Teenage rebellion is not a universal cultural norm. It is unknown in some cultures and was little known even in western cultures before the second half of the 20th century. Our popular culture has created the trend and continues to fuel it.
Ed Stetzer, who offers a stream of commentary on church and culture issues at his blog refers to a particular conference talk he gave and provides reference material for an:
off-handed statement that has generated a lot of questions. In that talk, I said something to the effect that teen rebellion is not found in all cultures. Thus, it is not a universal cultural experience. In other words, it is a myth that teens consistently rebel in every culture and context.
I probably mentioned teen rebellion is more common in Western industrialized societies with formalized educational systems. Since that time, people keep asking me, “where can I find more about that?” (Which teaches me not to make an off-handed comment in front of thousands of people.)
People often ask for a source to cite, but I did not remember a recent source where it is spelled out in detail. It is just something known and discussed in anthropology studies. In pre-industrial societies, “adolescents” spend most of their time with parents, often apprenticing with adults, etc. Thus, in my Ph.D. work, I remember reading it and discussing it, particularly in anthropology studies. I would think that most textbooks dealing with anthropology and “adolescence” would address the issues.
Stetzer directs our attention to an article in
Scientific American. In that magazine, Robert Epstein weighs in on the debate that teen rebellion is caused by brain chemistry issues among teens (a widely held view). He explains,
It’s not only in newspaper headlines–it’s even on magazine covers. TIME, U.S. News & World Report and even Scientific American Mind have all run cover stories proclaiming that an incompletely developed brain accounts for the emotional problems and irresponsible behavior of teenagers….
As you will see, a careful look at relevant data shows that the teen brain we read about in the headlines–the immature brain that supposedly causes teen problems–is nothing less than a myth…
Read the rest of Stetzer’s post, which includes his conclusions.
mgpcpastor's blog 
Even in the west, in homeschooling circles, where teens spend more time with mature adults than with immature peers, teen rebellion is much reduced.
What’s even worse is the myth of “maturity”. Maturity, in the way it is used to accuse young people of being immature, doesn’t mean anything.
It is said that the more experience you have the more mature you are. But this concept is illogical and doesn’t make any sense.
Isolated experiences don’t have any effect on the concept of “general maturity”. We can agree to consider “general maturity” as: thinking before acting, respecting other people, emphasizing with other people feelings and so on.
But we all know lot of people who have lot of experience including many job, university, travels, marriage but show no maturity according to those standards.
And that’s because there’s no extrapolation from having a job to respecting others to buying an house and thinking before acting and so on.
Working is relevant only to work. Marrying is relevant only to marriage. Travelling is relevant only to travel.
Just like the online gaming nephew can’t accuse his uncle of being “immature” for being unable to play online game (hence lacking that experience) the uncle can’t accuse his nephew of being “immature” for not living on its own or not having a job. Difference experiences are siimply relevant to specific situations only.
When an older people say that teenages can’t be trusted or should just care about MTV and school because they lack the experience to make mature conversations or to make mature decision, he/she should stop a second to think of what experience he/she is talking about.
The truth is that no one lacks experience to live. What teens want is to live. To live in the world that belongs to them not in the vacuous world of fake teen culture. They have an instinctive drive to show others what they’re capable of, to be a contributing part of the community, to make their own decisions and the concept that they lack specific experiences to have the maturity to be able to do those things is one of the most stupid ideas ever.
There’s no specific experience that makes you mature or adult or responsible. Experiences just make you expert in a determined context.
The piano playing teen is more experienced than the office-worker father… as long as we’re talking of the music context. The father is more experienced than the piano playing teen… as long as we’re talking of the office context. Both experience have no relevance or link to the general concept of “maturity” and “knowing the world”
And it’s a mistery to me why people use different standards when they talk about teens. Lot of people are married with a partner who has completely different competencies. In my neighbour family the father is a chef and he is an expert with cooking but is terrible with math. The mother on the other hand never learned how to cook but it’s great with math and she pays the bills or keeps the budget and so on.
All relationships are between two people with very different skills and experiences. There’s no specific experience that made them more or less adults or mature.
So why we insist on using such illogical concept just to support our bias and stereotypes?
The only experience one needs to live is the desider to live. The only experience a teen need to be trusted when babysitting her brother is the willing to do it.
And another truth most forget is that we never learn things before doing them, we learn them by doing it. No one knows how to be a father before becoming one and doing it. No one knows how to be a wife before doing it and becoming one. No one knows how to cook, before doing it and creating good meals after trial and error.
The why we people talk about teens all these standards get dishonestly changed, so that it seems that teens need MORE than what adults would need to prove their worth, their maturity and to learn?
Why aren’t we honest with teens and admit to them that to learn something you must try it? Why aren’t we honest with teens and admit to them that there are lot of things we don’t have experience with? Why aren’t we honest with teens and admist that people with lot of experience are not necessarily mature? Why aren’t we honest with teens and admit that adults don’t have high expectations of other adults but have abnormal high expectations of teens before they can trust and respect them? Why should, metaphorically speaking, an adult need less than an A to prove his worth but society ask teens to score an A+++ in order to be treated as adults? Why we tell teens that in order to be adults they must be way better than what adults generally are, otherwise they’re just immmature brats?
Daniel,
Thanks for posting such a detailed response.
I don’t like arbitrary notions of what makes someone and adult or child, but find in biblical terms that taking responsibility for oneself and one’s actions is a marker of adult status.
Some teenagers are very able to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions in their relationships with others, and we also know that some people in their twenties (or later) still think largely in terms of themselves, their needs and getting their own ways.
There has to be a reason why, in one limited part of human culture, in one limited time frame (the urbanised west of the mid and late 20th century) rebellion is seen as normal, when it never was before. And this period now is getting earlier (pre-teen) and extending onward into the twenties and beyond.
I also like to work with the concepts wisdom and foolishness.
Just because someone has knowledge does not mean they have wisdom, which is the skill to use their knowledge for the benefit of others in a timely way.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I’ll consider them some more in the future.