"Teenage Wasteland"

Eventually, one day, we'll want the best for our children but sometimes the best isn't what'll be best for them. I hope I didn't lose you there! In the article, "Teenage Wasteland," by Donna Gaines we see that teenage suicide rates have dramatically increased in the past forty years. We become aware that national issues such at teenage suicide, gun control, mass murder, do not become a major problem until it happens to a group of people at a given time. The article explores the deaths of four teenagers from Bergenfield, NJ who all four have committed suicide and the plausible explanations, or driving factors, leading to their suicides. Here in the United States, and I'm many other countries as well, we've set normalities that shape who we are and who we become. During your high school years you might probably recall those groups of people who were more "popular" than others, you might've even been part of that group that nobody knew about unwillingly! Every school has that. During the 1970s we learned that teenagers in suburban American often found nothing to their liking to do. Schools were filled with jocks and cheerleaders, and oftentimes familiar relationships were faulty.
A way to escape involved drug use. Upon the death of these four teenagers in NJ, the newspaper referred to them as "burnouts," "druggies," "dropouts," and the whole town referred to them that way as well without knowing their situation. The article lets us know that parents have high expectations for their children, limiting them to what the parents feel is appropriate. In a teenage gathering a parent might thing that they're getting stoned when in fact they can be talking. About their futures, careers, plans in life. A major problem in this town of NJ was that teenagers barely had things to do and a way to waste time was by doing these wrongdoings. I immensely agree that if there's nothing actively thrilling to do, you, I, everyone will find something to do—right or wrong. It's a problem with society and the status quo. The way we want to be seen, thought of comes down to the way our children carry themselves. A lot of parents want to be viewed as a prestigious mother or father because their child is in a private school bringing home nothing but A's from school without asking the real question—"son/daughter, is this what you really want? Are you happy?" Ms. Gaines also did a research from an ethnologist point of view by going out and experiencing what these teenagers do. Most of them have issues at home, some may not have a person they can trust, others may be in "war" with their parents because their parents think that they're rebelling thus a way of escaping is by cutting themselves, getting drunk, abusing drugs, and ultimately committing suicide.
A major point referenced in this article was the thought of many that the United States is being divided into a two-class nation where there'd only be the rich class and the poor class—rich class having a broad knowledgeable perspective and the poor not having sufficient skill sets. Those teenagers who do not go to college will be stuck in what she referenced, "shit jobs" where they'd most likely will get paid minimum wage, often complain or whine about work and their managers, and try to waste time by doing other things because they're bored. The reason for this? They lose motivation while in high school, they (and both you and I have noticed it too) realize that they barely get the preparations needed to work in modernized jobs, many jobs require a skill set that many do not have, some even require sufficient proficiency where you'd need to have worked in such positions for an X amount of years before being considered.
The problem? Much of the problem can be pegged to the parents. Parents shape society and sometimes they are oblivious to that fact because they're too busy trying to perfect other people's views of their social standing, and their weapon? Their children. I do still believe that teenage suicide rates are still rising and it could all be taken care of if their parents let their children break that status quo. The article says, "teenage suicide until kids' bad lives go away." I agree with that statement because most of suburban America does not have activities for teenagers to do that will influence them in the long run. A lot of the times towns look down, they frown upon, on these so called "dropouts," "druggies," "burnouts," and they'd wind up not having a place to go and this has to do with the fact that what's right and what's wrong, what's normal and what is not normal has been embedded into our society that what these kids do seems abnormal. Until we change that we'll continue to have a Teenage Wasteland.