• 3 out of 4 girls feel depressed, ashamed, and guilty about themselves
  
• 48% of young girls want to be as skinny as fashion models; and
  
• 31% of young girls are starving themselves
• Eight years old is the peak age for girls to have leadership ambitions. At that age, 44% of them want to be leaders, but the number drops as they get older.

This is from a well researched film called Miss Representation, made by a Sundance film maker. Watch the clip and help me think about how we adults can help create a realistic and loving world for our girls and for boys, too.

Having watched this clip, what is one thing you are going to do now?

Coined by Kirk Astroth, a 4-H outreach agent in Montana, today ephebiphobia is recognized as a major issue in youth engagement throughout society. Sociologists, government agencies, educators, and youth advocacy organizations use the word to describe any loathing, paranoia, or fear of young people or of that time of life called "youth".

The other day I was talking with a county social worker who wants me to speak to his staff about adultism at an upcoming meeting. When he brought the topic up to his supervisor for her approval, she responded that adultism isn't as bad as the other "isms" and it wouldn't be a very interesting topic. Hmm.

John Bell addressed this issue in a 1995 article called Understanding adultism: A key to developing positive youth and adult relationships"). Bell believes that racism, sexism, all the other isms reinforce each other in American culture, but the phenomenon of being disrespected simply because one is young is an ism that crosses many cultures around the globe. That is what makes this problem so complex. It's everywhere and we have all experienced it in one way or another because we have all have been young. The feeling of "less than" has been normalized. It feels like that's just the way things are.

So, now I want to ask the following question about a current issue that has been troubling me for some time.

Here in Minnesota, does the Anoka-Hennepin School District's controversial Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy, a.k.a. the "neutrality policy" on the issue of bullying have anything to do with ephebiphobia or adultism in some way? The policy requires adult staff members to remain neutral on issues involving student sexual orientation. The new alternative policy, called Controversial Topics Curriculum policy, states that discussion of controversial topics in class is helpful, but forbids staff members from taking sides with youth, even when bullying is going on.

What does controversial mean? Is it controversial to be gay? Do either of these adult-created policies and/or rules protect, nurture, and support all youth? Do they create an atmosphere of respect and care for all young people? Is adultism at work here? What do you think?

I think this youth worker had good intentions, but the outcome of her decision ended up being unjust and unfair to the Hmong-speaking youth. Our decisions and judgements are never neutral, even when we intend them to be.

I believe that staff development opportunities can be designed to encourage and enable a collective of youth workers to uncover and explore their own ethics around youth development and learn ways of intentionally modeling and transmitting ethical values to youth in ways that meet their basic needs. Youth workers who have done this sort of interior ethical exploration tell us that the need for this kind of educational opportunity is highly relevant to and useful to their practice.

Back in 1994, Milbrey Wallin McLaughlin, et.al., wrote a seminal work that every youth worker should read: Urban Sanctuaries: Neighborhood Organizations in the Lives and Futures of Inner-city Youth". McLaughlin studied and described the most important characteristics of effective youth workers and youth work practice. In the study, youth described the adults in the program as ethical. It found that the most effective and trusted youth workers:

• Make it clear that they see potential rather than problems in the young people they encounter.
  
• View the young person, not the activity, as the priority.
  
• Convey a sense of power and purpose for themselves and for the young people around them.
  
• Are described by young people as authentic - real, not phony, with a genuine interest in and concern for young people.
  
• Are motivated to give back to their communities, neighborhoods, families and organizations in return for the good things they received from caring adults when they were young.

Does this list describe you and your practice with youth? What ethical stances are revealed by your youth work? How do you prepare yourself for the ethical situations and dilemmas that arise in your work?

Megan Gunnar, a professor of child development at the University of Minnesota, recently spoke on Minnesota Public Radio about the damaging long-term effects of the stress of poverty on brain development in infants, children, and youth. This illustrates to me the insidiousness of our economic policies and beliefs about who deserves what and how much they deserve. Poor children and youth do not have equal opportunities for healthy growth and positive development. We are ignoring the data of the best youth development thinking of the past 75 years.

Sadly, in the 75 years since Dewey, not much has improved for many American youth and their families. In Minnesota, between 2000 and 2009, the number of poor children grew 53%, and the number of children living in extreme poverty doubled, an increase of 105% (Read more at Kids Count). Nationally, 20 percent of all children are living in poverty. These figures are expected to increase when the effects of our current recession are factored into the equation.

Back in 1973, Gisela Konopka, the University of Minnesota's renowned and revered professor of social work, testified to the US Congress about the requirements for healthy youth development. We use an adapted version of the treatise she developed in 1973 in the Youth Work Institute. It helps us think about how we build community with and around young people. I believe these basic youth needs are basic human needs. All humans will attempt to meet these needs positively or negatively depending on the situation at hand.

Basic Youth Needs

What do these principles mean for you in your work with or on behalf of children, youth, and families? How do we go about building community with others in this time of economic austerity, budget cuts, children and youth programs downsizing or disappearing, and the general sense of community isolation?

I don't have solid answers to these questions. I do think that bringing about a renewed sense of community will require minimally that we see all of us as belonging to each other. We all matter. We need to start focusing on our strengths and stop seeing and framing others in terms of weaknesses or problems. The same is true for the children, youth, and families we serve. This idea of using an asset-based or strength-based approach to working with children, youth and families is not new. It is ancient and it is intuitive.

-- Cecilia Gran, associate program director, Youth Work Institute