teenage autonomy Quotes

I think you are going through so many 'firsts' as a teenager, and it's a charged time because of that. You don't have much autonomy in life. Everything is just kind of crazy, and there are so many huge decisions to be made, like where are you going to college or who you date. These things can really affect your whole life.

A mother can legitimately be said to 'have a baby' - but in a civilization such as ours, she can never claim to own a teenager.

I don't want to tell a 15 or 14 year old what they should be doing. I want them to tell me. And that's what I got when I met Justin Bieber for the first time.

I'm a teenager, but I'm independent - I have my own apartment, I have my own life. And I think I have learned more than any of those teenagers have in school. I learned to be responsible, leaving my family and coming here alone.

At 16, I got housing benefit, and I had my own flat in an old woman's house. I was the only 16-year-old I knew living alone.

I hitchhiked at high school. My parents thought was a perfectly normal thing to do even though God knows I got blown a lot of times riding home from school.

I was a very independent teenager.

A lot of teenagers, when they're in the business, they want to rebel, because they've been so tied up and stuff. I'm not too tied up. I like to have fun. I just don't see myself getting out of control.

I think when you're 16, if you have good parents, they generally just fade in the background. I had great parents, and because they were great, I thought very little about them in high school.

Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that very poor and very rich adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can do drugs, have sex, make babies, and get money (from their parents, crime, or the State). For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents?

When children reach the age of sixteen, they discover the meaning of life: car keys.

Teenagers are people too!

When I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, by the time you were 16, you were kind of expected to be an adult. By the time we were 16 and able to drive, certainly by 17 or 18 and into college, you just had very little interaction with your parents.

Twelve-step programs require people to accept their powerlessness and turn their lives over to God or another higher power. Many adolescents question religion, and in general teenagers aren't going to turn their lives over to anyone.

My children are now adults and just kind of guide them while they allow you to have input in their lives without controlling them the way you did when they were toddlers. These are good steps to use for fathers at each step of their children's lives.

I don't think parents always know where their children are going or what they are doing, what they are up to.

Our teen-agers withdrew to their bedrooms on their thirteenth birthday and didn't show themselves to us again until it was time to get married.