Annotation

Catherine Mannarino

Amber Camus

English 110

April 18, 2011

Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson and Stefanie Mollborn. “Growing up Faster, Feeling Older: Hardship in Childhood and Adolescence” Social Psychology Quarterly Volume 72, No.1, 39-60. (2009): 1-23. American Sociological Association Web. April 18, 2011


In this online journal article written by Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson and Stefanie Mollborn age is reviewed and looked at, with given statistics to determine how hardships throughout childhood help adolescents mature to that level of adulthood. They propose that children and adolescents overcome their own personal difficulties to reach adulthood, rather than a set process of maturing. Johnson and Stefanie also point out that age cannot be a level of a maturity, and show examples of how one’s maturity does not always rely on your set age, but can rely on your lifelong challenges and experiences. The pitch, which the authors want us to believe, is that young adults, adolescents, and children’s maturity levels depend on the environment and culture that surrounds them. The compliant in this piece is the fact of adulthood being taken on too early in children due to their surroundings. The moment this piece is written in is in 2009, which is recent and thus up to date with the recent times and the realities of society. This article relies on the assumptions that maturity relies on environment and cultural aspects. The authors assume that if someone has a larger responsibility at a younger age they will be more mature and responsible as they grow into adolescence and even adulthood.

This source enhances the analysis of my primary source by supporting the ideas of a significant point in which adolescents and children mature into adulthood. This secondary source also contradicts my primary source my displaying how each person has an important moment in which this maturity level changes. The secondary source shows how environment and culture affects the maturity level in growing up, just as my primary source displays how in a certain culture, they celebrate maturing into adulthood. My secondary source compliments the idea, written in my primary source, that maybe children and young adults should overcome their own trials into maturity and not have a specific set time to mature. This secondary source supports the idea of children who are put in adult positions early on, having to work, or take care of their siblings while their parents work, that they may mature earlier on than their peers. Giving them this responsibility that an adult would normally do, makes them skip past childhood and jump into those adult roles.

More sources to look for, for the final paper would be a source that addresses a different cultural aspect of the passage of childhood into adulthood. Finding a completely different culture’s point of view would be able to contrast my primary source and bring forth other rituals of initiation into adulthood. Another source that I would be able to put into the final paper is a child’s perspective of adulthood and that want to be an adult. Seeing the opinion of a child on adulthood would help support the ideas of young adults wanting to join into that adulthood, and have the rights of an adult.

The two secondary sources, one which I have, and one which I am considering will in conversation be able to communicate around the ideas of my primary source. The secondary source about childhood and maturing through hardships would be able to be in conversation easily with a child’s opinion of adulthood and what it means to be an adult. These sources would be tied together through the steps of maturity, and a child’s perspective on it. Another possible secondary source that would be able to be tied into my current secondary source would be another culture’s view on maturity and how cultures view specific times that are necessary in maturing versus actual things that happen in one’s life to make them take that step towards adulthood.