#age segregation

[jackleg-penwright]

On Age Segregation

I was homeschooled in the late eighties and all through the nineties. There was a lot that was kind of toxic in that culture (though some of the worst tendencies, my parents actually actively rejected - even within a fairly intense segregated culture, it still wasn’t monolithic), but not everything was. For instance, one of the driving forces for my parents and for other parents in the movement was the idea that the age segregation reinforced by traditional schooling was toxic and harmful, both to children (who never learned to interact with either adults, or anyone younger than them) and to society. 

And while I do know that there were some negative unintended consequences to not having a “peer group” you could learn how to be equals to - for instance, to this day when I interact with anyone who is clearly an adult, my brain immediately sees them as “authority figure, must be deferred to, if they disapprove of what you think, then you must be wrong” (which I can and do actively resist, but it takes effort every time, and sometimes I don’t have the spoons to fight with my brain), even if they’re ten to fifteen years younger than I am. 

Then again, as an awkward, undiagnosed autistic kid in a time period when being a nerd was something even the adults thought you should be ashamed to admit, I probably wouldn’t have been that successful at finding an accepting peer group no matter what.

So yeah, there were some long-term downsides, but on the whole I think it was a very healthy mindset to foster. The idea that people are people, and that you can find something in common with someone of any age. My dad and my kids used to connect over Minecraft, and if you watched my dad’s minecraft youtube channel, you’d figure out pretty quickly he wasn’t doing it “to connect with the kids,” but because he really enjoys playing around in the wide open sandbox (he’s an electrician by trade, and most of his explorations are deep dives into what you can do with redstone).

I was reading one of those “Am I The A******” summary articles a while back, and the OP was wondering if she’d been too strict in actively preventing her 19 year old daughter from interacting with her 27 year old boyfriend (they had met in a student club at a school they both attended, and didn’t realize there WAS an age gap until they had already become solid friends). And even though the consensus was that yes, trying to be that controlling to someone who is a legal adult would probably backfire, it really bothered me how many of the comments assumed that the boyfriend had to be a perv because no one could possibly have anything in common with someone that much younger than them.

I have some significant trauma I won’t get into from people who acted on that assumption with regard to me (I was a student in a community college actor training program, but for some reason I was the only older student in that program, which I hadn’t thought would make a difference since most community college programs are very age-diverse, but since the younger students were just out of high school, they still saw themselves as children, while I saw them as fellow adults, because that’s what they were), which is really annoying because the idea that an "older" adult and a younger adult can’t connect over shared passions is not even true. (not to mention, mid- to late-thirties isn't even that old, I promise - all my parents' peers still call me a baby, and I'm over 40 now)

As the anonymity of Tumblr has shown us, it’s VERY common, if you start by taking away the basis for age-prejudice and just interact with people as they are, to discover just how much you have in common with people from all over the age spectrum. And it actually hurts a lot to see how many people (especially men, I guess, because no man could possibly enjoy other human beings for anything but sexual objectification, right?) are vilified for recognizing and acting on the reality that people can enjoy people, no matter what their age.

[cazort]

Growing Up Neurodivergent: ND Kids Often Need To Interact With People of Diverse Ages

One thing I haven’t ever heard people talk about which I think is a huge issue for many neurodivergent people is how our neurodivergence interacts with the age of the people we associate with.

Many of us ND people struggle to relate to our peers for a variety of reasons. Many of us struggle to read social cues and may be a year or even a few years behind in our development of certain types of social skills, even if we are highly competent or even years ahead in other skills, or able to perform at a high level in situations like school. This can lead us to associate with people much older and much younger than us, often getting different things out of the different interactions: wanting to interact naturally with people who are “on our level” often necessitates seeking out both older and younger people.

Also, even when we can read social cues just fine, many of us actively don’t want to conform to norms or fit into the peer culture around us. Many of us are bullied for acting in the ways that feel most natural to us. When you are in a small minority and want to seek out people who are weird in a similar way, and these people are rare, you end up having to look across a broader range of ages. This also can lead ND people to seek out people of a wide range of ages, just in order to access a large enough pool of people. This effect is especially true when people are in smaller towns or smaller social settings, as there are fewer people to choose from.

This age diversity can cause a number of problems. Our society is often strictly age-segregated, tracking kids through school strictly in 1-year cohorts. ND kids who form cross-age friendships outside of school are usually separated from their friends when in school. Some adults also discourage these relationships. There can especially be a worry about older people, especially adults who are friends with teens or children, being predatory. Paradoxically, ND people are both more vulnerable to exploitation by predatory adults, AND by harm coming from overprotective adults keeping us from forming friendships with older people even when those friendships might be healthy ones, and critical to our well-being.

What is the solution to all of this?

I think being aware of these issues can go a long way. But in the long-run, I would also like to see the following things:

More awareness of the issues ND kids face. More listening to the experiences of ND people, and less criticism and forced conformity, and more actual accomodation and more teaching of useful skills. I know as a kid, I hated being told to “act normal” or “stop being so weird”, but I loved it when people would give me concrete advice about how to navigate social situations or teach me specific skills that helped me take my social skills to the next level.

More active involvement by adults, to cultivate a healthy peer culture that does not bully ND people but rather embraces us. I really think a lot of the negativity in peer culture comes from kids imitating their parents. But some of it doesn’t, some of it comes from media such as television, or peer cultures and social media. Parents need to be aware of these influences and they need to steer their kids in the direction of healthy messages and help them to identify problematic or toxic peer cultures so they can avoid falling into them. It sounds silly but I think watching Star Trek as a kid was hugely protective to me, because it set a good example of a positive peer environment, so when I went into school and things were not like that, it felt bad and wrong and I disengaged, which I think was an adaptive response to me. Incidentally I remember my first elementary school friend who turned out to become a lifelong friend, was someone who was also really into Star Trek.

Less strict age-segregation in society, especially in K-12 school, but, as long as K-12 school is strictly segregated, less reliance on school for socializing. I found I often thrived in environments that had a slightly broader range of ages, including summer camps, musical ensembles, various extracurricular activities, and as I got older, the more mixed classes of my larger public high school. Also, open-ended play with the neighborhood kids, who were of an even wider range of ages, was super important to me. This is one of many reasons why having unstructured free time is so important!!!

When it comes to protecting kids and younger teens from predatory behavior from older teens or adults, it’s super important to adopt a nuanced viewpoint in which we teach kids and teens how to have healthy boundaries and how to identify red flags, rather than simply isolating them or prohibiting them from forming friendships with older people. Helping kids develop self-confidence and assertiveness at expressing boundaries is key. Ironically, a lot of what ND people are taught in school and sometimes even by parents, has the opposite effect: we are constantly taught to ignore or suppress our needs and sometimes even punished for doing so. This absolutely needs to stop if we are to protect ND kids. When we are constantly told to suppress our needs and when we are taught it is normal for others to overstep our boundaries, this is exactly the sort of setup that leaves us vulnerable to predatory, exploitative, or abusive behavior, whether in relationships, in a job situation, or anywhere. This aspect of protecting kids goes hand-in-hand with my first point about being more aware of the issues we ND people face, moving beyond trying to punish or control us, and moving towards working with us and helpingus.

[cazort]

Our society is heavily segregated by age, and I rarely hear anyone question it. Here I explain how pervasive this segregation is, in education, the workplace, and housing.

I also explain how interacting with people and having friends of different ages or even different generations, can have huge benefits for both younger and older people.

I want to raise awareness of this issue. I want us to start questioning the near total segregation of people by age in most schooling, and the heavily-age-segregated setup in housing and some employers. I think our society would hugely benefit from having a more diverse range of ages in more different parts of society.

[robertogreco]

[U]ntil the late 19th century, according to historian Howard Chudacoff, age wasn’t such a defining fact about people’s lives. [… F]or most of the country’s history, people of different ages tended to mingle: Families were bigger, generations often worked side by side, and kids and adults got their entertainment at the same county fairs.

Leon Neyfakh, “What ‘age segregation’ does to America”

[fuckyeahradicaled]

What ‘age segregation’ does to America - The Boston Globe

Rogoff said she is particularly concerned about kids in modern America. People “think of children as having a whole different life than adults,” she said, “but that’s not necessary, or even a common way for children to grow up.” One study, conducted by University of Arizona anthropologist Alice Schlegel, looked at 186 pre-industrial cultures around the world and compared them based on the amount of interaction kids had with adults outside their family. Schlegel concluded that “age segregation was related to features of antisocial behavior and to socialization for competitiveness and aggressiveness.”

Rogoff, for her part, has compared the relationship between kids and adults living in West Newton and the Guatemalan town of San Pedro. She found that the Guatemalan children spent a lot more time around adults who were doing work, and frequently emulated work in their pretend-play—for instance, making imaginary tortillas out of dirt. In West Newton, Rogoff said, children seldom saw adults working, and time spent with parents was more often devoted to “child-focused activities” and conversations about “child-related topics.” “We’ve overdone it,” Rogoff said. “We wanted to protect kids from working in factories 100 years ago...but we have excluded so much from the life of the community that they don’t feel like they have anything to contribute, and they don’t have as much opportunity to learn.”

[lnannibal]

Sorry bro, I don't see any difference between this:

and this:

The latter is racial segregation, and the former, still enforced by law, is nothing but age segregation.

"I am not going to indulge in doors which've now opened for me - not until all people can walk on every inch of the land freely."

WE SHALL SMASH SEGREGATION IN ALL ITS FORMS.

[robertogreco]

I don't want a 'City for Children', I want a city where children live in the same world I do.

Chris Berthelsen