and killed by a vigilante neighbour who suspected he was a threat. Even 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed because police officers thought he was a danger. And 17-year-old boys of colour are regularly tried in court as adults and sent to prison.
What about adolescent girls?
Innocently naughty behaviour has historically been the prerogative of teenage boys rather than girls. Rebelliousness was frowned upon if girls – whether black or white – expressed it. Historian Crista DeLuzio goes so far as to depict much of the early writing on adolescence as “boyology.” Girls were simply not imagined, in psychologists’ work, to have the same entitlement to experimentation and innocent risk-taking.
This double standard continues to permeate U.S. culture. There is a telling relevant example from the U.S. college context: Sororities, unlike fraternities, are bound by a ban on alcohol by the National Panhellenic Conference.
Kavanaugh’s alleged actions as a teen under the influence of alcohol have not tainted his reputation as a judge for many on the political right. But Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez are pilloried by Donald Trump as unreliable because they were possibly drunk at age 15 and 18. Kavanaugh’s own views on teenage girls’ accountability are telling: In a controversial decision he offered as a federal judge, he called to delay a 17-year-old pregnant undocumented girl’s access to an abortion. Although he claimed it was because she was a minor and needed parental consent, his delay could have forced the 17-year-old into motherhood – an adult consequence.
It's not about the hormones
Crista de Luzio notes that in the 17th century, youth was experienced as a “relatively smooth” period in New England Puritan culture in contrast to Europe in the same era. Widespread youthful rebelliousness, she argues, corresponded more generally with social instability.
Ultimately, there is no necessary physiological reason for holding that unruly or rebellious behaviour has to accompany hormonal changes in the teen years. Our uneven expectations about teenage behaviour – condoning white wealthy boys’ actions but not those of girls or other boys – say more, then, about us than about teens themselves.
Clem Ford on Trolling, #MeToo and Raising a Son:
Clem Ford
"This is a book about how the world we live in allows men to do deeply shitty things.”
