Youth: The Pre-Teens

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In Massapequa, N.Y., Kathy came home from school and announced that she would need nylons and a garter belt to wear at her girl friend's birthday party because "all the other girls" would be wearing them. Kathy is eight years old.

In Los Angeles, Bill's parents gave him his first "sitdown" dinner and dance (live music) for his tenth birthday. Tuxedoed boys escorted dates who wore corsages. One boy showered too much attention on another's date. "I had to talk with him and remind him he brought his own little date," explained Bill's mother.

In Chicago's suburban Evergreen Park, a dozen girls from age six upward, whooshed into the local beauty shop for their regular Saturday appointments, emerged topheavy with "beehive" and "lioness" hairdos. Sighed Manager Warren Miller: "They've got more hair than they've got face. I'd call it a mop."

In San Francisco, Beverly, daughter of a Berkeley professor, asked her parents for a "training bra." She needed to feel a little glamorous, since she was planning to go to a drive-in movie on the back of her boy friend's bicycle. Beverly is nine, her boy friend eleven.

In short, dating, dancing, kissing games and all the rest of the natural delights that once were the preserve of adolescents, are becoming part of the everyday life of an increasing number of eight-to twelve-year-old grade-schoolers all over the U.S. The latest social discovery of the pre-teeners. particularly popular in the nation's suburb-nests, is "making out," a tentative version of adolescent necking: the boys and girls get together at somebody's home, and the parents discreetly disappear, leaving the room darkened and the boys at liberty to "make out." Pre-teeners in Los Angeles have developed a modern version of the post-office and spin-the-bottle kissing games. They call it "Seven Minutes of Heaven (or Hell)." The boy takes the girl who is "it" into a closet or some other room and, depending on his inclination, kisses her (Heaven) or hits her (Hell) for seven minutes.

This, according to the dominant theory of education lumped under the name of John Dewey, is a desirable development of their "social skills." By cutting short the pigtail pulling and stuck-out-tongue phase that kids usually go through, parents feel that they are helping their youngsters bypass the awkward age. Learning early how to handle themselves socially and dress smartly, the children become well-adjusted and popular.

Burned-Out Cases. But a growing number of sociologists and plain parents are beginning to show some concern with this trend. Says Carlfred B. Broderick, associate professor of family relationships at Pennsylvania State University, and one of the nation's top authorities on children: "Many parents appear to operate under the mistaken theory that sex starts at puberty. They assume that early kissing is meaningless. But pre-teen dating starts the youngster earlier on the road to progressive intimacy. By the time these children have reached their teens, they have pretty well covered the field, and are ready for nothing less than marriage."