America Invented Adolescence (And America May Soon See The End Of It)

“In addition to the conventional scope of childhood from birth through to age 12 – a period when children’s dependency was widely taken for granted – Americans moved the goalposts of childhood as a democratic ideal by extending protections to cover the teen years … [and creating] institutions that could guide adolescents during this later period of childhood” – the juvenile court system and the democratic high school.