How sweet is 16, wondered the ‘Teenagers in close-up’ cover story for the Observer Magazine’s issue of 12 September 1976. According to this ‘definitive report on young people in Britain by the National Children’s Bureau… the archetypal 16-year-old here is a long way from the idle and anarchic teenager of legend.’
About 14,000 boys and girls took part in the detailed study. It was the same birth-cohort who were surveyed in 1969 in their final year of primary school, ‘a cross-section through differences of class, affluence and education’.
There are some candid reactions to the report’s findings from a group of 16-year-olds from Southfields school, a mixed comprehensive. Sarah complained: ‘You’re not told anything about the emotional side of sex. Just the biological view and that’s it.’ While Andy found that, ‘Kids are growing up more quickly today. They want to do what adults do – drink and smoke.’
And boy did they drink and smoke. ‘The most alarming statistics relate to smoking and drinking among 16-year-olds,’ said the report. ‘A third of those interviewed admitted to smoking and as many as 6% said they smoked up to 10 cigarettes a day.’
But there is a glaring omission here – there’s no sign at all of the impending punk generation. In fact, it paints a picture of a rather conservative lot where ’only 3% were opposed to marriage altogether… most thought the best age to marry was 20-25, with two children as the ideal family.’
We learn that ‘just over half [of households] had a telephone’. How on earth did teenagers cope without even a landline? Surely not by talking to each other? But some things never change. ’Arguments over clothes and hairstyles proved the most frequent source of discord between 16-year-olds and their parents.’ Just wait till the mohawks and safety pins appear…
