From its beginnings at the turn of

From its beginnings at the turn of the century, the scientific study of adolescent
development has always had as part of its implicit and explicit agendas the goal
of describing, explaining, predicting, and ameliorating problematic behavior. Despite
oft-repeated pleas to “de-dramatize” adolescence (e.g. Dornbusch et al 1991),
frequent reminders that adolescence is not a period of “normative disturbance,”
and accumulating evidence that the majority of teenagers weather the challenges
of the period without developing significant social, emotional, or behavioral dif-
ficulties (Steinberg 1999), the study of problem behavior continued to dominate
the literature on adolescent development during the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, one
recent article (Arnett 1999) suggested that scholars might reconsider the fashionable
assertion that the “storm and stress” view is incorrect and acknowledge that
the early writers on the subject may have been onto something.