Media Release
December 2 2009
Teenagers' lives limited by adult constraints
Teenagers
in suburban Australia are living their lives within the constraints of
adult space and time, according to new research from the
University of South Australia.
The ‘Mobility, Mothers and Malls’ report investigates how home,
community, school, teenage work and adult work all affect opportunity
for teenagers in the suburbs. It is part of the four-year Work, Home and
Community Project by UniSA’s
Centre
for Work + Life, to be launched today.
Project Manager
Dr Pip Williams said how teenagers are accommodated by home, local
community and parental work affects not only their well-being but the
well-being of their family and the wider community.
“What teenagers do, how they do it, when they do it and who they do it
with sits within, and sometimes butts up against, the spatial and
temporal realities of their parents and other adults in their
communities,” she said.
One hundred and seventy-four boys and girls aged between 11 and 18 years
took part in focus groups with Dr Williams and her colleagues. The
teenagers were from public and private schools servicing three
master-planned communities and three traditional lower socio-economic
status suburbs in South Australia, Victoria and Queensland.
Among the findings are:
Incompatible schedules between teenagers and their parents results in
reduced access to activities and friends and a perception that they are
missing out.
Homework is considered excessive in senior high school and a number of
teenagers describe daily schedules that leave them exhausted and with
little time to interact with family or friends.
School location is significant in terms of the demands and resources
placed on the teenager, their family and the community. Local schools
minimise demands of travel and maximise social interaction with peers
and other members of the local community.
Teenagers want more understanding about demands of school, home and paid
work and also want to see more convenient scheduling of these
conflicting activities, such as more consolidation of homework into
school time.
Teenagers regardless of age or socio-economic background often feel
marginalised in their local communities.
An absence of appropriate amenity coupled with poor public transport
systems leave the vast majority of teenagers complaining of ‘nothing to
do’.
Dr Williams said teenagers from homes with fewer amenity and mobility
resources relied on adequate community resources to gain access to
opportunity. However, communities with a large proportion of
disadvantaged households often lacked these resources.
“Teenagers from better resourced homes are less reliant on community
resources, but this comes at a cost,” she said.
“This includes mothers having to make sacrifices in relation to their
career to be available to their children. There’s also the trend to
withdraw children from under resourced local public schools in favour of
private schooling outside the area, which means teenagers forgo social
connection with their community, and communities and schools lose well
resourced families from the social milieu which erodes social capital.”
Dr Williams said the research had clear implications for policy and
action.
“This research suggests that specific actions by governments at all
levels, employers, planners, service providers, schools, parents and
teenagers can result in better outcomes for teenagers in our
communities,” she said.
“Action should focus on increasing resources available in the homes and
residential communities of teenagers, particularly teenagers from lower
socioeconomic areas, and reducing demands on teenagers and their parents
that are associated with adult work and transport infrastructure in
particular.”
Contact for interview
-
Dr Pip Williams mobile 0423 298 685
Media contact
- Kelly Stone office (08) 8302 0963 mobile 0417 861 832 email kelly.stone@unisa.edu.au