YouthWorker Journal Senior Editor Chap Clark struck a chord with his 2004 book, Hurt, which sold more than 50,000 copies and led to a more accessible 2009 version, Kids Who Hurt. Now, Chap has gone back to his research for a revised and updated version of the original, Hurt 2.0 (Baker). Among the additions to the new book is a chapter on “Kids at the Margins.” The chapter looks at two distinct groups of young people: the vulnerable and the privileged. The following article is excerpted from that chapter.
“Will you eat with me? No one eats with me!”
Shawn shouted across the room just as I was leaving for the lunch area. I knew Shawn fairly well. He was a small guy, even for a freshman, and he could barely walk. He was part of a special ed class.
I didn’t know where to discuss him in the original version of Hurt because I could not find a way to make it work. This tender, lonely, wandering kid haunted me for some time. In the new version of the book, I discuss Shawn and other kids at the margins.
Kids such as Terry—a thin, darting young man whose only words to me were: “I hate school!” Terry clearly loved to laugh, mostly at others, yet he could turn a smile into a mask of disdain on a dime. Terry’s school is among the poorest in one of the most impoverished parts of Los Angeles, and something about his eyes told me how far apart we were.
Kids such as Sara—who was as close to the perfect teenager as any I had met—was attractive in a cute, wholesome way. She had the grace and demeanor of a dancer, the movements of a gymnast and the poise of a choirgirl. Sara was committed—a committed student, a committed athlete, a committed child and a committed churchgoer—but I began to notice there was a difference between Sara and other teens I had encountered throughout the study. I can only describe her as naively optimistic and developmentally sheltered.
The more our team observed Sara and her peers, the more we noticed they all seemed significantly younger and less emotionally aware than their peers from public schools.
Sara, Terry and Shawn: three teenagers who in many ways are equally part of the adolescent community that has been affected by systemic abandonment and who are living, as are their peers across the board, out of a sense of isolation and the need to perform. They are all what I now call “kids at the margins,” a designation that describes those young people who, though still in the same macro world as their peers, in some ways fall well outside of the sociological mainstream.
Many young people exhibit behaviors, values and attitudes that do not cleanly fit such broad characterizations. Yet to get a sense of where teenagers are today, to really get inside their world, we must examine kids at the margins.
While much of contemporary scholarship views adolescents as basically healthy, there are emerging voices that admit the teenage life is not quite the free adventure many adults assume. Among those who study adolescents, there is an increasingly pervasive perspective that growing up today is harder and more treacherous than in generations past. As Osgood, Foster and Courtney put it, “Moving into adulthood involves a long and often difficult transition in the United States and other industrialized nations in the West.”
In both editions of Hurt, I have attempted to make the case that, at least at some level, all mid-adolescents experience life as painful and precarious; they grow up feeling more isolated than previous generations and, therefore, are more stressed and lonely than adolescent populations in the past.
I have observed and studied kids at the margins—those who have less opportunity and resources than the average young person and those who seem to have everything—and I have wrestled with the literature regarding both extremes, but it is not an easy task to describe how these teenagers experience life in comparison to their peers.
Instead of attempting to offer comparisons of who has it worse, I will focus on describing what I have observed in light of the latest research that illuminates how kids at the margins experience life in different ways from their more (for lack of a better term) mainstream peers.
The Adolescent Journey
For every teenager, regardless of life circumstance, the three basic issues of the adolescent journey are identity, autonomy and belonging. Those who fall outside the mainstream of the social or developmental spectrum are just as concerned with and consumed by the need to discover who they are as those who might be considered more typical. Cultural myths and stereotypes can keep us from recognizing what is going on with those at the margins.
Although it may not seem that privileged teens would wrestle with the issue of autonomy in the same way as their peers, research indicates for example, that they actually have a more difficult time recognizing and living out of a strong sense of self with the internal belief that they matter as a unique person.
Kids who are particularly advantaged or disadvantaged are uniquely shaped by the circumstances that have placed them on the fringes of the mainstream. Let’s look at the distinctives of the vulnerable and the privileged as they attempt to navigate these three tasks of adolescence.
The Vulnerable and the Privileged
The mid-adolescent population “at the margins,” as I conceptualize it, includes those on the one extreme who, relative to their peers, have fewer opportunities and resources (and generally more roadblocks) to achieve healthy individuation and those on the other extreme who have more opportunities and resources.
The former, whom I refer to as vulnerable, include those who grow up under extreme systemic or societal oppression or who have been beaten down by the impersonal vagaries of life circumstance. This group includes young people who face severe poverty, are homeless or are where they are due to class and/or racial oppression.
According to scholarly studies on vulnerable adolescents, especially those who are from poor urban communities, the majority are of color, are more likely to be male, are more prone to mental illness and depression and are far more likely to be involved in substance abuse.
There are exceptions to these generalities, but these are the broad categorizations applied to more at-risk adolescents. Difficult life circumstances also can nudge children and adolescents toward the vulnerable category.
Regardless of the events leading to the circumstances, this marginalized group consists of the disabled, the socially illiterate, those who self-describe as GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender) and those who fall into a distinct separatist subculture for whatever reason, such as highly religious students.
While many teenagers who might self-identify with one (or more) of these categorizations are not actually outside of their peer-group structures and therefore should not be viewed as “kids at the margins,” in my observation these are the two broad categories that describe the vulnerable.
At the other end of the continuum are those who have been commonly referred to as privileged. This term describes those teens who have a great deal more social capital, environmental resources and relational and vocational opportunities than the average population.
While not all private school students should be considered privileged, many privileged youth do attend private schools, especially elite private schools; and they are typically wealthy, have parents who are accomplished and deeply invested, and have been raised under the banner of possessing (for a variety of reasons) exceptional potential. They can be described as special, often due to their pedigree or their parents’ achievements, social status, fame or power. Privileged kids are taught at a very young age that they innately possess a special status in the world in general and among their peers in particular, and they are programmed to live accordingly.
Unique Challenges
As I explain in detail in the book, I argue that kids at the margins face unique challenges as they confront the three basic issues of the adolescent journey: identity, autonomy and belonging. Interestingly, kids at the margins face some disadvantages, as well as advantages as they journey toward adulthood.
Doing the research, spending the time with these kids, then writing about them has been a difficult, even painful, journey for me.
After skimming the first edition of Hurt, one sociologist told me that it wasn’t a helpful sociological take on the mid-adolescent population because I was an advocate. Since then, I have discovered that many sociologists, among them many of the most renowned in their field, find themselves advocating for those they study, especially when during the course of their work they uncover injustice, oppression, or perhaps even relatively fixable issues that cause damage and pain to a group of people.
If social science research must be a disconnected analytic quest for data, but does not bring action and change that improves the lives of real people, then the academy has written itself out of relevancy. The new chapter caused my heart to break for kids on both ends of the margins.
From Shawn, the disabled boy who had few friends, to Terry, my hard-eyed urban adversary, to Sara, the sweet and smart wealthy girl, I have come to see that marginalized young people need what every other adolescent needs: adults who care for them without any self-serving agenda.
All kids, regardless of their background, family, ethnicity, gifts or power, are desperate for a society that will help them discover who they are, what gifts and voice they have, and how they belong in a multigenerational community that values all.
Because of the work I have had the honor to do with these kids the past few years, I am now more committed than ever not only to writing as an advocate, but also to advocating with my time, money, career, calling and life. I invite all of you who are reading to join me. Our kids, all our kids, deserve no less.
