Lucy Foulkes (Bodley Head (UK); Vintage Digital (US))
In the teen movie Mean Girls, protagonist Cady Heron arrives at a US high school having grown up in Africa. Baffled by her peers and the social hierarchies of school, she approaches things as her zoologist parents would 鈥� documenting the people around her as if they were animals living on the savannah.
In her new book, Coming of Age: How adolescence shapes us, psychologist Lucy Foulkes takes a similar approach to decoding the rulebook of adolescence, coolly describing the teen tribe from the outside, even though she has spent years working with them.
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The result is a refreshingly clear-eyed description of the forces that shape adolescent behaviours and emotions. Teens are often viewed through a lens of judgement or morality, their actions reduced to the products of hormones or immature minds. But you will find none of that here.
Each short chapter is cleverly punctuated by often-moving interviews about people鈥檚 adolescent years. Take 14-year-old Emma, who got pregnant and discovered what it was like to have a baby at school. In a terrible turn of events, the baby died, so she had to deal with grief, too. The stories add humanity to the research and complement Foulkes鈥檚 succinct and objective writing style.
She starts by describing the microcosm of secondary or high school, where most of our teenage adventures play out. As the writers of teen movies know, the rules governing this environment are surprisingly universal. Research backs this up: high school is governed by a strong hierarchical structure with a few high-status pupils at the top. Students quickly organise into cliques, which offer social protection, although attempts to leave such groups can come at a high individual cost.
This pecking order, and our place in it, can play a big role in shaping self-identity, says Foulkes, influencing us for years to come. Though we tend to view teens as rebellious, much of their behaviour is actually highly conservative. From wearing the right clothes to the people you should fancy, successfully following the rigid rules set by more popular kids can make the difference between an easy life and social ostracism.
The need to fit in is also the source of many other behaviours, such as risk-taking. We know teens take all sorts of risks 鈥� from drugs to drinking, driving too fast and unprotected sex 鈥� and overall do so more often than children or adults.
But while we often see this as irresponsible, Foulkes paints a different picture. We may, for instance, think that teenagers underestimate the size of the risks they take, but evidence shows that, if anything, they overestimate the potential negative outcomes of many risky behaviours. Teenagers, she writes, have much to gain from risk-taking 鈥� and much more to lose by playing it safe.
Taking risks helps them develop independence while still fitting in with peers; refusing to engage in such behaviours would mean taking a huge social risk. Framed this way, doing dangerous things other teens do is, in fact, a risk-averse behaviour. We see the rationality behind it.
The desire to fit in also helps explain bullying. In one of her most powerful chapters, Foulkes writes that 鈥渏ust as the victim is seen as having broken certain norms, the whole peer group must then follow a new norm: agree with the bully and ostracise the victim, lest you end up a target鈥�.
Foulkes delivers a positive message, too, by highlighting research into how to prevent bullying, and the fact that some students (those who are highly empathetic with a strong belief in themselves as change-makers) can be instrumental in stopping it.
Chapters like these, as well as ones on sex, love and grief, can help parents and teachers understand teenagers free from judgements and stereotypes, with renewed respect and armed with advice on setting boundaries.
This book will also send you down memory lane, and is likely to give you a fresh perspective on the adolescent events that left an indelible mark on your own identity, however long ago that was. It is an eye-opening read for anyone who knows a teenager, or who has been one.
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