csua.org/u/jja -> www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/opinion/17males.html?ex=1347681600&en=4c4642124be12ecb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Enlarge This Image Glynis Sweeny A SPATE of news reports have breathlessly announced that science can explain why adults have such trouble dealing with teenagers: adolescents possess immature, undeveloped brains that drive them to risky, obnoxious, parent-vexing behaviors. The latest example is a study out of Temple University that found that the temporal gap between puberty, which impels adolescents toward thrill seeking, and the slow maturation of the cognitive-control system, which regulates these impulses, makes adolescence a time of heightened vulnerability for risky behavior. We know the rest of the script: Commentators brand teenagers as stupid, crazy, reckless, immature, irrational and even alien, then advocate tough curbs on youthful freedoms. Jay Giedd, who heads the brain imaging project at the National Institutes of Health, argues that the voting and drinking ages should be raised to 25. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, asks whether we should allow teenagers to be lifeguards or to enlist in the military. And state legislators around the country have proposed raising driving ages. But the handful of experts and officials making these claims are themselves guilty of reckless overstatement. More responsible brain researchers like Daniel Siegel of the University of California at Los Angeles and Kurt Fischer at Harvards Mind, Brain and Education Program caution that scientists are just beginning to identify how systems in the brain work. People naturally want to use brain science to inform policy and practice, but our limited knowledge of the brain places extreme limits on that effort, Dr. There can be no brain-based education or brain-based parenting at this early point in the history of neuroscience. Why, then, do many pundits and policy makers rush to denigrate adolescents as brainless? One troubling possibility: youths are being maligned to draw attention from the reality that its actually middle-aged adults the parents whose behavior has worsened. Our most reliable measures show Americans ages 35 to 54 are suffering ballooning crises: 18,249 deaths from overdoses of illicit drugs in 2004, up 550 percent per capita since 1975, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. More than four million arrests in 2005, including one million for violent crimes, 500,000 for drugs and 650,000 for drinking-related offenses, according to the FBI All told, this represented a 200 percent leap per capita in major index felonies since 1975. More than half of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in 2005 were given to middle-aged Americans, up from less than one-third a decade ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control. What experts label adolescent risk taking is really baby boomer risk taking. Its true that 30 years ago, the riskiest age group for violent death was 15 to 24. But those same boomers continue to suffer high rates of addiction and other ills throughout middle age, while later generations of teenagers are better behaved. Today, the age group most at risk for violent death is 40 to 49, including illegal-drug death rates five times higher than for teenagers. Strangely, the experts never mention even more damning new discoveries about the middle-aged brain, like the 2004 study of scans by Harvard researchers revealing declines in key memory and learning genes that become significant by age 40. Both teenagers and adults display a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors derived from individual conditions and choices, not harsh biological determinism. Theres no typical teenager any more than theres a typical 45-year-old. Commentators slandering teenagers, scientists misrepresenting shaky claims about the brain as hard facts, 47-year-olds displaying far riskier behaviors than 17-year-olds, politicians refusing to face growing middle-aged crises ... if grown-ups really have superior brains, why dont we act as if we do?
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