Okay our teacher said that it was good, but that it still needs to be precised.


Introduction:

Youth is that particular and complicated period where one has to redefine one's aspirations, one's ambitions, and build a social status that corresponds to it. Nowadays many sociologists agree that becoming an adult is more difficult that it once was. In the past, we could only find two categories, adults and children. You got married, you left your parents to live with your partner, and you became an adult. The frontier was much more clearer, there was no turning back.
The evolution of our societies has led to the creation of a new social status to represent youth. In France the average age when one leaves one's parents has significantly increased. One may keep emotional contact and come back home seeking for parental care. The morals have changed such that both the relationships between parents and children and the ways of becoming adult are different.
Our study aims at underlining the differences between how French and Americans handle the transition to the adult age. More precisely, the way we, students, test what we have learned from our parents and our society to build our own aspirations and our own values.
We will, in a more pragmatic approach, tackle this question focusing on the excesses of youth as a good indicator of the way we test life.


Quotations:

C'est un tort égal de pécher par excès ou par défaut. Confucius
(it as wrong to sin by excess as to sin by default)

La sagesse a ses excès et n'a pas moins besoin de modération que la folie. Montaigne
(Wisedom has it's excesses and needs as much moderation as madness do.)

The best things carried to excess are wrong. Charles Churchill

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. Oscar Wilde

Questions:


What kind of experience do youth in those different countries wish for or have?
Why and how could childhood affect the experiences teenagers have?
What are the roles of the society during this span?
What do the youths learn from its excess and how much can we expect it to be part of our adult life?


Question number 1:

Subjects to deal with: the discovery of alchool, driving, sex, financial independance, smoking, leaving our parents, food and obesity or anorexia..


Question number 2:

Subjects to deal with: parental education and values, the parental monitoring of children, money given to children, religious education. What kind of influence do your parents have on you now that you've left, how long will it last according to you? How long do wish it to continue? If had the choice to live exactly like your parents did would you do the same? Why? What are the limits imposedby parents?


Question number 3:

Subjects to deal with: The law, the media, politics, excess in society, social role models, wealth of society, the different possibility of evolution your society grants you or doesn't grant you. What are the limits imposed by society?




Question number 4:

This part is likely to be a more personal part, and an transition to what we will conclude after the study. The benefit from a life of excess and the advantages of wise behaviors or vice versa. What we've learned from personal experiences, the wise ones and the excessive ones. What do we think would be our life with more or less excess. Do people we that have been excessive usually have good situation in society. To what extent is this adult life the consequence of our discoveries and past experiences.