Pre-Owned Framing Youth: 10 Myths About the Next Generation (Paperback) 1567511481 9781567511482

Teens must be controlled -- that's the prevailing picture of youth presented in the media and by government officials. In this whirlwind tour of 10 common myths, Mike Males shows you the statistics -- about drugs, alcohol, sex, crime and curfews -- to reveal what teens are really like, and what they really need.Among the lies you will learn about in Framing: - Lies 101: What's at issue here: bad behavior -- or bad press? As Males shows, teens are far more civil than what the poverty and abusive conditions endured by millions of them would predict.- The Dawn of the Super-predator: government and law enforcement officials incessantly misrepresent "youth crime" and predict "adolescent super-predators" despite a general decline in juvenile crime. They ignore the even worse adult trends. But serious teenage crime is rarer today than 20 years ago. Instead of challenging the false assumptions of the conservative anti-crime onslaught, liberal interests have embraced them -- at great cost to reasoned policy.- Curfews -- Putting the Truth to Bed: curfews stop crime, right? Wrong. Analysis of curfew and other "get tough" measures show they discriminate against minorities and are associated with higher, not lower, youth crime rates.- Pot Boilers, Coke Hoaxes, and Smack Scares: what can we do about a generation lost to drugs? It's a question often asked -- without realizing that teen drug abuse is falling while adult abuse is high and rising. Worse, Clinton-era policy mindlessly punishes youth while evading the real hard-drug crisis among adults.- Conception Deception: the biggest issues in "teenage pregnancy" and motherhood are finally getting an airing -- intractable poverty,violent and abusive families, the role of older men, the surprising new findings that earl