Back in February, the New York Times ran a story that jived well with what I had already begun to notice: Fewer Youths Jump Behind the Wheel at Sixteen. The opening of the article summarizes the reasons:
For generations, driver’s licenses have been tickets to freedom for America’s 16-year-olds, prompting many to line up at motor vehicle offices the day they were eligible to apply. In the last decade, the proportion of 16-year-olds nationwide who hold driver’s licenses has dropped from nearly half to less than one-third, according to statistics from the Federal Highway Administration.
Reasons vary, including tighter state laws governing when teenagers can drive, higher insurance costs and a shift from school-run driver education to expensive private driving academies.
To that mix, experts also add parents who are willing to chauffeur their children to activities, and pastimes like surfing the Web that keep them indoors and glued to computers.
I turned sixteen in 1983. I took the test for my learner’s permit promptly at 15 1/2, took the (free) driver’s ed course in high school, and got my license within weeks of hitting my 16th birthday. As I will turn 41 later this month, I am rapidly approaching a quarter-century of licensed driving. (I tried to calculate last week about how many miles I had driven in those 25 years. These days, I average only 12,000 miles per year, which is low by Southern California standards. In earlier years, when I had a longer commute, I drove easily twice that. I’d guess that I’ve logged somewhere around 400,000 miles so far in the USA and Britain.) When I was in high school, as virtually any American adult over 30 will tell you, a driver’s license was a much-longed for rite of passage, a crucial demarcation line for adulthood. The only people I knew who didn’t have their license by their 17th birthday were those who had either repeatedly failed the test or those whose visual disabilities made it impossible for them to drive.
But it is not so today. The Times notes that rising insurance and gas costs have played a part, and I don’t doubt that economics are a factor. Many states have placed onerous restrictions on teen drivers, limiting when and with whom they can operate a motor vehicle. When I got licensed 25 years ago, there were no such restrictions. In the early ’80s, a teen in California could load up a car with a dozen friends and drive them around at midnight. No mandatory seatbelt law, either.
What I particularly appreciate about the Times article is that it doesn’t attribute this shift away from licensing teens solely to legal or cost factors. There’s also been a fundamental shift in the attitude that at least a great many young people seem to have towards independence — and towards their parents. Today’s teens are mostly the children of baby boomers, after all, boomers whose willingness to be present in their children’s lives may exceed that of an earlier generation. The lamentable “helicopter phenomenon”, in which anxious parents hover over their nearly-grown children with a watchful eye, is well-known to high school teachers, youth workers, and college administrators. It is enabled by constant cell phone communication. And it seems to lead some teens to be much more comfortable being driven around by Mom and Dad than an earlier generation might have been.
Of course, teens today have fewer reasons to go out. When I was in high school, a cordless telephone was the zenith of innovation. Without texting, without Myspace and Facebook and iChat, there were infinitely fewer ways to connect with others without leaving the house. Today’s teens can maintain a complex and sophisticated social network without ever leaving their bedrooms. Presumably this reduces the impetus to get out of the house physically, because virtual escape from the home is already so easy. Parents today seem more worried about online predators than drunken driving, which reflects the substitution of the fear of a very real danger (one that took thousands of lives) with anxiety about a phenomenon that has been massively over-exaggerated.
The kids I work with in various youth groups (at All Saints Pasadena, the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles, etc) come from a wide variety of economic backgrounds. I have noticed that the reduced interest in the license is just as common among affluent teens as among poorer ones. In other words, even those boys and girls whose parents could afford to buy them a new car seem decidedly less eager to get licensed than did the teens of my generation. The absence of driver’s ed classes and the cost of insurance is not a sufficient explanation for this remarkable drop in the desire to drive while still underage.
I wish that I could attribute this drop to an increased ecological consciousness on the part of the young. But as far as I can tell, here in bus and subway-deprived Los Angeles, the kids with whom I work are no greater fans of public transportation than a generation before them. They are quite content to be driven around by older siblings and parents. All other factors aside, what strikes me most about “kids these days” is a far greater willingness to be dependent upon others, including parents. While I still see plenty of teens for whom the license and the keys symbolize freedom, their numbers are not nearly as prevalent as before. Beyond an issue of restrictive license rules and phased-out driver’s ed classes, I see abundant anecdotal evidence of a “shift in the middle-class adolescent Zeitgeist”; that shift has been towards closer, more enmeshed relationships with over-protective boomer parents.
My mother, Vassar class of ‘59, left California to go to upstate New York for college. She came home twice a year, always spending Thanksgiving with friends rather than returning home. Long distance calls were expensive, and she called home once a month or less. When I went to college, I came home twice during the semester as well as at breaks, and called home once a week. Last year, I asked a group of former All Saints students who were now at college, home on winter break, how often they talked to their parents. More than half talked to a parent every single day, even those who attended college on the other side of the country. A generation so comfortable with a high degree of attachment and enmeshment with their parents will have far less interest, it seems, in grasping at the first opportunity the physical independence that a driver’s license represents.
Well said, Hugo. Very descriptive and non-blaming. I have quite a few value judgements I routinely make about these societal shifts, and it’s nice to see you avoid dropping those in this post…
oye! seriously, are you stalking me? :)
i’m 21, in college, and still not able to drive. partly because it terrifies the bejesus’ out of me. i’m horrible at driving games, imagine me in the real thing! oh, i doubt i’d be hurt in an accident-but half the state of california would spend the night in a hospital.
and yes, there are a lot of economic factors. i lack a job, so gas and insurance would be a problem. my father is currently paying for my braces, while also paying for my brother’s and mine’s college education.
it is extremely embarassing to come to school in my dad’s van, and have to tell people that if they want me to come to a party-they’d have to pick me up-but i’ve found a lot of my college counterparts to be more than willing to give this poor girl a lift.
as for those kids who talk to their parents everyday…you want to live in my house? i can’t wait until the day i can go a week without having to run into them!
Very interesting and for me, timely.
My nephew turns 18 this weekend. And you describe him to a Tee.
We were just discussing his drivers license test last night and to my amazement, he just didn’t seem to interested or excited. Neither was his sister, who still has a few years to go (although she is thinking about a hardship permit because of transportation concerns to and from college). He was actually more concerned about registering for the draft.
But he seems perfectly content to ride his bike or his skateboard to wherever he needs to go.
I wish more of us adults could pull that off. Our energy use and carbon footprint would improve certainly, but also, we would be healthier, and wealthier (and maybe more wise as well). And I think, as energy costs rise, we will all be wishing we could conduct more of our necessary travel by foot or bicycle.
More than half talked to a parent every single day, even those who attended college on the other side of the country. A generation so comfortable with a high degree of attachment and enmeshment with their parents will have far less interest, it seems, in grasping at the first opportunity the physical independence that a driver’s license represents.
This is slightly to the side of the topic at hand, but how were these students’ relationships with their parents prior to going away to college? I talked to my parents almost every day in college, too. But prior to college, I didn’t really talk with them that much at all. Having to communicate by phone, rather than just sharing daily routines with them, forced me to get to know them as people, not just as those who put the roof over my head and fed me. I wasn’t dependent on them, but I suddenly found myself liking them.
More back on topic, I’m baffled at A) people not wanting to get their license for non-economic reasons, and B) your statement that school drivers’ ed programs are disappearing. I guess it’s something I’m so far out of touch with I never relized that a shift WAS being made. Do you know WHY school-based classes are disappearing?
In California, we’ve heavily cut back on school-based driver’s ed, which is now seen as a frill, along with things like music and PE.
As a ten year old boy I dreamed of driving a cool car ASAP. Currently, in NJ public transit and biking does it for me. And now that I’m about to begin student teaching and graduate, I’ll HAVE to get a car. I don’t know about enmeshment with my parents (I email occasionally to tell mom and dad to transfer rent money to my account) but I do know that there is a stigma associated with people who don’t drive, like “EWW why not?” / “I feel so sorry for you!” So they would always drive me around.
Now that it’s 6 long years past due, getting my license is actually a psychological hurdle I will have to work hard at overcoming. I shit you not. I don’t want to drive anymore. And the idea of driving scares me.
//i’m horrible at driving games, imagine me in the real thing!//
Let me just assure you that driving games are nothing like actually driving. I am TERRIBLE at driving games and I am actually a pretty good driver (save a little case of leadfoot here and there).
My older son (now 20 yo), had no interest at all in getting his driver’s license. He seems to have missed that adolescent feeling of invincibility so he was worried about causing an accident (I was the same way at that age). There also weren’t all that many places that he wanted to go that we weren’t going to anyway. We didn’t push it until it became necessary because it would add $2000 to our insurance and we aren’t swimming in extra money!
He’s now working and saving up money for college (and insurance) so he’s had his license for a while. He still doesn’t wander all that often (even though we’ve encouraged him to) except for going to libraries, bookstores, movies, or concerts. I think he’s not typical though - he’s the dreamy, creative sort who lives in his head and spends his spare time drawing and writing.
Our 16 yo daughter has her learner’s permit and wants to drive mostly so that she can take more dance classes.
Neither of them owns nor wants a cell phone. I don’t have one either.
I’ll be turning 30 in July. I don’t have a license; I don’t drive; I’ve never had to drive. This is partly because I have parietal lobe brain damage that has interfered with my ability to map objects in three-dimensional space at a reasonable speed, partly because I am surrounded by so many caring people who enjoy my company that I never really have to drive, and partly because (tying in with point #2) I’m not a “bowling alone” person, so if I leave the house, it’s going be with somebody else anyway. One of the unexpected benefits of this is that it has played into my already-extant tendency to fight macho gender norms. Driving, after all, has profound phallic implications; there’s a reason why so many middle-aged men buy convertibles. Asking people for rides forces me to be humble. It gives me a way of getting closer to people, because I have such wonderful conversations in other people’s cars. And having to be the one getting picked up on dates has changed the whole way I look at dating.
I think it’s probable that 20% of the people over 30 who have licenses and drive really shouldn’t, but have been forced to do so. I’m fortunate in that I never was, and if I have my way about it, I’ll never have to drive on a regular basis.
that shift has been towards closer, more enmeshed relationships with over-protective boomer parents
Or, you know, just closer relationships with more involved parents. Along the lines of the college/community business, I think it’s basically a good sign if parents and children are increasingly interested able to tolerate one another, increasingly willing to help one another and to be helped. I’m infinitely closer to my parents than either was to theirs, and we’re all happier for it.
My parents are just barely technical baby boomers, born in ‘62 and ‘63. I don’t think they or their peers really had the boomer experience or felt included in that culture, based on what they’ve said, so I think it’s probably mostly post-boomer parents we’re talking about.
My son just finished high school here in small town America, where cars are still a very big thing. And every few years, each high school goes into mourning because a carload of teens crashed into a tree. Whatever the reason fewer teens are driving, I’m for it. I’m just so glad we survived it. (BTW: an obvious reason for fewer teen drivers: the $50 tank of gas. They are the poorest age group.)
Driving, after all, has profound phallic implications; there’s a reason why so many middle-aged men buy convertibles.
-Tom Head
Ironically, a group of friends and I have this (admittedly rather cruel) inside joke whenever some middle-aged guy roars through with a sports car or convertible: one of us inevitably asks “Compensating?” Another person would jump in saying “yeah, he’s probably not satisfying anyone”. It’s hard to tell when someone with a fancy car actually has other attributes to “establish machismo” or is simply a “poser”.
Interesting thoughts, thanks.
I don’t have time to tease this out right now, but I feel like there are connections to be made between this post & the post about the Gandalf Theory of College Selection. This post seems to have a subtle sense of concern about over-connection, the latter a more overt one. But it seems to me a similar set of ideas is behind both.
Indeed, Stephen, and both you and Daisy noted the same thing.
Well, I went far away to college (800 miles, but a world away–from the small-town exurbs of Orlando to DC) but I chat on the phone every day with my mom. (Dad not so much, but he’s more busy.) My parents were never helicopter parents, though–the reason I’m 800 miles away is because they challenged me to go out into the world and get into the best school I could and have a life they regret not having. We’ve always been a very close family, and this is our way of maintaining the community Daisy posted about. I go home and see them almost every school break I have, and unlike many of my peers here who seem obsessively driven to go broke getting “amazing” internships on the Hill here, I go home every summer because I know it’s a chance to spend time with my family, and I know that those chances will dwindle when I move into the working world and probably not move closer to home for years.
My father more-or-less forced my sister and I to get our licenses before leaving for college - I think he felt it was a necessary life skill. We were both younger than many of our friends, and used to getting rides from them by the time we were eligible for learners’ permits. And there was a lot within walking or public transportation distance. Our parents also made sure we learned how to cook while in high school, and how to wash dishes and do laundry and balance a checkbook. I think emotional closeness between parents and children is basically a good thing, but I worry that over-parenting can leave kids without practical autonomy.
Just before I turned 16, a friend of the family told me about a young man who had managed to get a reduced insurance rate based on a letter from his school that described him as an exemplary student. Since my peace work had made me a burr in the saddle of the school administration, I knew I had no hope of getting that kind of letter. I grasped that the adults in my life could use my desire to drive to control me; that and a basic environmental awareness, a sense that if I didn’t want to drive and didn’t have to drive (the small city I grew up in put my needs within cycling or walking distance) I could choose not to. I stand by that analysis even today; I consider people who depend on the car less free, economically and politically, than those of us who can, at a pinch, do without driving. My main sense of freedom and mobility came from my bicycle from the moment I learned to ride, and to a considerable extent from my skill as a sailor.
I remained car-free until I got into the anti-nuclear movement. After a memorable drive with a drunk (who later proved suicidal) I decided that I had better prepare myself to take the Stevie Wonder option (Stevie Wonder once said he’d rather drive himself than ride with a drunk). I accordingly learned to drive at the age of 28, and have never for a second regretted my choice.
Hi Hugo
A fascinating article, thank you.
It’s such a shame that California has cut back on school-based driver’s ed - I thought it was one of the best things that kids could learn at school. Teaching skills that effect life and death seem a strange thing to cut from the curriculum.
I’d noticed a similar changes in attitude to driving in kids in the UK; I thought it was the result of high cost of motoring here but I think your points about the internet make a lot of sense.
I think it leaves parents without practical autonomy as well.
I think it leaves parents without practical autonomy as well.
That’s a very good point, PM. It’s also ripe for feminist analysis: which parent has to sacrifice so much autonomy for the sake of driving the kids everywhere they need to go?
There’re also some important geographical differences that shouldn’t be overlooked, and that intersect with issues of class and (indirectly, I think) race. In wealthy neighbourhoods of large cities, car ownership is almost a useless luxury. But in suburbs, poor neighbourhoods, small towns, and rural communities (note the radical disparities within that list!), where public transportation is at best infrequent and at worst unreliable and dangerous, cars are the just about the only way to get around. And, at least in the last three cases, parents may not be able to play chauffeur (chauffeuse).
I’m 20 and I never even considered that schools should be teaching driver’s ed. I just thought of driver’s ed as scenes from 80s movies. I always just assumed your parents were supposed to teach you.
I really think you hit the nail on the head with this one. Children of baby boomers do seem more comfortable with dependence on other people than I’ve gotten the impression former generations were. Most of my relatives and a lot of my former school mates are so afraid of the real world that they’re content to stay children, sacrificing any benefits of independence for protection from the unknown. Parents seem to be more willing to do it, too.
I like Noumena’s point, too. I’ve seen so many women who felt like they were horrible people if they didn’t devote their whole lives to their children. Most women in my mill town were working more than full time AND felt this way. They ended up having no discernible life of their own. Since their work wasn’t fulfilling, their only identity left was was Mom. Then when their kids don’t want to have lives of their own as adults, they allow it because some feel like their identities will collapse without their kids to mother or they just don’t know any other way to live.
Plus, at least in my experience, men didn’t raise children. My mother raised me, not my father. If I needed to go to the doctor or there was a school function, Mom got off work to do it and then worked overtime to make it up. Most of my school mates growing up would tell you the same thing.
I’m 20 and I never even considered that schools should be teaching driver’s ed. I just thought of driver’s ed as scenes from 80s movies. I always just assumed your parents were supposed to teach you.
Do all states not have laws requiring X number of hours of formal driver’s ed, at least for teenagers? Where I grew up, going to the DMV and telling them your parents taught you wouldn’t have sufficed.
It was my father who did most of the driving us around when we were kids. On further reflection, this might explain some of his eagerness to see us get our licenses.
(My mother did most of the cooking, and she was the one who made us start cooking dinner once a week.)
I’ll be 33 in july, never had a license. I’m getting to the point where I could afford a car, but when you’ve never budgeted for one, the costs seem much greater. It would be a huge hole in my expendable income/savings–I’d have to give up things I actually enjoy for a destructive machine I don’t even like. I also simply can’t imagine driving every day as a commute, the very thought of it frankly horrifies me. I don’t have great public transit options for my commute right now; a car would save me up to an hour day, but even if I had one, I wouldn’t dream of driving. That hour on the bus is time I value–ipod, good book, coffee, and no one bothering me.
Also, the fact that I’m far less likely to have to live with the guilt of killing or maiming someone, however unintentionally, weighs heavily on my mind. I keep thinking I should take a class and get a license, primarily so I can do my fair share on road trips, drive a friends car home if they’ve been drinking, and drive in the case of a medical emergency or something. But I can never seem to prioritize it enough to actually get around with it. It’s always something I’m vaguely planning to do next year sometime. I’ve lived in a car culture all my life, and it’s always seemed profoundly alien to me.
get around with it
get around to it, that is…
It’s fascinating to see at least a few other adults here who are “car-free.” I remain so at age 46, despite having no medical excuse for being so and despite the fact that with each passing year I am regarded as more and more of a “freak” by those to whom driving comes as second nature and cannot imagine a life in which they could not drive.
While my life is not always easy, it is not one of total dependence either. I come to know public transportation schedules well; I walk; I bike; I make driving friends. And I manage to travel quite a bit without having to rent a car.
I’m not sure how the tendency of today’s teenagers to be less car-eager relates to the “helicopter parent” phenomenon. I deliberately moved two states away for college because I knew I had to do so to break away from letting my mother do everything for me. Today, I become a bit disconcerted when I see parents do practically everything for college-age sons and daughters–choose their courses, wake them up for class with a phone call, etc. I don’t think those parents are teaching autonomy to their kids. There’s such a thing as having a good relationship with your children, and such a thing as not letting them grow up.
I’ll confess to being one of those children that talk with a parent almost every day so it’s likely that I have a certain bias.
However, I feel strongly that the interdependence and connection that this post seems to imply is a negative is actually a positive.
Of course, a lack of skills or an inability to function in the real world is a bad thing. Yet I don’t think that is the natural result of a close relationship between parents and children.
The idea that a single person or a nuclear family should be able to handle all of life’s challenges is a fairly recent and culture specific one. Historically the majority of cultures had the expectation that an individual had a fairly broad system of support, including grandparents and aunts etc. I know that personally a lot of my current success and plans for the future are based partly on the expectation that I have my family’s support. I know that I will be able to have children whether or not I find a husband and still have a career because there will be extra hands to help me. This reduces the artificial panic over getting married. Similarly I strongly believe that having emotional support from family members reduces the chances that you will enter into an unhealthy romantic relationship due to desperate loneliness, if you also have emotional support from friends the chances that you will be emotionally stable increase exponentially.
“Where I grew up, going to the DMV and telling them your parents taught you wouldn’t have sufficed.”
My father taught me how to drive. Back then, you got a discount on your insurance if you took formal classes, but it wasn’t required. I took two days of the classes to get the discount, but I already knew how to drive by then. Of course, this was 15 years ago, so the requirements may have changed.
My school had Driver’s Ed, but it was entirely theoretical, because the school didn’t want to pay for insurance for all those student drivers.
theverycold, I would never be comfortable being picked up on a first date. Having my own way out is just that crucial to my own confidence - I like knowing that if I have to I can say “I’m leaving now” and go, without having to wait for a ride. I suppose in any truly dangerous situation it wouldn’t make a difference, but psychologically it does.
I think it’s a good thing that my generation can take advice from our elders and respect them as people, not just as authority figures.
As a note on formal driver’s ed, in California we were required to take X hours or (and this was key) a certified distance-learning course. I sent off for the book, it took me 5 hours instead of 30, and all was right with the world. The 50 hours of practice time was the main reason I didn’t get my license right away - my parents found it easier to drive me places than to spend 50 hours in the car with me while I drove around.
B:
I never knew of any such requirements. They never asked me how much my parents had trained me. All I had to do was pass a computer test for my permit at 15 and at 16 pass a driving test. Far as I knew, only requirement to take the test was being 16 and having your permit at least 6 months. We drove for maybe 15 minutes down Main Street and a residential area, nothing special like parallel parking. I was always astonished how easy it was. Maybe that has something to do with the can insurance rates being so high in my state. And all the uninsured drivers…
I apparently lack sensitivity. Learning to drive was no big deal. Driving is no big deal. The last at-fault accident I had was in 1970, slipping on ice going into a driveway and hitting a tree at about one mph. Failed to traumatize me. What’s wrong with me, anyway?
I’ve come on several accidents of major severity. Saved one guy’s life–the cops told me I need to get a test, since I didn’t have any latex gloves with me at the time–and one guy was dead when we finally got him out of the car. Still drive without qualms. Major spiritual failing, I guess.
Got a friend who has helicoptered her kids to an extent that makes it difficult for me to keep my mouth shut about it. One result is it makes it easier, perhaps inevitable, that they will find spouses–they did–who are equally controlling.
I’ve never considered the shift away from teens clamoring to drive to be a bad thing. That and the move away from ‘car culture’. (I’m one of those people that does not like to drive and got my license when I was twenty.)
The helicopter parenting is a bit much, to say the least. Asking teens to be responsible for driving younger siblings and running errands in return for driving privileges also seems to have gone the wayside.
I think the phenomenon is a combination of factors. The rising cost of gas and insurance are obvious. Lengthening commutes, non-standard work hours, and increased numbers of parents working more than one job probably reduce the possibility of teens borrowing a parent’s car. I’d bet parents being worn out by driving long distances for work also dampens the teen enthusiasm for driving. The rising cost of college tuition over time also means its much less likely that a student working/saving for their education (in high school or college) will be able to afford gas, insurance, or a car of their own.
The restrictions on new drivers is also significant, and varies by jurisdiction. Graduated licensing requirements can prohibit teens from driving late at night, restrict the number of passengers, suspend licenses for speeding tickets, and carry heavy penalties for driving with any level of blood alcohol. All of which reduce fatalities. Thankfully, I did not have to mourn any classmates in high school because of a car accident or drunk driving. (Someone supposedly street racing did kill an acquaintance of mine a year ago, but thats another story.)
Its hard for anyone to say ‘Yes, I’m finally free to go wherever I want… as long as I’m completely sober, get no speeding tickets, have no more than x passengers, and have the car home before midnight’. The mental gymnastics required for that are beyond me. In my teen years, I could stay out later if my mother drove me to and from parties.