Rural Youth: A Case Study in the Rebelliousness of Adolescents

The existence of cultural continuity from genera tion to generation within society supports in advance the notion that adolescents do not generally rebel against and reject traditional values and parental norms. Thus, it is not sur prising that research findings disagree with the popular stereotypes of rebellious adolescent behavior. The disagree ment between parent and adolescent as to the stage at which the adolescent may participate in the activities which sym bolize adulthood is as temporary as the period of adolescence. While this disagreement may be responsible for the popular image of rebellious youth, it cannot accurately be described as a group rejection of societal norms; it is, rather, an indi vidual resistance to specific authority patterns. In these re spects, rural farm, rural nonfarm, and urban youths behave in the same ways. But, even when rural and urban dwellers are involved in the same degree in youth subculture, rural residents are more traditional in their values than urban dwellers. Within rural residence groups, farm youth tend to be less permissive than nonfarm youth. Traditional ideas, like all ideas, change, but the traditional values of farm youth have changed less, proportionately, than the values of non farm youth. Although a conclusive explanation is not avail able, a likely one would be that parents most attracted to the traditional values of the farm have been the ones to remain on the farm. Since parental viewpoints are accepted at ap proximately the same rate by farm and nonfarm youth, it follows that farm youth would be the more traditional in their values.—Ed.