The confusing signals teens must decipher

OPINION: We have an odd belief in this country that you can solve social problems not by changing social conditions, but by changing laws.

Thus we brought in an anti- smacking law out of disgust at the abuse of our children, who are seen by many people as, at the very best, human pets.

Unfortunately the same people neglect their animal pets, and probably abuse them as well. Why not? They abuse themselves too.

There are many ways of being abusive, and we're past masters of all of them.

I use the collective "we" here because we are a community, whether we feel like we are or not, and abusive families belong to us.

Their problems are our problems, their failures our failures, and isolating and stigmatising them doesn't help their kids in the long run.

To solve this problem - violence against children - we'd need to be a community that valued children and families highly in the first place, which I'm not sure we do.

Now we plan to raise the driving age, so that young drivers will be less lethal on the roads. I'm not against this; I'd rather save lives too; but it's interesting to think about why we had such a young driving age in the first place.

People last century - like my grandmother - left school at 14, and started work.

They were well drilled in a basic education in which they were not encouraged to think creatively, still less to think of ever attending university, and were expected to take part usefully in society.

There was no question of being disruptive in the classroom: they were beaten if they were, and their own families would have agreed with the proposition that teachers, not students, should be in charge.

Because they came from big families, kids had responsibilities at a young age, caring for younger brothers and sisters under the watchful eye of busy parents, and helping with the chores.

They had to take responsibility, be beaten, or leave; there was no question of sitting down to discuss their feelings about it. Harsh but straightforward.

We must have had a different idea of what childhood is, because people then entered the world young and had to make their way in it, often living with strangers, if they were in service, or working on other people's farms.

Nobody would have tolerated their drinking or taking drugs. T

hey'd have been sacked, and there would have been no sympathetic welfare system to pay them for doing nothing.

If they lost their job, their parents would have had no sympathy for them either. They couldn't afford to keep them.

A year after leaving school, and having adjusted to the working world, teenagers could get a driver's licence.

That made them more useful to employers, and because we were still a rural society, being able to drive soon became essential, as it still is for rural teenagers.

They will now be penalised by the proposed law change for the sake of urban brats, like boy racers, who have behaved irresponsibly.

The issue here is as much what we've allowed teenagers to become, as whether they should be driving.

We lowered the drinking age, after all, though most of us predicted that would end in disaster: it was obvious that once 18-year-olds could buy booze, younger teenagers would get their hands on it easily, and then teenagers would drive drunk, since adults do.

And if I find our attitude to recreational drugs confusing, so must kids. With so much pressure to legalise marijuana, the effect surely has to be that young kids suspect it's not all that serious to use it - yet we know very well that it impairs judgment every bit as much as alcohol does.

Then there's the party pill industry we've allowed to develop.

That endorses the idea that you have to be high on something to be enjoying yourself, an idea we legitimised when we made it legitimate.

What did we think the result would be? Safe teenage drivers? Responsible kids?

I don't advocate a return to the brutal clarities of the past, but if we wonder why teenagers behave the way they do, surely we should ask ourselves.