When did the teen years begin?

The flying fingers of Glenn Reynolds have spun across the keyboard to produce an opinion piece at Foxnews called, "Teen Sex and Media Hype."

Basically, Glenn says that teenagers today are "infantilized," meaning they are treated as children who tend to display some adult vices. He suggests that the teen years stop being seen as an extension of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. So teens should bear adult-level responsibilities, such as holding down real jobs.

It's an interesting idea, and one I strongly endorse. What we think of as the teen years are really an invention of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Jobs were so scarce that the federal government encouraged businesses to employ only primary breadwinners of households. Most teens then worked, and they found themselves unemployed. Married, working moms were sent home, too.

It was from this enforced idleness that the teen years became socially and culturally distinguished as a sandwich time between childhood and adulthood, and "teenagers" were seen as a distinct group with a special psychology, requiring special care. This didn't happen right away, but it was firmly in place by the end of the 1950s.

Today, among the middle classes at least, the years of grades 7 -12 are consumed with organized sports, organized recreation and activities hoped to enhance college admission. It's not the lack of gainful employment that I bemoan, it is the regimentation of teen's lives. There is so little room for spontaneity in their lives. My peers, parents of teens as I am, seem sometimes to be wholly impassioned with making sure their kids' calendars are crammed. It is a pit I find myself falling into also. This is bad for the kids and bad for the parents.