Teenage rebellion

Teenage rebellion is a part of social development in adolescents in order for them to develop an identity independent from their parents or family and a capacity for independent decision-making. They may experiment with different roles, behaviors, and ideologies as part of this process of developing an identity. Teenage rebellion has been recognized within psychology as a set of behavioral traits that supersede class, culture, or race; some psychologists, however, have disputed the universality of the phenomenon. According to Terror Management Theory, the child's allegiance to parental authority and worldviews can weaken after the discovery that parents, like themselves and everyone else, are mortal. This realization creates an unconscious need for security that is broader than what the parents alone provide. This can lead to new cultural allegiances, in the search for a more enduring sense of meaning. Teenagers seek to perceive themselves a valued contributor to aspects of culture that more convincingly outlive or transcend the mortal individual's lifespan. However, since the parents also instill their cultural beliefs onto the child, if the child does not come to associate their parents' mortality with their cultural beliefs, the chances of rebellion decrease.

Nature

There remains some debate as to whether the causes of teenage rebellion are completely natural or necessary. Some posit that an adolescent's failure to achieve a sense of identity can result in role confusion and an inability to choose a vocation, and/or that these pressures may develop from being viewed as adults. Indeed, in the Western world the age at which one is considered an adult (in both the cultural and legal sense) has advanced from the early teens in earlier centuries to the late teens – or even, in today's society, one's early twenties. However, simply focusing on contemporary western or western-influenced cultures cannot answer the question of "universality". For example, if our hunter–gatherer ancestors or historic agrarian cultures had different patterns of behaviour, this would suggest that "teenage rebellion" is not "completely natural".

In ''Scientific American'', however, Harvard psychologist Robert Epstein disparaged the notion of "the immature brain that supposedly causes teen problems" as largely a myth, and wrote that the turbulence often seen as typical of these years is not "a universal developmental phenomenon." Epstein alternatively contends that external factorsnotably " treating older and older people as children while also isolating them from adults and passing laws to restrict their behavior"are more likely responsible for the angst seen among many American teens. Likewise, in an article by Robin Lustig of BBC
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