NCJ Number
116368
Journal
Sociological Review Volume: 36 Issue: 4 Dated: (November (1988) Pages: 706-732
Date Published
1988
Length
25 pages
Annotation
During its 80-year history, the sociology of youth has provided a succession of partial explanations of the circumstances and responses of the young.
Abstract
By emphasizing the problematic aspects of youth, this sociology has failed to examine those aspects of youth that might be related to a normal transition process rather than an inability to adjust. The functionalist approach provides a theoretical framework for the study of the trajectory from childhood to adulthood, but fails to examine the structural aspects of the transition. The new wave sociology of youth subcultures attempts to examine the articulation between the subculture and the social structure through class, but fails to account for female or conventional youth or allow more than a superficial acknowledgment of youth as a process of transition. The challenge facing the sociology of youth is to examine the process of becoming an adult and to locate such processes in the social structure. It also must combine the elements of age and class into a conceptual model that can be extended to include the other major elements of stratification such as gender and race or ethnicity. Within such a framework, it will be possible to locate existing studies that have concentrated on subcultures or the problems of specific groups and to fill in remaining gaps with new empirical work, particularly through the secondary analysis of large data sets that provide representative samples and allow intergroup comparisons and wide-ranging longitudinal data that permit the study of processes. 3 figures, 2 tables, and 52 references. (Author abstract modified)