When Youth Internalize Adultism

"Respect: You give it, you get it." While its not as easy as simply repeating old adages, respect boils down to a relationship built on mutuality, inter-reliance, and reciprocity. 


Looking for and getting the respect of adults oftentimes leads young people to become more like adults, assuming the mannerisms, appearance, and even the identity of adults. This happens in a few different ways, depending on which adults a young person is surrounded by. It may mean sex at a young age, drinking, drug use,  or other kinds of self-demeaning behavior. Other ways young people assume the identities of adults are through more "socially acceptable" behaviors, such as the clothes, apparent attitudes, and actions of adults. Joining the debate club or football team, driving in "just the right way," and other self-sacrificial behavior are examples. This is not an indictment of those behaviors, necessarily; instead, its an observation that all of these activities are forms of internalized adultism. 


Trainer Paul Kivel explores this dynamic, writing, "There were lots of promises from adults. If you study hard, workhard, stay clean, stay safe, don’t have sex, don’t drink or smoke,don’t mess up, adults promised you a life filled with power and privileges. But the promise of power 10 or 20 years in the futurewas not inviting nor convincing." So assuming the rights and privileges of adults when you're young is self-perceived as a way to exert your power; unfortunately, the reality is that by doing these things you are actually giving up your power as a youth!


The alternative to internalized adultism isn't obvious, because the traps are all around. You get good grades and you're facetiously praised in a way no adult would praise another adult; you get bad grades and you're punished for underperforming. As John Lennon said, "As soon as you're born they make you feel small..."  


So what's the different route? Well, for adults who don't want to promote internalized adultism we must be our own most severe critic. Harder still, we must be aware of every criticism of children and youth, as they are almost always rooted in the oppressive behaviors of adults and related to adultism. It's as simple as my daughter complaining she can't reach the sink in our new house. Why do we constantly build sinks at "adult" height, despite the fact that homes are clearly built with kids and adults intended to live there? So listen for those criticisms, and make adjustments as necessary: a stool will help my daughter reach the sink, and I can leave a cup in the bathroom so she can help herself easily all the time.


For young people the route is more complicated, because once you are aware of the oppression of adultism and the addiction to adultism it is challenging to not see it everywhere all the time, because it is everywhere, all the time. And the real zinger is that in just a few years, you are going to be an adult, too! There is a particular type of compassion that I've experienced from the most conscious youth. They approach me with a kind open-mindedness, and urge me to a greater version of myself than I'd known before. This most recently happened to me in Connecticut, where the Manchester Youth Commission hosted me for a three-day retreat. The young people in who were there were determined to make wonderful meaning of the experiences they were having in their youth voice activities; however, the adults who were there were as ignorant as every adult - including me! Luckily, with the young people as our guides we started to see the world from new lenses, and the group grew because of it. 


Alternatively, there are young people who discover adultism, either consciously or unconsciously, and detach as a result. They step away, move away, and even run away in order to find safety, peace, and ease. While this happens in obvious ways, it also happens in more subtle ways: for every young person living on the streets tonight, there are 50 at home zoning out inside of video games. I believe this is a direct effect of internalized adultism, as are many of the behaviors I listed at the beginning. 


Children and youth routinely internalize adultism throughout our society; this is why we have a crisis of purpose throughout our society. The most responsible adults believe their responsibility is to steward young people towards a powerful, purposeful, and dynamic future; the most irresponsible believe they must control the uncontrolled and benefit from their so-called inabilities. The painful reality is that all adults are responsible for adultism, thus leading to the crisis. We must find a different way.

When "Authentic" Means Something Else

A lot of well-meaning adults are concerned about "authentic" youth engagement. This is often a code-phrase, one determined to separate the youth who really want to be engaged from those who really don't want to be engaged. The problem is that is a false premise for any kind of youth engagement.

Adults routinely fail young people throughout our society. Whether its the parent who constantly screams at their six-year-old because "he won't listen to anything else" or the teacher who resorts to spanking out of frustration, we constantly rely on the tools of oppression to negate the voices and roles of children and youth.

Unfortunately, these types of routine disenfranchisement instills in young people a distrust of adults, resulting in what we label as "apathy," which is nothing more than a conditioned response to the routine sense of disconnectedness thrusted on all people from the day we're born.

The results of this perception include adultism, which is the social addiction to the opinions, words, and actions of adults; ephebiphobia, which is the fear of youth; and gerontocracy, in which older people run the show simply because of their age and the assumption that age equates to wisdom or otherwise.

The way to defeating this misconception has little to do with "authentic" youth engagement; rather, it is the commitment adults make to young people that can turn the situation around. Too often adults simply pick the most involved youth to become more involved because they are simply too lazy, too scared, or too disrespectful of different perspectives to engage the historically disengaged youth in our society. I have heard many adults ask, "How can I commit to these youth when I don’t know what will happen? I don’t know if they'll do what I want them to, or, they don’t know what they really want, so don’t they have to know that before I commit to helping them get it?"

Lots of adults think of committing to youth engagement as a trap. When we truly and authentically experience engagement throughout our lives, our partnerships with young people become windows and doors through which our interactions with the larger communities and world we live in become richer and more meaningful. I prefer that to any simplistic fix offered by the easily engaged. How about you?

Evolving Youth Engagment

Engaging young people throughout society is a constantly evolving practice that requires consistently engaging the critical perspectives of children, youth, and adult allies. It also requires that anyone committed to youth engagement stay committed to re-inventing their approaches to youth engagement, as young people themselves constantly evolve. This means acknowledged that worked in 2008 won't work in 2010, let alone using what happened in 1998! And I'm talking about every place that wants young people to be engaged, including at home, in schools, at our community programs, and in our national efforts.

Adults struggle with this reality, as we seem to treasure sameness and familiarity as we grow older. We want the consistency and commonness of our youth, where homogenization ruled. That doesn't work anymore, and will work even less in the future. We rely on the fixtures of our studies and practices from the past, looking to "research-proven" examples to guide our well-meaning intentions, instead of acknowledging the variations, demolitions, and re-imaginations of youth today. 

There can be a danger to constant evolution: failure, temporary-ness, and non-sustainability are the hallmarks of radically re-invention in many, many examples. However, it is absolutely vital that we dream bigger, better dreams and get beyond what we think we know will work. Evolution.

Redefining Adultism

An apple is an apple and an orange is an orange. Based on this belief, last month I unveiled my new definition for adultism at a youth commission retreat in Connecticut, and now I'm prepared to share it with you. The following is from the newly written Freechild Project Intro to Adultism:

Adultism is the addiction to the attitudes, ideas, beliefs, and actions of adults. It is a major concept in the organization of society: Adultism prevails in every sector, including government, education, social services, and families. It's defeat is often seen as a bad thing, as adults are mostly capable only of seeing their own abilities as those that are truly needed to the function and well-being of our world. 

The problem with adultism is that ignores, silences, neglects, and punishes children and youth simply because they are not adults. Every young person experiences adultism from the day they are born until the day the world around them recognizes them as an adult.

The Freechild Project believes that adultism is part of the structure of society and its institutions, including families, schools, churches and the government. Because of the long history of adultism and its pervasive nature in our societies, essentially all people suffer from this oppression.  The resulting internalized oppression and distress patterns are severe.  For example, adultism is expressed by treating the young person as weak, helpless and less intelligent than adults.  For many, there is verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Oppression of young people conditions them to accept all other oppressions that exist in the society. 

I would love to hear what you think about redefining adultism, and this new definition.