Rising Twenty
- Author:
Pearl Jephcott. Faber. 8s. 6d.
In this book Miss Jephcott, author of Girls Growing Up, gives us a picture of 100 ordinary working-class girls in three very different parts of England. The one thing they have in common is that at the time of the study they were all over 17 and under 21. From the girls themselves the author has learned about the interests and thoughts of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 20, and the results of this study are very revealing. On the whole the girls, though limited in outlook and abilities, were good-hearted and kindly, their chief virtue being generosity and a thoughtfulness for younger children. Their lives provided very little in the way of resources for enjoyment and their experience tended to be extremely narrow. It was found that the girls were inclined to adopt a fixed pattern of weekly activities at a very early age and this pattern changed very little as they grew older. Another outstanding feature was the extent to which the girls continued to be influenced by their homes although they were going out to work, and the real affection and concern they maintained for their families.
One would judge from this book that work to these girls was merely a stop-gap until they got married and that most of their thoughts and activities were directed to this end. Many of the girls expressed a desire for ” fuller and clearer information about sex Miss Jephcott says that the ” approval of these highly critical readers ” of the booklets put out by the British Social Hygiene Council would ” rejoice the heart of the Council There appears to be a marked indifference to further education in this section of society. ” Twothirds of the hundred girls ” had had no formal education after leaving school and the number actually attending classes was about a dozen. Most of their reading seems to have been confined to the cheaper magazines and books from the 2d. library, but there was ” a widespread interest in letter writing
The general impression one gets after reading this book is that the life of the average working-class girl is drab and narrow and that something should be done to enrich it. Miss Jephcott points out, however, that ” no one solution will meet the needs of people so diverse in background and so varied in ability and character She maintains that, although the bodies which have a professional interest in ” youth ” could all make a contribution, ” it is the genuine interest and encouragement of the people whom the girl meets day after day that are the really powerful factors ” in their lives. ” If formal agencies could do more ” she suggests ” to harness the energies of the young adult on the adolescent’s behalf, both together could almost certainly put a brake on the present squandering of enthusiasm and ability and the consequent disillusionment of so many youngsters C.H-S.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.