1920's Lifestyles and Social Trends | Youth Culture

Peer Socialization.

A flamboyant youth subculture with its own ways of speaking, dressing, and acting flourished in the 1920s. Youth peer culture grew in the context of the family's retreat into a private emotional world and of the extended length of time teenagers and young adults spent in school. In the 1920s the high school, college, and peer group replaced the family's role in socializing adolescents; now these institutions defined the world of youth.

Mass Phenomenon.

The new importance of schooling in creating peer culture was indicated by the marked acceleration in rates of attendance: between 1900 and 1930 highschool enrollments increased 650 percent, and attendance in colleges and universities went up threefold. Of the three decades, the 1920s witnessed the greatest rate of increase. By 1930 school attendance was a mass phenomenon for the first time: close to 60 percent of the highschool age population and...