As of this writing, baby boomers range in age from 61 down to 43. But today, Mike Males, a senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and a founder of Youthfacts.org, warrants an op-ed in the New York Times in which he expands the baby boom years to those now aged 35, or those born in 1972. This will come as a surprise to the Gen-Xers now blaming the baby boom for everything that went wrong with the world, or at the very least, resenting us for having the temerity to be born and have our childhoods during affluent times:
A SPATE of news reports have breathlessly announced that science can explain why adults have such trouble dealing with teenagers: adolescents possess “immature,” “undeveloped” brains that drive them to risky, obnoxious, parent-vexing behaviors. The latest example is a study out of Temple University that found that the “temporal gap between puberty, which impels adolescents toward thrill seeking, and the slow maturation of the cognitive-control system, which regulates these impulses, makes adolescence a time of heightened vulnerability for risky behavior.”
We know the rest of the script: Commentators brand teenagers as stupid, crazy, reckless, immature, irrational and even alien, then advocate tough curbs on youthful freedoms. Jay Giedd, who heads the brain imaging project at the National Institutes of Health, argues that the voting and drinking ages should be raised to 25. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, asks whether we should allow teenagers to be lifeguards or to enlist in the military. And state legislators around the country have proposed raising driving ages.
“People naturally want to use brain science to inform policy and practice, but our limited knowledge of the brain places extreme limits on that effort,” Dr. Siegel told me. “There can be no ‘brain-based education’ or ‘brain-based parenting’ at this early point in the history of neuroscience.”
Why, then, do many pundits and policy makers rush to denigrate adolescents as brainless? One troubling possibility: youths are being maligned to draw attention from the reality that it’s actually middle-aged adults — the parents — whose behavior has worsened.
Our most reliable measures show Americans ages 35 to 54 are suffering ballooning crises...
Ah, yes. It's all a gigantic and nefarious plot, financed by some shadowy middle-aged Dr. Evil, to keep teenagers down by projecting our failings onto them.
Males cites 18,249 deaths from overdoses of illicit drugs in 2004, up 550 percent per capita since 1975. I'm certain that there is less drug use among teens than there is among adults because drugs aren't as much a part of teen culture. But the CDC estimates that 4,554 teen deaths each year are a result of alcohol use. In 1980, the National Center for Health Statistics studied the deaths of of those who were 10-19 years old that year where alcohol was a primary or underlying cause of death and found 284 deaths, 276 of them in teens aged 15-19. By 2003, there were more than 5000 -- a 1711% increase.
He goes on to cite other statistics without taking into account other variations in population size and socioeconomic factors.
There is a legitimate argument to be made that behavior problems aren't the exclusive province of teenagers. God knows the recent behavior of various Republican legislators is indicative that adults too are capable of making bad decisions. You can even argue that boomer and Gen-X parents (for the oldest Gen-Xers also now have teenaged children) are far more interested in being their children's buddy than providing a guiding hand. But citing absolute numbers, and their increase since 1975, when those in the age group cited exist in such huge numbers, does nothing to "prove" the author's hypothesis that recent studies indicating that adolescent brains are undeveloped is a plot by adults to divert attention from their own behavior.
As the United States begins its slow, inexorable and inevitable plod into decline, the drumbeat of "blame the boomers" is going to become ever louder. I would, however caution those Gen-Xers who believe that somehow all the Deadheads sold out and elected George W. Bush, that soon they too will be blamed for everything.
Meanwhile, this op-ed should have David Brooks watching his back, because another pseudo-intellectual postulating nonsense to prove a nonsensical point, is nipping at his heels.
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