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As difficult as they are to accept in 1976, the concepts of childhood and adolescence developed and became fixed only in the last 400 years. At the end of the Middle Ages, rather than the "child" being relegated to toys, fairy tales and games, and the "adolescent" to the contemporary equivalents of rock music, petting and cars, they, or at least those beyond 6 years old, were one with adults sharing work, living space and recreations. The separate world of childhood and adolescence, the prolonged period of dependency-- or infantilization, if you will--did not then exist. Compulsory education laws and industrialization, with its demand for skilled labor and urbanization, combined to develop further a separate world of childhood and adolescence. In turn this led to the semi-ghettoization of the "adolescent," who, like other excluded groups, defensively banded together and created her and his own culture of sex, drugs, clothing, music and political attitudes. This artificial demarcation and its consequences appear mainly in the so-called western world, which is economically, but not socially, overdeveloped and predominantly middle class; but do not appear in the majority populations of the underdeveloped Asian, African, Middle Eastern and South American nations.

Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care Volume 6 issue 11 1976 [doi 10.1016%2Fs0045-9380%2876%2980002-3] Joel Fort -- Youth- Drugs, sex and life.pdf