Introduction

Walking along the street between around 3.30 and 5 in the afternoon can feel daunting. As schools and colleges empty, groups of young people crowd the pavement, achieving what seems like an impossible range of simultaneous activities—eating, drinking, texting, and talking at top volume to each other. Adolescence is a time of change, discovery, and uncertainty. Adolescent rebellion has moved on since then. Or has it? In the 1960s, parents tut-tutted about their daughters' miniskirt or their sons' long hair. In the early years of the twenty-first century, teenagers "negotiate" (or not) tattoos and piercings, and young women reveal an increasing amount of leg, midriff, and cleavage. Little has changed. Parents of adolescents brace themselves as the impact of hormones and a quest for greater independence kick in. And sometimes adolescent anger and moroseness turn into repeated acts of delinquency or—sometimes fatal—violence towards self and/or others.