Cultural and Community Identities
His parents were Danish, but before Erik was born, they separated. Erik was born near Frankfurt, Germany. Three years later his mother married Erik’s Jewish pediatrician, but waited years before telling him that Dr. Homberger was not really his father. Erik considered himself German, even though his parents were Danish. However, German children rejected him because they considered him a Jew, and Jewish children rejected him because he was tall and blond.
Erik Homberger was an average student and graduated from what we would call a high school. Then he wandered around Europe for a year or so before trying an art school in Germany. After dropping out, he tried another one in Munich, then he moved to Florence, Italy. He wandered around Italy, soaking up the sun and visiting art galleries. Finally at the age of twenty-five, he settled down to work and study.
Erik experienced many of the factors that remove identity from adolescents in our modern Western culture. He had little national identity (Danish, German, Jewish), little community identity (constant moving around), little family identity (mother divorced and remarried), and little religious identity (Jewish or Christian). It is little wonder that Erik Erikson (his biological father’s name) was the one to develop the concept of the “identity crisis” during adolescence. He had experienced it himself.
Contrast Erik Homberger (Erikson?) with Jesus at the age of twelve. Mary and Joseph had taken Jesus to Jerusalem for the Passover. Thinking Jesus was with the group when they started home, they did not miss Him until the end of the day. Returning to Jerusalem, they searched three days before finding Him in the temple talking with the teachers there.
When His parents saw Him, they were astonished. His mother said to Him, “Son, why have You treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for You.”
“Why were you searching for Me?” He asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in My Father’s house?” (Luke 2:48-49)
How many twelve-year-olds today would say something like that? Probably not many, but we must remember that even though Jesus was soon going to be a teenager, He would never be an adolescent. At the age of twelve He knew who he was and much about His mission in life. Within a year, like any other twelve-year-old, He would be an adult (a teenager) and be treated as one by everyone in town.
How different this is from today’s teenagers who, like Erik Erikson, often ask, “Who am I?” The reason for the difference is the invention of adolescence. Our culture today does not tell teenagers who they are. It has created adolescents without giving them an identity. Let us now consider some ways it has removed identity and some ways teenagers try to find it.
Act Your Age?
When teenagers act childish, some parents say, “Act your age,” as a put-down. The problem with telling teens to act their age is that they, and we, are not sure what that means. We have removed the “rites of passage” found in “primitive” cultures. Although we often make fun of these ceremonies, they are important in giving people identities. When boys or girls begin these ceremonies, they know they will come out as men and women, even though they are still in their teens.
On the day after their thirteenth birthday, Hebrew men went through their bar mitzvah, and on the day after their twelfth, women went through their bat mitzvah. These new men and women then had to keep all the commandments. They could buy and sell property. They were adults, not children, and certainly not adolescents. When a Roman boy reached his sixteenth year, he exchanged his toga praetexta for his toga virilis. From then on he would be treated as a man.
The Apostle Paul had a clear cultural identity. He wrote that he was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee” (Phil. 3:5). “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendents? So am I.” (2 Cor. 11:22). There was no question about Paul’s national identity. He was a Hebrew. He was also a Roman citizen, but he mentioned that only when he needed to.)
Of course, a ceremony itself is not important. What is important is that there be some point at which people are recognized as adults. They need to know that they are no longer children (or adolescents) and that they are full adults. Ceremonies in themselves may have little meaning.
Our culture has no “adulthood ceremony,” not even an age of adulthood. Every spring high school seniors dress in long black robes and go through a ceremony in which they move some strings from one side of their heads to the other. It means that they have completed high school, but it does not mean they will be treated as adults by the whole society. Half of them will go on to college and remain adolescents for several more years.
When I register at a motel, my teenagers stay free because, at the front desk, they are considered children. If we eat at the motel restaurant, they are charged adult prices because there they are considered adults. How can they “act their age” when the same institution treats them as children one hour and as adults the next?
When visiting a nearby high school, I noticed a pamphlet saying, “Passport to Adulthood.” As I pulled it from the rack, I saw what it was published by the selective service system. Inside it said, “MEN: When you reach 18, you become an adult. With that new status come rewards—and responsibilities.” It would be much easier for everyone if it were all that simple. Unfortunately, registering for the draft does not mean that teenagers will be treated as adults.
Do We Have to Move Again?
As a typical teenager growing up in the 1950s, I moved six times, attending five schools in four cities. Where was I from? I had little identity with any community. My teenagers have lived in the same house the last fourteen years. When we moved into it, five other boys on the block were the same age as our five-year-old son. By the time he reached high school, he was the only one left. Even when teenagers do not move, their community does.
How different from the strong community identity people had in New Testament times. In fact, we still refer to people then as being “of” a particular community.
Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.”
“Come and see,” said Philip. (John 1:44-46)
The Apostle Paul was also “Saul of Tarsus.” When identifying himself, he said, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. Under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today” (Acts 22:3). Notice that he gives his national identity, his community identity, his religious identity, and his educational identity. We still refer to “Joseph of Arimathea” (John 19:38) and “Judas the Galilean” (Acts 5:37). The place of one’s birth and residence was important.
When schools were smaller and within the neighborhood, students got a community identity from them. I began my education walking to a one-room school with kindergarten through sixth grade and one teacher. Later I went to a “city school” and graduated with about fifty in my class. I knew everyone in both schools by name. My teenagers began in an elementary school with 500 students and now attend a county high school with about 400 students in each class. They do not even know everyone in their classes, much less everyone in the school. They do not find a community identity even in their schools.
When I was bused to the city for school, it was to get a “better education.” Today when people are bused, it is often to achieve racial balance. Both kinds of busing have been at the expense of a community identity for teenagers. When people first moved to the cities, they formed distinct neighborhoods. Today most of the neighborhoods are gone, and many people hardly know the names of others on the block, or even down the hall in the apartment building.
First we removed our teenagers’ cultural identities by creating adolescence—we turned them into “adult-children” without telling them what they were really to be like. Then we took them from farms and small towns into large cities. We took them out of small schools in their neighborhoods and put them in huge institutions where they cannot possibly know everyone. It is little wonder that many of them ask, “Who am I?”
This Proves I’m an Adult!
In societies that have puberty rites, the young men and women have no question about when they become adults. In our society, they are never quite sure if they have arrived at adulthood or not. Are they adults when they have to pay adult prices at a restaurant, when they can get a driver’s license, when they can quit school, or when they can vote? How can they prove to themselves that they are adults? What physical feat can they do to prove it? Since there are few lions or bears to slay to show that they are grown up, many look to other actions to prove their adult status.
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution states that people can vote everywhere at age eighteen. However, the federal government is now pushing for laws in every state requiring people to be twenty-one to buy liquor. What a commentary on our culture that the final step into adulthood is the right to buy a drug that will make one irrational and irresponsible!
Many teenagers see the use of drugs as proof of their adulthood. Even though they cannot buy drugs legally, most teens use them during adolescence as a way of proving to themselves and others that they are adults. A 1982 survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that nineteen out of twenty 18-to-25-year-olds had drunk alcohol. They had taken what they considered the final step in the proof of their adulthood. Furthermore, three out of four had smoked tobacco, and two out of three had used marijuana.
Several surveys have found that the majority of those who become cigarette smokers began by eighth or ninth grade. The National Youth Polydrug Study found that men first smoked marijuana at an average age of 12.8 and women at 13.1. They began drinking alcohol a little earlier. Many teenagers see the use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana as an initiation into adulthood. Since our culture does not have any meaningful formal rites of passage, beginning use of these drugs has become an informal rite of passage.
Of course, adolescents look to other self-defined rites of passage, which we will discuss later. Some believe having sexual intercourse makes them adults. Others believe breaking a law makes them adults. They are looking for some way of proving to themselves and others that they are adults.
Do I Have to Wear That?
Since adolescents do not get an identity from their culture or their community, they often turn to another group—to other teenagers. Afraid of being rejected by these other adolescents, teenagers feel a strong pressure to conform to the group. Unfortunately, those other teens do not know who they are either, so peer pressure becomes a case of “the blind leading the blind.”
Teenagers pick a group they want to join, then conform to it. Such conformity shows in actions, language, beliefs, possessions, and, most obviously, in dress. There is a big difference between having a horse on your shirt and having an alligator, a fox, a dragon, or a tiger. If parents suggest wearing something not “in” with the group at the moment, the suggestion will be met with, “Do I have to wear that?”
Social psychologist Solomon Asch (Social Psychology, Prentice-Hall) showed that adolescents conform, even to a group of strangers, on such a simple thing as judging which of two lines is longer. When making judgments alone, teens made errors about 7% of the time. When judging with a group of three or more people, they made errors about 33% of the time if the rest of the group was unanimously against them.
As the differences between the lines became less, the teenagers conformed to the group more. If they were made to feel less competent than the others in the group, they conformed even more. Unfortunately, many of the decisions adolescents make are much less clear-cut than judging the lengths of lines. Since they are also unsure of their identities, they are likely to conform to nearly anything the rest of the group does.
Further research has shown that people eleven to thirteen years of age conform more that those of any other ages. Of course, this is when they have just begun adolescence and have the least identity. They look to others to decide how to act because they do not know who they are. Since men mature later than women, we would expect the most conformity from them later. That is exactly what we find. Women conform most at twelve years of age and men at fifteen.
Pressure to conform is strong for any people not sure of their identity. The Israelites were just becoming a nation, but had judges instead of kings. The people were unhappy with Samuel’s sons and asked Samuel to “appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” Samuel told the people how bad a king would be for them, “but the people refused to listen to Samuel. ‘No!’ they said. ‘We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles’” (1 Sam. 8:5, 19-20).
God knew that, in asking His people to worship Him in a different way, they would feel the pressure to conform and warned them about it. “After they have been destroyed before you, be
careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same’” (Deut. 12:30). He warned them not to worship God like the other nations, but it did little good. “They rejected His decrees and the covenant He had made with their fathers and the warnings He had given them. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. They imitated the nations around them although the Lord had ordered them, ‘Do not do as they do,’ and they did the things the Lord had forbidden them to do” (2 Kings 17:15).
Such warnings are given to individuals in both the Old and New Testaments, as well as to the nation of Israel as a whole. Only a few chapters after the Ten Commandments, God said, “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong” (Ex. 23:2). Unfortunately, teenagers may follow the crowd to take drugs, vandalize, or steal. Adolescent gangs roam the streets of our cities. Paul told the Romans, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).
Unfortunately, conformity is not a good answer to identity, even if teens have chosen to conform to a “good” group rather than to a gang. In earlier times, people found lasting identities in their cultures and communities, but these adolescent identities are based on temporary groups. If the group rejects the adolescent, the result can be devastating. When the group breaks up, as nearly all adolescent groups finally do, the adolescent is again left without an identity.
What Can Parents Do?
Of course, as individual parents you cannot do much about the lack of cultural identity. Political action is needed to develop it, and that takes time—too much time to help your own adolescents. Furthermore, such change is unlikely to take place any time soon, even if people start taking political action. In 1985 teens spent $65 billion and any move to change adolescence would be opposed by intensive lobbying to protect the interests of those who get these billions of dollars.
Develop a “cultural identity.” Just because our culture has not developed an age of adulthood does not mean that you are helpless as parents. You can develop your own “criteria of adulthood.” Even though the culture itself does not tell teens what it expects, you should make it clear to your own teens what you expect of them. As we said in an earlier chapter, let them know that, even if no one else does, you expect them to act like responsible adults.
You can also have “puberty rites” for the time when your children become adolescents (adults). I know of one family who literally has a family celebration when their daughters begin menstruating. If that sounds too “primitive” to you, you could pick a birthday near the age of puberty and have a “ceremony” the day each child becomes an adult in the family. Of course, you would then treat him or her as an adult from that time on.
Develop a community identity. Since part of the identity problem is that families move frequently, the solution is to stop moving. One couple, Pete and Sally, decided not to move while they had adolescents. They decided his “better” job and higher salary were not worth the cost in identity for their teenagers. Another couple, Harold and Molly, did move, but chose the new community and neighborhood with their adolescents in mind. Molly said, “The ‘right’ place to live for someone in Harold’s position was a poor place for our teenagers. There were no other teens within five blocks.”
Whether you move or not, become a part of the community. Join a church in the community. Become a part of the community choir or orchestra. Join community athletic leagues as a family. Send your children and adolescents to schools in the community. Become a part of the parent-teacher organization. Become a leader in scouts, 4-H, or other clubs where you can work together as a family.
Make your block a real neighborhood. Mike and Debbie had other families in for games and a backyard cookout. They joined a neighborhood crime-watch. They started a neighborhood Bible study group. They began walking down the street evenings, stopping to chat with people in their yards. They generally took time to be real neighbors to everyone within three or four houses.
Learn about your community. We have made it a point to subscribe to the weekly local Jessamine Journal as well as the daily Lexington Herald-Leader. You can put local news clippings on a bulletin board or the refrigerator so that everyone in the family will see them. Learn about the history of your community. We were surprised, delighted, and aghast as we read the book Wilmore, Kentucky, and learned of the early history of our town. Although the book will never become a bestseller, it taught us much about our town.
One thing you need to do is show by your own pride and participation that you have a community identity. Some people see Wilmore as a little college town five miles from the end of the road. No one stops by just because they are passing through. One evening while giving a local teenager a ride, I asked where he planned to go to college. Though he was not sure, he said it would be somewhere other than in this “stinkin’ town.” I immediately knew that his parents had given him little community identity.
I later asked my son riding with me if he felt the same way about Wilmore. He said, “No, I really like living here. I have lots of friends and know everyone.” We had succeeded in helping him develop a community identity. Wilmore may not be world famous, but as a family we can take pride in it. We can personally know many people in town—all the pastors, all the businessmen, both doctors, the dentist, all members of the city council, and so forth. Although we are well aware of the shortcomings of our community, we can emphasize the good things and take pride in them. Then we can work to make it better.
Any community can give teens a real role in the town. A few years ago when a teen suggested painting faces on the fire hydrants, our city council said, “We will supply the paint, if you will paint them.” I know of one teenager who is planning to run for city council as soon as she turns eighteen. She knows most of the current council and feels she can have a real effect on city government, even as a teenager.
Use peer pressure. Peer pressure can be positive as well as negative, and toward Christianity as well as away from it. Mary White Harder, James Richardson, and Robert Simmonds were psychologists and sociologists at the University of Nevada when they wrote an article for Psychology Today on the “Jesus People” in a commune in the early 1970s. They wrote, “All of us who interviewed members came under such pressure that we felt the need to withdraw at least once a day in order to reaffirm our own world views” (December 1972, p. 113).
T. George Harris, editor of Psychology Today at the time, wrote, “Each time they called in after a visit, we asked them if any of them had been converted to the movement. At least one of the researchers had trouble hanging on to scientific certainty while he lived day and night among the vibrant, born-again Christians” (p. 42). The pressures were so great that even people studying the commune could hardly keep from becoming Christians.
Even a group within a group can be a positive influence. When our son Kent was in eighth grade, several Christian students started a prayer group. They gathered each morning to pray together briefly between first and second hour. After several weeks the group had grown to nearly twenty students. One afternoon Kent said, “The first teacher came to our prayer group today.”
“Who was it?” I asked. When he told me, I was surprised and asked why she came.
“We were gathered in a circle praying when she pushed her way in asking, ‘Who’s fighting?’” said Kent. That prayer group was a source of strength that whole year, a positive peer pressure.
Even if you cannot get a group for positive peer pressure, just one other person will break the power of the group. Solomon Asch, the social psychologist who did the experiment having college students judge the lengths of lines, found that the power of the group depended on unanimity. If just one other person gave the correct answer, the pressure to conform was broken. Students then gave the correct answer, even though nearly everyone else was giving the incorrect one. Even Jesus sent His disciples out in pairs (Mark 6:7).
If your teenagers cannot find even one other person to stand with them, they may have to leave the group. Jeff was on the football team. Each year he found that the pressure to drink, take drugs, and listen to off-color stories dragged his Christian life down. Each summer at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes he would rededicate his life, then go through the same cycle again. Finally, he made the very difficult choice to quit the team.
Although you alone cannot change the culture, you can go a long way toward giving your teen a community identity. The major factor is your own attitude. If you do not have a community identity with pride in your community, you will not be able to pass this on to your adolescents. You can also help your teens find a good group so they will feel positive pressures to conform. As parents of teenagers, we need to help make good things happen in our teenagers’ lives.
2005 Update
Changes in Drug Abuse
Fortunately, the best data about adolescent drug use is available to anyone with Internet access. Every year since 1976 the University of Michigan has conducted the Monitoring The Future (MTF) survey about drug use and abuse of about 50,000 students in eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades. Sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, detailed results for the most recent 15 years and summary results for the entire time are always available on-line at www.nida.nih.gov. The results for the last decade show a variety of trends, from good news to bad news. Teen use is unchanged for some drugs, increasing for others, and decreasing for yet others.
This chapter looked at the use of alcohol and tobacco as a means of proving adulthood, and this annually repeated survey shows basically good news for these drugs. The reported use of both of these has declined for all grades, but especially for eighth graders, during the last half dozen years. The tenth grade reported use has also declined, but not as much; and twelfth grade use has declined, but by even less. Similar results appeared for the use of marijuana.
Likewise, the use of illicit drugs of all kinds shows basically good news. Since the use of such drugs peaked in the mid to late 1990s, their reported use has been declining annually since 1996 or 1997 for all grade levels. The MTF report notes that there was a 17% decline in the use of illicit drugs between 2001 and 2004. Some people have interpreted these changes as meaning that we have won the war on drug abuse.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. A few years ago the MTF report said, “For the first time, in 2002 the MTF survey looked at the misuse and/or nonmedical use of the prescription drugs Oxycontin and Vicodin.” Living in Kentucky where the misuse of Oxycontin originated, the finding that among high school seniors about 5% abuse Oxycontin and about 10% misuse Vicodin came as no surprise to me. These are prescription drugs very useful to those who need them. Oxycontin is a very powerful time-release painkiller that helps many people in constant pain. However, adolescents (and others) discovered that crushing the pills eliminates the time-release factor, and gives a rush—sometimes a fatal rush.
The decline in the use of illicit drugs has been offset by the misuse of legal drugs. It is not illegal to possess prescription drugs such as Oxycontin or Vicodin, so one does not risk arrest simply by having them. Ritalin, taken by millions of children, is often the drug of choice on college campuses. Although Ritalin calms the behavior of hyperactive individuals, it is a really a stimulant, and college students take large doses for that purpose.
Likewise, it is not illegal to possess over-the-counter drugs like dextromethorphan, also known as triple-C, skittles, candy, robo, red devils, and dex. Although you may think, “Why would anyone take that?” you have probably taken it—and given it to your children. It is known as triple-C because it is found in its largest dosage in Coricidin HBP Cough & Cold. In fact, it is found in over the counter cough suppressants, such as Robitussin, Drixoral, Vicks formula 44, etc.—over 140 over-the-counter products in all. Adolescents have discovered that taking these in large doses gives the high they are seeking.
So many people are making their own methamphetamines (meth) that some states have passed laws against selling over-the-counter drugs containing pseudoephedrine unless the customer asks for it at the pharmacy counter. Pseudoephedrine is the active ingredient in decongestants such as Sudafed. One can buy all the ingredients needed to make meth at most discount stores, and pseudoephedrine is the one most likely to have restricted access.
In addition to warning adolescents about illicit drugs, they must be warned about the misuse of legal drugs. No one should take any drug in any way other than the stated directions. Overdoses of many drugs can kill you. Others may do permanent harm to vital organs in the body, so no drug should be taken in any way not described on the bottle.