The travails of 19th-century urban youth as a precondition to the invention of modern adolescence

One of the factors leading up to the "invention" of modern adolescence was what reformers saw as the corruption of youth by the city. It was the plight of these youth--all too visible to reformers, intellectuals, opinion makers, and trend setters--which set the stage for a child-saving movement during the last century aimed at taking youth off the streets, putting them in schools, stretching out the home-leaving age from 14 to 18, and in general, prolonging a developmental period.