Double Standards

The following was submitted to my website by Jessica M. from Ireland. I have a space there for people to share their stories of adultism. (please visit it at: margaretpevec.com/adultism)


I was doing my shopping in the supermarket, and needed to carry my family's groceries out in a box. Standing at the checkout, I whipped the box up in a clean and jerk type movement and set it on my head, the way women do in some African countries. The old woman working the till was very alarmed and said a light girl like me shouldn't be lifting heavy things. I said it was fine; it wasn't even heavy. She wouldn't let the issue alone. I told her again it was fine and I regularly lifted heavier things than that at home and in the gym. She just talked over me saying I'd have spinal problems by the time I was her age.

I'd like to know how it would have been if the ages had been reversed. If a young person were to override an old person they didn't know like that it would be seen as gross rudeness.

When I related the incident to a friend, he didn't see what I had to complain about. He said "I hope you weren't rude to her. If someone talked crap to my elderly mother I'd smack them around the head."

In other words, he felt, that not only should elderly people have a free pass to be disrespectful, but that objecting to disrespectful or invasive behaviour on an older person's part is "rudeness," and so inappropriate that it deserves physical violence.

This left a very acid taste in my mouth. Is it really that hard to treat a young person as a human being with boundaries?

Invading the Personal Space of Young People

The following was submitted to my website by Jessica M. from Ireland. I have a space there for people to share their stories of adultism. (please visit it at: margaretpevec.com/adultism)

An example of adultism I experienced and still feel strongly about is physical touch. As a child I remember adults seemed to think it was okay to openly touch me, hug me, or play with my hair, even if I didn't know them. I think the assumption was that if you're young, you don't understand boundaries, so they don't have to worry about overstepping boundaries with a young person. I have mild Asperger's symptoms and one of them is a strong aversion to touch. Being a child at the time, I didn't really know how to handle the behaviour except by recoiling or saying loudly and defiantly "I don't like being touched!" I was called "rude" and told they were just being friendly; that the appropriate response was to smile politely. I find that ironic, since if anyone behaved like that to an adult, it would be the person doing the touching who would be called rude and the adult would be quite within their rights to refuse the unwanted touch. Yet because I was a child I was expected to tolerate the behaviour and smile about it. My mother, to her credit, explained that it was okay to refuse physical touch but that I should do it in a calm and polite way, such as "Excuse me but I don't like being touched unless it's by someone I know well."

I also had teachers at school behave in this overly familiar way. They would casually take hold of my arm or even mess with my hair, and would act very shocked and concerned when I refused their touching. At one school there was actually a list of students' rights, one of them being "to refuse unwanted touches." Yet they didn't like it if I said I didn't like being touched and acted as if I were being rude just for asserting basic boundaries.

I still feel angry when recalling these incidents. They were the adults, I was the child, yet I was the one expected to tolerate their inappropriate behaviour, because they were adults therefore it was okay.

"Sexting" Exposes Adultism

I started catching up with the teen “sexting” brouhaha today. One role of teenagers in a society is to shake up adult complacency and to test the limits of social behavior. This latest has certainly captured media attention. Nothing sells quite so well as teenagers and sex, does it? But you’ll never hear an adult commentator admitting that he wishes he were 16 again with a cell phone. Adults have a tendency to act as if young people live in a parallel universe that has nothing to do with them. We pretend to hold all the moral cards and pass judgment on the young from our ivory towers, even as we produce movies, TV shows and advertisements that expose our penchant for exploiting young, beautiful and sexy women.

Teens of all eras have been creative and innovative in tweaking adult sensibilities. In my high school and young adult years, free love was just getting started, pot was coming back from Viet Nam with young vets and making the rounds of ordinary kids, and music was starting to be more edgy than in previous generations. Heck, even Beatle haircuts were causing family feuds. The current “sexting” incidents are a spit in the eye to adults: you’ve created this technology, now we’re going to take it to the limit, push it in your face, see how far we can go.

I would feel a lot more comfortable about it if I knew that schools were providing comprehensive sexuality education to every teenager in the U.S., from 7th grade on and Sex Ed classes included lots and lots of discussion about relationships, identifying personal values and the sexual exploitation of girls in our culture. Since I know that our adultist society, by and large, feels compelled to withhold honest and thorough sexuality information from teenagers (we can't even talk openly about it ourselves), the idea of young high school girls sending nude photos of themselves to older teen boys is distressing because I don’t know if they understand the personal ramifications of their actions. For heaven sakes, they just need to know why sending a nude picture might come back to bite them later, and what adults who are into pornography might do with such a picture.

But, as usual, we are blaming the victims of our outdated ideas. I think it’s ridiculous to prosecute these young people as pornographers. If I were a prosecutor involved in one of these cases, I would indict the federal and local policies that prohibit comprehensive sexuality education about such an important and life-changing topic for human beings, a topic that adults need to become more comfortable in addressing.

Louisville, KY wins the prize for May

I have a Google Alert that lets me know if the word “adultism” is used anywhere on the internet. Needless to say I don’t get many alert emails, unfortunately. And, a lot of times when I do, it’s something I myself have written! But today I got something meaningful. On May 14th, the Louisville, KY Office of Youth Development will be presenting a 2-hour workshop on Adultism for youth workers! Wow, that’s so cool. I’ve emailed Rebecca DeJarnatt, the facilitator, to congratulate her and ask for more information.

Less surprising, because he has written many blogs and articles on Wikipedia about adultism, was Adam Fletcher's blog "Activities That Address Adultism" that arrived in my inbox this morning. Adam always has smart things to say about working with teenagers, so I encourage you to read it!

Consider the Past

I think it's important to remember that teens, like adults, come in a wide range of competencies and that those competencies are influenced a great deal by the culture. I'm reading "The Greatest Generation" by Tom Brokaw, and realizing (again) the amazing competency of my parents' generation, many of whom went to war or stepped up to other enormous challenges as teenagers. The word "teenager" wasn't even in common usage until sometime after 1938; there were children and adults, and adulthood happened no later than 18 for most people.

I think if school was structured such that adolescents could spend most of their time doing meaningful, important community work; if they felt their opinions mattered to society and were included in all decisions; if they had the freedom and encouragement to find compelling work we would view teenagers in a completely different way.

A recent comment to a blog I read regularly said, "Adolescent bodies, social instincts, and emotions develop way faster than their ability to envision realistic consequences or incorporate abstractions (like value systems) into their decision-making processes." I know plenty of teenagers with a fine ability to envision realistic consequences. And most children have great value systems, if adults would care to inquire, and leave their superior attitude at the door.

My point is the adults control the culture and largely define what we will and will not allow adolescents to do and learn. You just have to think back to WWII to know that's true. Sexuality education is a good example. Arming young people with comprehensive information that includes not only the physiology but the psychology of sex and relationships with concrete strategies to deal with the complexities of relationship that we all, especially teenagers, encounter on a daily basis, would go a long way toward supporting them to adulthood.

Sharing Our Stories With Young People

A new writer friend of mine, Tamara Palmer, has a terrific idea for a book called My First: A Collection of Real Life Stories From Real Life Women Who Were Once Your Age Too. She's designing it as a gift book for mom's to give to their 11-15 year old daughters, aunts to give to their nieces or gramas to give to their granddaughters. She envisions girls reading it together at slumber parties, and finding out that the things they're going through are normal and have been happening throughout the ages of women.

Tamara’s idea will stick to the safer topics like “first period,” “first bra,” “first kiss,” “first trip away from home,” but I love the concept. It’s empowering and anti-adultist when adults share their personal stories with younger people in a loving, human-to-human way, so the youth can extract the “takeaway message” on their own. The tone of personal story is so different than typical adult lectures, which often sound like the adult has done no wrong, has never succumbed to risky activities, and knows everything there is to know about living life the “right way.” It also builds a bond: “Here’s an adult I can trust because they understand what I’m going through from their own experience.”

In the research my co-author, Rhonda Richardson, conducted that led to our book, What Kids REALLY Want To Ask: Using Movies to Start Meaningful Conversations, she went right to 10-14 year olds to find out what topics were on their minds that they wished they could talk to their parents about. Her research posed the following to over 1200 middle schoolers: “If you could ask your mom or your dad one question and know you would get an honest answer, what question would you ask?” Many of their questions asked about a parent’s life experience when they were young. In the research done by the Search Institute on Developmental Assets with hundreds of thousands of young people in grades 6 through 12, only 1 in 4 said they have Asset #2: Positive Family Communication: “Kids turn to their parents for advice and support. They have frequent, in-depth conversations with each other on a variety of topics. Parents are approachable and available when kids want to talk.” I tuned out my mom when I was about 12, right when I needed her most, because I did not believe she had ever gone through what I was going through, and had nothing of value to communicate.

I’ve talked to parents who feel strongly that they shouldn’t share about their drug/alcohol use or their early sexual experiences with their teenagers, because it might come across as a license to repeat parental mistakes. I believe not sharing is adultist and a missed opportunity to demystify, normalize and illuminate a child’s path to adulthood.

Read more about Tamara’s project and find out how to share your own “firsts” by going to: TamaraPalmer.com and click on Call for Submissions.

My Story

Part of my passion about adultism comes from my own childhood. I was raised in rural NE Ohio, granddaughter of Slovenian immigrants. We lived on five acres, at least three of which were wooded and adjoining other undeveloped lands. My two older brothers and I (and other neighborhood kids) had tremendous freedom to roam and explore the natural world. I remember having my first picnic in the woods, sitting atop a huge rock with my best friend Tommy, sharing Kool Aid and sandwiches, when I was 5 years old. I’m sure our respective grandmothers were keeping an eye on us, but as far as I was concerned, we were alone. There was a silent message from those two grandmothers: we think you’re capable, we trust you.

My mom and I were always close, but sadly, by the time I reached junior high, I had already decided I couldn’t talk to her about the stressful things that were going on in my life: my developing body and budding sexuality, being overweight, hating to be naked for gym showers, the overwhelming changes of going from my small elementary school to the bigger junior high in town. I wanted to wear nylons and tennis shoes year round; she wanted me in sensible shoes and socks. I thought I needed a bra; she didn’t notice. I was in love with the sexy boy from the next township over. She thought he was a hoodlum (she was right).

Now I know my brain was taking it’s second growth spurt and that my thinking had become more complex. I could tell that my mom didn’t have the answers I needed. I knew her opinions were static, unyielding. Furthermore, no one talked to their parents in those days (the 60’s). The culture did not support closeness of the sort I had in my younger years with my mom. She and I lived in two separate worlds. Hers was the world of adults, the “know it all” beings who were in control and had all the answers. Mine was the world of young people, who didn’t. She was pretty much oblivious to what was happening in my life, and I liked it that way. Our patterns of non-relating lasted well into my adulthood.

Young people have a lot to teach adults, and adults have lots of experience to share with young people. But adults can’t know the truth of the younger generation, because it is always changing. The saddest result of adultism in my life, and the lives of many other teenagers, is that I didn’t have my mom as an ally when I needed her the most. I simply couldn’t trust her to respect me as an individual.

The Foundational Oppression

If adults consistently disrespect a child, that child sees disrespect as a natural part of life. It doesn’t take long for her to start believing, without consciously thinking about it, that her ideas are not worthy of attention by adults and are therefore useless to society. There is a pervasive belief that only the ideas of adults are valid and that children have absolutely no credibility until they have attained the exalted state of adulthood (even though it is never clear what constitutes an adult!)

Once a person has been indoctrinated to consistent disrespect in the form of being overlooked, ignored, controlled, poked and prodded against his will…and another oppression comes along, like racism, classism or sexism, there is no fight left. The fight fled before the person even got conscious enough to realize “this is not right.”

Maybe it’s easier to see when the reverse is true. When a young person is respected from the beginning, when she is given a say in the things impacting her own life, when she feels a sense of power and control over her life, when her opinions and feelings are validated by the adults around her…and sexism (or sexual exploitation) or classism or racism comes along, it’s like, “What? Are you kidding me? I don’t deserve to be treated like this!”