In this monologue Dr. John A. King explains why he helped his children secure an investor to purchase a small coffee‑and‑ice‑cream shop in Keller. He argues that the modern notion of a "teenager" is a post‑World‑II Western invention created by sociologists to label a cohort caught between an expanding education system and a job market that could not yet absorb them. King contrasts this with agrarian, Amish, and Middle‑Eastern cultures where children begin work and responsibility at ages five to eight. He contends that Western societies have infantilized youth, resulting in "juvenile adults" who linger in self‑actualization quests well into middle age. By placing his own children—aged 17, 14, and 10—into business early, he seeks to bypass the so‑called teenage years and move them directly onto a path toward adulthood, responsibility, and practical skill development.
Chapters
Earlier on this month, my wife and I helped our children buy a business. We didn't buy a business for our children, we helped them. We helped find an investor, we helped them understand that in order to purchase a business, if they didn't have the cash, they were going to have to get an investor, and then they would have to pay that investor back. And the business that we bought was a little coffee shop and ice cream shop here in the middle of Keller. The reason I did that is that I don't believe teenagers. Teenagers, or the whole concept of being a teenager, is something that occurred in America and in Western societies post-World War II. Sociologists were trying to come up with a term for this group of people that were stuck between a growing educational system that was equipping them for jobs that were not yet available. And what we've got now is a group of children that are engaged from the age of 5 to 25 is an educational process that really doesn't equip them for anything practically, but maybe theoretically, at best theoretically. Now that in and of itself is a Western phenomenon, and it's a modern Western phenomenon. The Amish people in America don't do that. The age of 8, the kids are on the tool. In the agrarian societies around the world, from the ages of 5, 6, and 7, kids are out with Mum and dad on the land, learning how to work the land. In Middle Eastern cultures, a boy at the age of 5 was handed literally over from his mother to his father and said, he's now yours, raise him up in the way he should go. At the same age, the girls went from playing in the yard to now working with mum and grandma in the kitchens and being able to prepare food, participate in their responsibilities and roles within the families. And we don't do that in our Western society. We cater to them, we placate to them, we try and modicole them and protect them. From what? From taking responsibility. And what we've got in return is a whole bunch of juvenile adults that in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are still trying to get into self-actualization and find out what they really need and fulfill their unmet expectations of what life is. I think in terms of what we've done is juvenilize our society. We've reduced it to the lowest common denominator, not taking responsibility, not being able to take a knock, not being able to stand up. So my attempt with what I want to do with my kids is start them young. My youngest children are 17, 14, and 10, and I want to get them into business now because I just don't believe in teenagers. I believe in children and putting them on a path to adulthood. And this bit in the middle called teenager years that, that everyone talks about and has so much angst about for their kids, that's because the kids have got too much time and they're not developing appropriate ways to relate, communicate, and conduct themselves in preparation for adulthood. Because when you leave childhood, You become, and you're on the way to becoming an adult. This pause, this purgatory of life in the middle, is by our own creation. And I don't believe it's part of the normal development and the normal ramping up of a child as they grow into their adult years.
