In The Case Against Adolescence, you have a list entitled “Reintegrating teens into the adult world.” The rights in your list will be surprising to many parents—could you explain why you created this list?

Yes, first of all, it’s a very long list. I have to say, for the record, I was very uncomfortable creating that list, because I am a parent of four children, and I was raised to believe that young people need to be protected, that they’re inherently incompetent and irresponsible. I want to protect my children, and I want to protect all young people. I really struggled with writing that chapter. The rights I list are shocking in some respects. But the truth is that all young people are not the same, just as all elderly people are not the same. We have to look away from age and look at ability, look at competence.

Again, I learned so much in researching and writing this book over a nine-year period, and my own opinions were deeply challenged.

I know that if we move in the direction of a competency-based system, we’ll start to see teen turmoil disappear, and we’ll have young people working with us, instead of being our enemies. And they will not be so afraid and confused about growing up, because they’ll be growing up where they’re supposed to be growing up—that is, among adults.

If a teen can demonstrate competence in a certain area, does that necessarily mean that he or she should be entrusted with a certain responsibility?

That is the flip side of rights and privileges: responsibility. You can’t get a right or privilege without getting the responsibility that goes with it. I am not talking about giving young people more freedom—they have too much freedom. This is about rights and responsibilities. It’s a distinction that is subtle but very important.

If you give young people incentives and opportunities to join the adult world in various ways, thousands will go for it. If you deny all young people the opportunity to join the adult world, many will become depressed, angry, or oppositional. And that’s why we currently have 5.5 million teens in counseling and 2 million attempted suicides by teens every year.

What evidence can you point to that demonstrates that teens, when treated like adults, will rise to the challenge?

In my book, I talk about teens in other cultures. I talk about, for example, the Lost Boys of Sudan. I look at teens who ended up becoming the head of their family because of the death or illness of parents. I look at teens in programs like the original Boys Town. In the 1930s, Boys Town was run completely by young men, and the chief of police was 15 years old. (Now an elderly man, he is interviewed in my book.) This was a place where young men who were in trouble with the law came and basically ran their own town. Many of them became responsible young citizens overnight, because they were entirely in control of their lives. Unfortunately, the modern Boys Town has abandoned the old responsibility model that Father Flanagan established in 1921. It’s now mainly a “treatment” program.