What is youth?

As the SACBC family life theme for June is “Me and Youth”, I offer a few thoughts on this topic from the angle of youth and their families.

There are some very different definitions for what we mean by youth today. For some of us it is a general kind of group of young people who are not yet married. For others it is teenagers, possibly from 13 up, or most often from around 15-20. Formally, as per the government, youth can be from 15-35 (this has been clear from various ANC rallies and meetings recently where some of the demonstrators didn’t seem particularly young). Many people would consider anyone over 20 a young adult and someone needing to take up adult responsibilities.

It is difficult then to classify youth accurately and so also to consider what makes them tick and what their task in life should be.

Taking a more traditional family view however, youth would most likely straddle high school and tertiary education or work, unless, as for an unacceptably large group, they have not yet found work.

How do these youth fit into a family scene?

They are growing, physically, emotionally, intellectually, psychologically. Growth in a sense can be seen as a natural involuntary process that just happens to one as time goes by. At this time, physically boys and girls grow taller and heavier and their sexual organs grow into maturity. This growth is also accompanied by emotional changes.

Development could be seen as being more determined, a result of particular situations, circumstances and stimuli. These can vary tremendously and so big differences begin to emerge. This is also the area where influence is a strong factor, from peers and the culture possibly more than from their families.

Families can and do struggle with what is happening to their children and how their emotions and moods can be so unstable, one minute being up in the clouds and at another time almost suicidal just because a boy or girl has rejected them. Families struggle because youth appear to change their values and they so often give up on religion in the way their parents practise.

Although problems such as drug-taking or drinking are far too common and are often attributed to something happening in their lives, every normal young person goes through emotional and psychological turmoil that may or may not lead to anti-social and unacceptable behaviour.

Youth appear almost to be a separate culture, a sub-group of society that lives in a different world. The music they like, their cellphone culture with all the add-on gadgets that confuse parents and sometimes make them either overreact or ignore danger signals, their need for peer approval, their apparent lack of interest in the more serious side of life, their fears and fads and their passionate need for enjoyment—these are all part of their cultural world. Some do work hard, take school seriously, value religion or spirituality and good, healthy relationships, and do so almost at the risk of being considered uncool and laughed at by their peers.

Parents may look forward with some fear and trepidation to the teenage years, but they do still continue to love their youth in spite of everything. Young people, although they are driven by their own inner forces to struggle for independence and their own identity, do still love their parents and families. But it is tough, being a youth, or surviving a period where the house is inhabited by one or more youth. It’s tough loving, and being loved. But then love, if it is to be true to itself, is tough, patient, kind, not jealous or ambitious, unjudging, accepting.

Thank God for love and for the life stage of youth designed no doubt to add spice to life, and strong spice at that.