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pseydtonne · 3695 days ago · link · · parent · post: What Scandinavia Can Teach U.S. Teens About Coming of Age
The author is oddly privileged, however everyone else has already addressed that. My concern is that he never noticed the existing rite of passage in the United States and Canada: getting your driver's license. In a few months, a child becomes a card-carrying marauder. The youth also gets to leave the sidewalk-free suburbs for the first time alone, nearly a decade later than one's grandparents would've hopped a trolley somewhere. Sure, it's not a sexy ritual. It doesn't lend itself to a National Geographic special. No one loses a foreskin. However it's this huge cultural moment: an American child wants a job to pay for the freedom-inducing vehicle. The cycle begins again.