Once our society set aside time for adolescents to grow from children to adults, to become accustomed to their expanding bodies and minds. Now the markers that defined passage—differences in
dress, behavior, and responsibilities—have vanished. The institutions that guarded adolescence, such as family and schools, now expect “young adults” to deal with adult issues. Those trends
leave teens no time to be teens.All Grown Up and No Place to Go spotlights the pressures on teenagers to grow up quickly. The resulting problems range from common alienation to
self-destructive behavior. Quoting teenagers themselves, Elkind shows why adolescence is a time of “thinking in a new key,” and how young people need this time to get used to the social and
emotional changes their new thinking brings. Many of his ideas, such as the “imaginary audience” that makes teens so self-conscious, have become seminal in adolescent psychology.Already there
are more than 175,000 copies of All Grown Up and No Place to Go in print. In this thoroughly revised edition, Elkind also explores the “post-modern family” in which teenagers are
growing up. He helps parents and those who work with youth and understand teens in crucial ways, because the root of so many adolescent frictions is the gap between what teenagers need and
what our culture provides.