Response to The Invention of Adolescence

For the most part, I agree with this article. It mentions the predominant attributes of puberty and becoming an adolescence. Teenage years do come with a certain desire to assert independence. During this age, one is searching for an identity. This doesn't exclusively mean having a sense of what one aspires to be in life and the best way to achieve happiness or at least contentment. It also includes finding an identity among the people one is surrounded with especially among one's peers. Moreover, a kid's thought process experiences drastic changes as they become an adolescent. As indicated in the article, teenagers gain the "capacity for abstract reasoning and relative thinking." Aside from the scientific evidence, I can attest to this from personal experience. This is the time when kids start contemplating philosophy, mortality, politics and begin to question religion.

However, despite the mostly accurate description of qualities associated with adolescence in this article,there was one part that I didn't agree with. I personally didn't appreciate how the article simplifies the mental capacity of teens. It refers to the mental state of teens as "immature" thus I believe it is not giving teens the credit they so richly deserve. For instance, the article touches upon the subject of romance among teens and goes on to describe teen romance as "absurdly simple". Sure it might not be the "till death do us part" romance adults have, but by any means does that mean the relationships are not to be taken seriously.Furthermore, not only is that insulting, the article is contradicting itself on many occasions. On one hand, it talks about "the clash between physical maturity and mental immaturity" in teens, and on the other hand, it says that as kids evolve into teens, their ability for abstraction increases exponentially. I fail to understand the author's point of view. Does the author consider teens to still be the simpleminded kids they were or young adults on a road to sophisticated thinking?

Aside from that, I don't imagine I have any other problems with the article. Regardless of the fact that it doesn't succeed to getting across its point of view on teens' mental capacity, it did achieve its main goal of explaining the origins of adolescence.