Grow Up...

Another thing that bothers me in reading a lot of historical, epic, or fantasy stories nowadays is that the protagonists are teenagers. Now, there is nothing wrong with that, but it has become a very serious problem in literature. I've seen stories where kids ranging between the ages of fifteen and seventeen are completely immature and then are forced to grow up when they find themselves thrown into a particular situation. This is another history-inspired post, so just bear with me here.

The reason I have a problem with most teenagers in stories today is that, if they're in a historically-based or fantasy story, then they tend to be very immature and unlikable. This would not be true in history. Think about it. In historical times, girls were often married off as young as the age of twelve or thirteen. But, when they got married, they were not unsure what they were doing. These girls were mature, generally well-educated, and were trained to run a household at a young age. They were constantly busy and had absolutely no time to angst or complain about growing up too fast or too slow. This is especially true if your protagonist is a male and is an orphan or only one parent; he would have to grow up faster to take on a man's responsibilities to take care of the family. Teenagers would also have to grow up rapidly if they were poorer because they had to work hard to help support the family, like if they live on a farm. In other words, back then children had a very short transition period from child to adult, and that was the accepted norm.

Case in point: John Quincy Adams. The sixth president of the US and son of John Adams was only eleven when he accompanied his father overseas. He spent most of his teen years traveling all over Europe, including serving as a secretary to an American envoy to Russia when he was no more than thirteen or fourteen. By the time he was twenty years old, Adams had quite a career already under his belt, and so he had little difficulty in becoming a lawyer and later a foreign minister, all before the age of thirty. Not all children had the same opportunities as Adams, but they nonetheless became adults very early in life. This made them far more mature than most teenagers today, and this means that some literature focused on teenagers and young adults is inaccurate.

If you're writing a story set in modern times or after the 1950's, then you can largely ignore this post. But, if your story is a fantasy or historical, I think you should consider that not every teenager back then acted like teens do today. Instead, young people in the past were far more mature and capable than they are portrayed in literature today.