All My Children

In the later teens—at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen—a majority of young people will have lost enough of their shyness and gained enough experience so that they can mix socially with pleasure. Those who are in love will be in love on a more realistic basis than when they were younger—in the sense that they will have got to know the beloved before allowing themselves to become infatuated, and in the sense that they are seeing each other fairly regularly in real life situations, not just dreaming of each other at a distance. Others will not be emotionally ready yet to fall seriously in love, but they are drawn to certain members of the opposite sex and are having regular or occasional dates.

Aside from the groups just mentioned there will be a fair number of young people remaining who will not feel ready for dating. Some of them will be socially warm and self- assured towards the opposite sex as well as towards their own—it is only in regard to romance and sex that they are unready. Others will be shy both in ordinary sociability and in romance, though they may be well adjusted and productive in their work. In fact some of the world’s most creative people—in the arts and sciences—have been this type of shy, late-blooming young people. Most of them will eventually have successful marriages and social lives as well as careers.

I am listing this variety of patterns to point out that each of them can be normal and natural. Most shy people as well as most sociable people are well adjusted. I certainly don’t think that a young person who doesn’t feel like dating needs to make dates to prove that he can do so. I don’t believe a young person of either sex should encourage himself to have a predominantly physical love affair, either, in order to prove to himself that he can.

Another reason why young people who want to go far with their education should not push themselves to become romantically or sexually involved is that there is a reciprocal relationship—to a degree—between studies and sex. Those who are regularly involved in heavy romances or in physical affairs of a kind which keep them in an excited or turbulent state are more apt to have trouble keeping up with their school work. It’s not just that their affairs take up time and cause worries. It’s more basic than that. Freud pointed out that when a child at the age of six or seven gives up temporarily his romantic and sexual strivings, the emotional energy that is freed is sublimated into school work and other impersonal interests. In adolescence that transformation will be reversed to a small or great degree from impersonal interests to sex. Heads of schools will tell you that if a pupil is given a sports car, providing him with very direct gratifications through dating and showing oft, his school work is likely to suffer.

How then does a married student do well academically? The answer is that it depends on how mature the student is when he gets married. If he is a stable, responsible person with a well-fixed ambition, he can perhaps get married at twenty and not have it interfere with his studies, provided his wife is sensible and level-headed too. On the other hand, if he’s a distractable person who hasn’t settled on a career yet, and he marries or has an affair with a girl who is still emotionally unsure of herself, he may get promptly into academic trouble.

I want to be sure that I don’t leave the impression that any time you fall earnestly in love or decide to go steady (on a romantic or physical attraction basis) you will surely fail your exams or lose your life aspirations or cut yourself off from a creative career. That would be going much too far. There are several reasons why : quite a few of the young people who do get interested in each other do not become involved in intense relationships or in day-to-day dating. A majority of the cases of falling in love in the teens do not last long. Those young people who will be going to work after school are more likely to let themselves fall seriously and permanently in love as the time to leave approaches; they can afford to do so, in the emotional sense, because working at a job does not usually require the same mental self-discipline as studying. A majority of those going on to university are, by comparison, more guarded in their feelings. Yet there is a significant number who do drop out of university; becoming involved in an affair or a turbulent marriage is one of the reasons.

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