youth

One of the most exciting things coming off of election night was watching gangs of teenagers running through my neighborhood banging pots and cheering about Obama’s win. I’d never seen anything like it. Courtney’s here to talk concretely about the youth turnout in this election and what that may mean for the future of American politics. –Kristen

There was a lot of skepticism leading up to the election about young people. Many pundits talked about the usual pattern regarding youth enthusiasm about politics…it starts out with a bang and ends with a whimper. In other words, young people usually talk a big game, but then don’t actually show up to the polls in expected numbers.

Well this year was different. Plain and simple. Pew Research Center has just released a report titled, Young Voters in the 2008 Election and it’s chock-full of exciting news about the ways in which young people walked their talk this unprecedented election season. Some of the highlights:

• This year, 66% of those under age 30 voted for Barack Obama making the disparity between young voters and other age groups larger than in any presidential election since exit polling began in 1972.

• Among voters ages 18-29, a 19-point gap now separates Democratic party affiliation (45%) and Republican affiliation (26%).

• Just 62% of voters age 18-29 identify as white, while 18% are black and 14% Hispanic. Four years ago, this age group was 68% white. In 2000, nearly three-quarters (74%) of young voters were white.

There is all sorts of intriguing data coming out of the November 4th showing of young people, but perhaps most exciting is the inkling that a whole generation is shifting left like never before. There is real evidence that young people who have been galvanized by an Obama presidency are poised to concretize a real, solid progressive youth movement.

I’ve written about this before, but it bears saying again. In order to capitalize on the exciting youth movement that has been ignited by Obama’s presidency, progressives need to put some serious money behind a youth-directed, Democratic political machine. It’s as if we’ve all been given a golden opportunity—an inspiring leader who understood the importance of grassroots and netroots organizing. Now it’s time to run with our blessing.

Word on the street is that The American Prospect Online is working on a big story on how to transfer the Obama enthusiasm into a sustainable youth movement. Stay tuned for the link and analysis…

–Courtney Martin

From Sarah Palin’s wardrobe to sex on college campuses…Hmm, not sure how to make the transition here, so I won’t try. But I’ve been wanting to share this list of some of the latest on the college kids and the sex. A couple of my brilliant colleagues at the Council on Contemporary Families recently pooled suggestions of books on a related subject and came up with the following list, some of which I’d heard of, some of which I hadn’t:

Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses, by Donna Freita
Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, by Kathleen Bogle
What Women Want–What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently, by John Marshall Townsend
Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties, by Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner

And on the guy side of things of course:

Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, by Michael Kimmel
Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, by CJ Pascoe

Are we missing anything?

Here to bring you your monthly insight into the youth perspective is Courtney Martin with a post on how young people are getting involved in politics…by targeting their grandparents for the Obama vote. Courtney’s awesome column, Generation Next, appears the third Monday of every month. –Kristen

One of my favorite get out the vote efforts by youth this fall is, hands down, The Great Schlep. The young, civic-minded, and Jewish recognized that they had a profound power to influence a very special population in a very special swing state: grandparents in Florida. And thus the Great Schlep was born.

Here’s the always controversial Sarah Silverman on the basic concept:

There are a few things that I deeply admire about this project. First and foremost, I love that a bunch of young people took stock of the power they already possessed (being beloved by their well-intentioned, if not a bit conservative grandparents) and figured out a way to use that power for political leverage. This is the best of youth activism at work—a homegrown, grassroots exercise of power in innovative ways.

I also appreciate that, while it springs from a place of cultural and religious identity, it serves a much broader cause. Jewish youth didn’t wait until there was a fantastic Jewish candidate to start organizing, schlepping, and registering/influencing voters; they participated in a long, beautiful tradition of Jewish activists promoting the best interest of a “minority” and, in turn, their own vision of a more just society.

And finally, they used shocking humor and a sort of wonderful sarcasm about their own culture to get the word out. Some have found the racial implications offensive, which I totally understand. I happen to think it’s pretty amazing social commentary. In any case, they got your attention didn’t they?

–Courtney Martin

Girl with Pen is extremely pleased to bring you the inaugural post from Allison Kimmich, Executive Director of the National Women’s Studies Association. Allison will be posting her column, Girl Talk, which explores truths and fictions about girls, the third Wednesday of every month. -Kristen

As a feminist, and as a professional advocate for feminist education in my work at the National Women’s Studies Association, I felt faint one day three years ago when my then-five-year-old daughter told me that “girls don’t do math.”

Well, it turns out that my daughter was right. Last week the New York Times reported on a study that points to U.S. failures in math education. The article notes that the United States does a poor job of educating both boys and girls in math, but that we especially miss opportunities to encourage girls who could be excellent mathematicians unless they are immigrants or daughters of immigrants from countries where math is valued.

Or as one of the study’s lead author Janet E. Mertz puts it, “We’re living in a culture that is telling girls you can’t do math—that is telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math.” Neither the study nor the article explores in detail what it is about American culture that undervalues math education, but the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls produced a report last year that offers some insights. The report notes that self-objectification (buying sexy clothes or asking parents to do so, and identifying with sexy celebrities) can “detract from the ability to concentrate and focus one’s attention, thus leading to impaired performance on mental activities such as mathematical computations or logical reasoning.”

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I’m thrilled to welcome ya’ll back from the weekend with this month’s post from GWP regular Courtney Martin. Please do check out the questions Courtney leaves us with at the end, and feel free to share links in comments. Courtney is doing some amazing work on youth and political engagement (hint hint: her next book) and any links you post will be of great interest to us all! -GWP

Generation Next
By Courtney Martin

In such a tight presidential race, it’s not surprising that pundits are suddenly stuck on looking for the demographic that could have the biggest influence on the outcome in November. One of the key groups that the media is finally analyzing in a sophisticated way is the youth vote. Yes, we are more complex than just “the youth go CRAZY for Obama.”

The Nation’s Peter Dreier just published a piece with the following framing:

Democratic Party strategists believe that in key swing states, a dramatic increase in turnout among young voters–and African-Americans–can be the key to victory for both Obama and the party’s candidates for Congress. Campus activists, meanwhile, view the Obama campaign as a means to catalyze a new progressive youth movement among the Millennial (18- to 29-year-old) generation that they hope, unlike the political crusades of the 1960s youth rebellion, will be part of a broader, multigenerational coalition.

Dreier also worked in the following critical stats:

After steady declines in turnout since 1972, young voters reversed the trend in the 2004 presidential and 2006 mid-term elections. In Democratic primaries and caucuses, the number of young voters increased from 1.1 million to 4.9 million. (In contrast, Republican primaries attracted only 1.8 million youth voters.) A Harvard study found that compared to the 2004 primaries, the youth vote quadrupled in the Tennessee primary and almost tripled in Iowa, Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas.

Really critical food for thought. I thought I’d leave you all with some questions that the mass media has consistently failed to ask, and that even Dreier (who generally does a great overview, didn’t touch on in depth):

-How is the progressive movement doing in building a youth movement that can last for years to come, not just jumping on the Obama band wagon?
-Is the progressive youth movement being funded adequately? (I asked and answered this one in my recent column at the American Prospect.)
-What issues are most important to youth? (Answer: the same ones that are important to “the old folks”: the economy, the war, and healthcare.)
-How are young women responding to Palin? Michelle Obama?
-How are voter mobilization organizations targeting non-college enrolled youth? (Too often the media acts as if the majority of 18-28 year olds are enrolled in school, which is actually not the case.)

Please leave links to places that are answering these questions adequately in the comments section, if you run across them! Let’s hold our media accountable to explore these issues before it becomes too late to address every last little obstacle between Obama/Biden and the White House.

Sex and Sensibility
Sex and Sensibility is a weekly column from Kristen Loveland that seeks to put the reasoned voice of a young woman in her 20’s into the “sex wars” fray. Sometime member of the “hook-up generation” and frequent skeptic of the social, cultural, and sexual messages young women receive from the religious right and national media, Kristen provides a voice for a much-discussed generation that has had little chance to speak up for itself.

Removing the Kid Gloves
by Kristen Loveland

In an article appearing in Wednesday’s New York Times titled “Girl Talk Has Its Limits,” the lives of young girls are once again put under the microscope for inspection by a pack of inquisitive adults. Not content to explore the sexual landscape of Miley Cyrus, cultural scrutiny now delves into female friendships and asks whether girls really should be talking, or “co-ruminating”, with each other so much, because “[s]ome studies have found that excessive talking about problems can contribute to emotional difficulties, including anxiety and depression.”

First of all, this is old news. My roommate’s abnormal psychology textbook from 2004 notes, “It is known that rumination is likely to maintain or exacerbate depression, in part by interfering with instrumental behavior.” Notice the terms “maintain” and “exacerbate”—the depression derives not from the rumination itself but from another source.

Unsurprisingly, one of the not-so-hidden assumptions of this article is that girls have an unhealthy obsession with boys:

“I could see it starting already,” she said, adding that she has made a concerted effort recently not to dwell on her own problems with friends and to try to stop negative thoughts. “From sixth grade, it’s boys are stupid, boys have cooties,” she said. “And then it progresses to boys have cooties but 20-year-old cooties. So you might as well change it when you can.”

Ah yes, the fragile female psyche. I might ask why the author wasted over 1,000 words devoted to a question bound to lead to a dead end. After all, will you ask your daughter to bottle up her worries instead? I might also ask why the author used fictional models from Heathers, Mean Girls, Sex and the City, and Gossip Girl for female friendship. Sure, I’ll admit that I talk to my girl friends—a lot. I get a feeling of distinct pleasure when I look at my cell’s phonebook, considering which of my good friends I should call next to ruminate about “so-and-so who failed to call” or “you’ll never guess who showed up last night” or “is it just me, or does she seem a bit self-centered lately?” But these exchanges have never quite reached the dramatics of a Lindsey Lohan-led cast, though they might be a lot more interesting if they did.

While I’d like to say that the article’s author clearly hasn’t seen enough Woody Allen movies, it’s true that females are more prone to clinical depression than males. Nonetheless, it seems rather facile to place 1,000 words of emphasis on co-rumination as explanation—even irresponsible as I watch the article trek up the New York Times “Most Emailed” list. Because in the end the article (note its placement in the Fashion & Style section) is simply another of those proprietary “What’s wrong with our young women?” pieces that will make the rounds of forwarded email and provide all too simplistic answers for questions that really deserve more complex consideration. What’s wrong with our young women? They talk to each other too much. What’s wrong with our young women? They’re too superficial. What’s wrong with our young women? They give away the milk for free.

While newspapers and magazines are understandably aching to draw readers in, we can’t ignore the implications of such incessant prying into young women’s lives. It’s noteworthy that so many articles focus, or place the blame, on the actions of young women themselves (friendships, sexual relations, drinking habits, college experiences, etc.), instead of on the society in which they are raised. But perhaps we aren’t so much interested in solving “the young women problem” as in lifting back the curtain to sneak a covert glance at that object of intense public fascination: the Miley Cyruses, the Britol Palins, and all the other bright young female things that seem so troubled. As one writer notes, “The modern American female is one of the most discussed, most written-about, sore subjects to come along in ages.”

The funny thing is, that was actually written back in 1957, which means the new ain’t so new. A young Nora Johnson was talking about “Sex and the College Girl” in the 50s, the era of the domesticated and constrained female, who kowtowed to the reasonable, responsible expectations of society. Yet Johnson’s description of her generation struck me as so relevant to today:

We are deadly serious in our pursuits and, I am afraid, non-adventurous in our actions. We have a compulsion to plan our lives, to take into account all possible adversities and to guard against them. We prefer not to consider the fact that human destinies are subject to amazingly ephemeral influences and that often our most rewarding experiences come about by pure chance.

Those are my italics. I emphasize that last line, because I think it is something we often forget as a society, perhaps in an effort fill the news feed, perhaps in an effort to re-corset our daughters. Depression and anxiety are, of course, conditions to be treated seriously. But efforts to analyze each and every aspect of young American women’s lives, (always premised, of course, on a concern for those young American women’s well-being), is a form of the strictest regulation, and ignores the intense wonder of unknowing and chance.

Whenever I read stories implying that we should worry about such-and-such an aspect of young women’s behavior, I picture an invalid who lives to be a hundred by lying on her sofa all day. But does she live? And is she any more psychologically sound for having been removed from experience all these years—or has her mind warped in on itself, obsessively concerned with the minutiae in life because she has never known the larger things? Shouldn’t we… wait, sorry, I had to catch myself there for a second. I’m afraid I was getting rather alarmist.

Anyway people, remove the kid gloves.

And while I’m at it, two interesting reports from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), a nonpartisan research center studying youth civic engagement. I drew on these in putting together the talk I’m giving here at the University of South Carolina Upstate tonight and wanted to share them with ya’ll too.

Welcome back from the weekend! I’m psyched to start the week off with this next guest post from regular Courtney Martin. Here she is, with some quintessential Martin-style wisdom for individuals and orgs wishing to reach younger people through their writing and their work. -GWP

Reaching the Next Generation

One of the most interesting things, in my humble opinion, about the next generation is the way that it approaches altruism. Long gone are the days when writing a check or signing a petition were action enough for the socially conscious individual. And also long gone are the strict bifurcation between nonprofit and corporate, do gooder and go getter, giver and saver.

Through a variety of technological innovations like Facebook Causes and You Tube appeals, young people have changed the landscape on “doing good.” And it’s not just a technological shift, but a whole new paradigm that has been born thanks to the kids of the 80s and 90s.

Organizations like Drinking Liberally have spawned a whole new, very fun way of approaching public awareness and political community. And one of my favorite new sites is All Day Buffet, which calls itself “a social action brand for the cool kids.” It seems that everyone is striving to put the fun back in fundraising.

Including myself. Check out the piece I wrote for The American Prospect about my own little contribution called the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy.

And keep this in mind if you are trying to inspire young people to get involved in a cause. We like to feel engaged, but not drained. We like to kill many birds with one stone.

We like to get a little tipsy.