Retzinger, Suzanne M.

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Clinical Sociology ReviewVolume 11 | Issue 1 Article 181-1-1993Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End KidsSuzanne M. RetzingerSuperior Courts of California, Ventura CountyFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/csrThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Clinical SociologyReview by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState.Recommended CitationRetzinger, Suzanne M. (1993) "Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids," Clinical Sociology Review: Vol. 11: Iss. 1, Article 18.Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/csr/vol11/iss1/18202 CLINICAL SOCIOLOGY REVIEW/1993divorce more harmful to them, how society reinforces the idea that women gainidentity from parenting and the related idea that the process of pregnancy giveswomen a closer connection to the child. Their clinical and research findingsrevealed that "between 4 to 85 percent of females compared with 2 to 25 percentof males were involved in programming/brainwashing of their own children.Furthermore, females were more likely to fit at the extreme end of the continuumin degree and type of programming/brainwashing" (p. 155). Though this is anextremely sensitive topic, the authors discuss it in a manner that most will findeffective.But, again, this chapter and others as well would have benefitted from drawingupon other studies ranging far beyond the authors' "clinical and research findings."This is far from being a fatal flaw but it is a flaw nonetheless.Both of these books are well worth reading and make a signal contribution toclinical sociology. As one who has practiced law—including domestic relationslaw—I enjoyed both books immensely.Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids, by Donna Gaines. New York:Pantheon, 1991. 262 pp., $23 cloth.Suzanne M. RetzingerSuperior Courts of California, Ventura CountyTeenage Wasteland is about teenage subcultures. The book begins with a suicidepact among four teenagers. Although it takes place in urban New Jersey, it couldbe Anyplace, USA: It is a social-psychological case study of teenage lives. Gainesshows how "young people are still the only minority without formal representation..... [They] suffer more absolute structural regulation than anyone.... The largersocietal system seems to set up to strip young people of their desire for selfdetermination" (pp. 239–40).The book is written in an experiential, journalistic mode. A certain group ofteenagers called "dropouts," "troubled losers," "druggies," and "burnouts" arelabeled and stigmatized by the larger order. Gaines hung out with them, got theirconfidence, and went into their lives and into their heads to know their experienceand what it feels like to carry these labels. She shows the social psychologicalstructure of their lives, and the importance of context in understanding theirexperiences and feelings. She goes into their experience in a way that leaves thereader identifying with the loneliness and hopelessness of their worlds.BOOK REVIEWS 203Reading Teenage Wasteland, one begins to identify with these teens on anemotional level; the alienation they feel is overwhelming, with no one to turn to whounderstands their experience. No one seems to even try to understand. The"burnouts" see no future in what the world has to offer. This only touches the surfaceof their alienation, loneliness, and pain.This book is valuable for anyone who wants to get into the mind and experienceof our youths: social workers, probation officers, teachers, counselors, parents,almost anyone. Reading this book allowed me to appreciate in a new way not onlyteenagers taking deviant paths, but all young people of the 80s. It is a differentgeneration than my own, and on the surface seems different. These young peopledo not have the same future opportunities as teens from the 60s had; there are fewerand fewer directions for young people to go. These young people are living in amore alienated world and are more alienated from the larger community—times areharder and chances for a better life have diminished. To outsiders they look "tough,scruffy, poor, wild. Uninvolved in and unimpressed by convention, they create analternative world, a retreat, a refuge" (p. 9).When we get below the surface, we can all relate to the experience of thesepeople; the underlying emotions are the same for all of us—shame, humiliation, andanger. Often "dropouts, losers," and so on are condemned for not wanting to read,for going through the motions of getting an education, for being apathetic, for takingan alternative route. Condemnation only increases the abyss. Hopelessness, anger,shame, and fear remain.For "burnouts" or gangs, alienation is the common bond—this is the way theysurvive the pain. But in some ways they are one step ahead of the adult world; atleast they are aware of the alienation. They reject a dysfunctional society. Adultsare simply alienated, and are oblivious to the lack of bonds; adults are frightenedand annoyed by kids hanging out, by green hair and skin heads, earrings—withoutdealing with alienation or feelings.After reading Teenage Wasteland, you will not blame the teenagers for movingaway from the mainstream. Many ask the question, "What is wrong with theburnouts, the dropouts, the druggies?" But we seldom ask what is wrong with theconformists who tolerate the alienation, who buy the world as it is and acceptinjustice—who become adults who perpetuate the system. "They can easily live intheir own world, sleepwalking through stale family life, boring school, and badjobs. The dullest, most apathetic students will come alive when left to their owndevices" (p. 99). "Their way of fighting back is to kill themselves before everything204 CLINICAL SOCIOLOGY REVIEW/1993else does" (p. 103). Some of the young people do not buy the alienation of the adultworld, but there is no one to turn to, nowhere to go, fewer resources.Viewing the anger and alienation of teenagers as simply a personal problemremoves the event from the social context and insults the person further. Alienationcontinues. Gaines keeps the issue within its rightful context.What I was left with from Teenage Wasteland is a system of unacknowledgedemotion which leads to blame: adults blame the kids who blame the adults whoblame Heavy Metal, ad infinitum. I see a system where everyone is oppressed, someworse than others, some more aware than others. We are all in the boat together: ourname is Alienation. The fundamental question that I went away with from this bookis about alienation on all levels, within and between persons and groups: How dowe communicate to bridge the gap? How do we manage our human bonds?Scheff and Retzinger, in Emotions and Violence: Shame and Rage in Destruc-tive Conflicts (1991), discuss the nature of human bonds and how communicationworks to increase or decrease alienation. Braithwaite's Crime, Shame andReintegration (1989), on reintegrative shame, may give law enforcement officersa new perspective on dealing with teenage subcultures in a way in which they willbe heard. "The police would not release the suicide note . . . most young peoplewatching thought this was the worst insult. Even in death, the parents won out. Thedicks wouldn't even let them get their last word in. Denied to the bitter end" (p. 27).Alienation goes on, but it need not.The Social Costs of Genetic Welfare, by Marque-Luisa Miringoff. New Brunswick,NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991. 210 pp.William D. DavisCoastal Carolina CollegeMiringoff identifies an emerging viewpoint associated with genetic interventionand reproductive technological capacities in the medical arena and labels it "geneticwelfare." For the most part, such gene tampering is viewed dysfunctionally.Disabilities will be identified and rectified before a person is born. The importanceof the mother will be subordinated to the rights of the fetus. Biological determinismand eugenics once again become issues when the elite (physicians and scientists)make policy decisions as to who will and will not undergo genetic counseling andwho will and will not benefit from genetic intervention. For those who do not—thepoor, minorities, the disinherited—the old stigmas that the disabled have slowlybeen shedding may again be heaped upon them many-fold.

Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia\u27s Dead End Kids

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Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia\u27s Dead End Kids

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