Thoughts on Jessor for Week 8

I found the two Jessor readings particularly compelling this week.  Although I know we’re supposed to be reading with an eye to the methods, etc., I still get swept away in the content.  There were a couple of things that stuck out to me:

Culture, Development, Disability:  I work with developmentally disabled adults on a limited basis and have for two years.  I had never worked in this capacity before that and had often found myself feeling sorry for those with such impairment.  I thought this chapter was really interesting in turning that around on me – is it the way we have arranged our culture that makes these people somehow “less”?  I don’t know.  But I do know after working with them for two years I am amazed at how much they can and do contribute to society.  And how they have their own society (much like Martha’s Vineyard) where abilities, or lack of them, don’t matter.

However, if I were to have my own child, I would still pray for a healthy, fully-abled child.  I do live in this culture, and as much as I love the disabled adults I work with, when it comes to my own family I still hope for what is most “accepted” in our culture.

Development Among Inner City Teens:  A couple thoughts came to me about this one too.  It made sense to me that teens who were living adult lives out of school had a hard time separating their roles and acting like kids at school.  However it seemed to me that the researches should have further explored the idea of escape—I’m surprised more of the kids didn’t comment about using school as an escape from their adult lives.  Adults use vacations to escape from the realities of work and home.  I would think these kids would use school the same way, but perhaps they are not mature enough to even be able to separate that out.

The other interesting point that stood out to me in this chapter was when the young girls were discussing dating the same men their moms were dating.  There are so few eligible men in the population that the women are all competing for the same men and there’s (understandably) a lot of resentment from the older women because of this.  I found that particularly compelling because of my own situation—having married a man several years older I have sometimes felt the resentment of women his age.  We have also gotten disapproving looks and questions about whether he’s my father.  And that’s in a population where there’s not a great shortage of men, but there seems to be enough of a shortage of good men to cause bad feelings.  I can see how this would be magnified in the inner-city situation where middle-age women are competing with teenagers.

That’s it for the moment…I look forward to a good discussion in class on Tuesday.