Talk:Fear of youth

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[edit] Call to Remove NPOV Tag

This article is filled with citations that can are verifiable; I propose to remove its NPOV tag. Freechild 16:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General conversation

  • Quite obviously a pseudo-scientific justification for pedophilia. Should be deletetd. 80.185.144.179 01:29, 16 March 2005.
  • ^^Agreed. -- an actual teenager. 63.135.232.24 01:19, 1 February 2006.
  • Not likely at all. This page appears to me to be merely facts and stating the truth, nothing more -- another actual teenager. Aking 06:26, 2 February 2006.
  • Er... just a comment. This article is about adolescents, not prepubescent children. As for Science, pedophilia is defined as sexual attraction in adults towards pre-pubescent children, and as such is recognized and classified as a disease by the United Nations Organization and by the American Psychiatry Association. Popularly, the definition varies immensely according to the age of consent in your jurisdiction and also to media usage (and the credibility of the media vehicle), as well as according to language and culture. In any case, sexual attraction to adolescents is not considered a disease. Paulo Andrade 12:12, 22 August 2006.
  • Anyway, the article is not about sex or sexual attraction. It focuses on prejudices and discriminations against adolescents, of several different types, particularly on irrational ones. Paulo Andrade 12:12, 22 August 2006.
  • While I'm confident that this isn't a distinct medical condition, I have known people who were afraid of children in a very distinct way. In one case, the fear seemed to stem from the idea that children don't have social boundaries. Another instance had to do with the fear that one could be accused of innapropriate behavior. Also people who were humiliated or teased by other children when they were young can feel anxiety around groups of children. Tygerbill (talk) 22:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Crime contributing to this phobia

OK, I'm not sure what the above discussion was about. However, under the definitions section, an editor listed a number of issues that arise from ephebiphobia, from sex and pregnancy to changing laws to ensure more rights. I wonder if crime and juvenile delinquency have anything to do with contributing to ephebiphobia? If so, this should be mentioned in the article (e.g., seeing a group of teenagers loitering and fearing they may be planning something as in a string of burglaries or a teen drinking party). [[Briguy52748 14:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)]]

[edit] What is and is not a phobia

I consider the 'pathological forms' section of this article to be one large bias in favour of teenage misconduct. Desiring to conceal underage pregnancy is at least a strongly practical concern even if you ignore the moral aspects, it is hardly a pathological example of ephebiphobia. I believe you will also find that while distasteful it may seem to those untouched by it, 'coerced' termination is also a practical consideration, since very young motherhood is seldom positive for anyone concerned. A pathological fear or prejudice, it is not. Neither is a real example of a phobia, and I frankly suggest excising the sections explicitly concerning the territory of parents or guardians altogether from this article and reforming it to concern only the social phobia. 81.168.41.125 02:01, 08 August 2006

I don't think you read the whole section through very well.
"by the means of violence, use of terror or threats of any kind."
"vigorously humiliating"
"compulsively or obsessively"
The point is not the activities themselves, all of which in moderation are reasonable, but the taking of them to at times violent extremes. --Superslash 19:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


A phobia is an irrational fear towards a situation or a specific thing. Since ageism is not necessarily driven by any irrational fear, it cannot be used to define a phobia of any kind. There is an already existing ageism article.

Ephebiphobia may manifest itself as the things that were listed in the article, even to extremes, but they are not the phobia itself. This is fine, since manifestation of the phobia helps to explain it. The ageism section is redundant, but the previous section seems relevant. Sigehelm 09:15, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Since the section on ageism is restated in the adultism article, the section should be deleted. Sigehelm 09:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

Are you certain the spelling ephebiphobia is correct, instead of ephebophobia? 惑乱 分からん 22:08, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the spelling is odd. "Ephebophobia" looks like a made-up word at any rate. If we are to include it in this encyclopedia, then let us at least spell it according to regular principles. "Ephebiphobia" is ill-formed because it incongruously inserts the Latin connecting vowel "i" into a Greek-type compound word with Greek elements; and it is unpleasant because it goes against the analogy of other words in -phobia, like "acrophobia", which generally have "o". (The word "agoraphobia" has "a" because "agora" is of the 1st declension -- but "ephebos" is of the second.) If this were a well-established word, we should, of course, be obliged to bow to common usage, even if this usage went in defiance of etymology and analogy. But "ephebophobia" is so obviously a neologism that it cannot plead tradition in defense of its eccentricities, which, like the word itself, will seem the mere product of ignorance and faddishness.Gheuf 04:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I'm having trouble finding any sources which support he bulk of this article. Most of those I've checked just mention the term as a fear of teenagers but don't go into detail. Does anyone know where this stuff came from? -Will Beback 22:07, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

  • I sure don't, and so I added a ((source)) tag to the article. I wonder if this is really just a dictionary definition? Should the definition be TransWikied to Wiktionary and the rest of the material just deleted? Herostratus 02:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
The "Ageism" material seems worthwhile, but would be better placed in a different article. Unless the original author gives an explanation shortly (I've left a message on his talk page), I'll refactor the article, leaving the "phobia" material on its own. That'll make it easier to decide its disposition. Will Beback 20:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe the article should be renamed to "Phobia against adolescents" or "Ageism against adolescents" with a "#redirect" command in the word "ephebiphobia". The article has also some connection with article "Adultism", although a merge would probably be difficult. Paulo Andrade 12:22, 29 August 2006 (GMT)
That sounds reasonable. In my opinion, it usually doesn't matter that much if you have article title X with title Y being a redirect, or vice versa. However, it matters a little bit. "Ephebiphobia" would, to me, signifiy a phobia -- a person going into sweats and panic attack if near a teenager, that sort of thing -- while "Ageism against adolescents" is much more general and political more in tune with the actual article in my opinion. I would support Paulo's suggestion. Herostratus 15:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pathological forms of ephebiphobia

The section "Pathological forms of ephebiphobia" has been POV tagged for awhile now. It is pretty clearly POV, it is certainly unsourced, and in fact it reads like original research, and pretty silly at that, thus I removed it. Taking a look at the section point by point:

  • "incarcerating teenagers or underage adolescents at home for a long period of time, or through the use of handcuffs (in any period of time), usually to prevent them from going out to parties, to the mall, to the movie theatre or to any place where they could potentially develop a social or a love relationship;"
    • First of all, being grounded is not "incarceration". Second of all... handcuffs are being used to prevent kids from going to the mall or the movies? Let's see some cites on that, please.
  • "vigorously humiliating an underage adolescent in public;"
    • Some people maltreat their kids. They probably did the same thing when the kid was eight. Or if the editor is referring to strangers doing this... how much does this happen? I don't see it, but maybe I don't get around enough, but I'd sure like to see some cites.
  • ""compulsively or obsessively hiding a pregnant teen or preteen from public observation (as if she had a contagious disease), especially when moving or traveling to another place (neighborhood, city, region or country) solely with the purpose of hiding the pregnancy; "
    • Uh this sounds like some kind of myth of how people behaved half a century ago. Do people still move (and to another country yet) when Babs gets in the family way? What you do hear about, although it's rare, is that (1) a young person herself hides a pregnancy from her parents or whomever, or a (2) person is pregnant and doesn't even realize it, due to ignorance or denial or whatever. Anyway, unwed teen pregnancy is a fraught and difficult situation for the families involved and it seems way wrong to lump this into Ephebiphobia.
  • "forcefully inducing or coercing an underage adolescent to have an abortion, or conversely see a pregnancy to full term, by the means of violence, use of terror or threats of any kind."
    • While I'm sure this happens, some cites would be needed here. But the main thing, again, is what does this have to do with Ephebiphobia? Your kid gets pregnant, you drag her to the abortion clinic or whatever... maybe because you suspect you'll end up raising the kid, or you don't want your kid to queer her chances for a decent education etc. or maybe you're just a jerk -- there's a whole lot of family dynamics here that doesn't fit under Ephebiphobia. Herostratus 06:40, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What does this article want to be about?

Kudos on the many citations added to the article, but this article still makes my spider-sense tingle. This article seems somewhat schizophrenic... The first section describes an anxiety disorder, ephebiphobia, with cites of it as a medical condition. That would mean the person has anxiety symptoms, such as sweating, nausea, choking sensations, etc.

If we replace the term with the definition in the following section, we get:

"...At least one major economist has proposed that sweating-nausea-choking-etc-in-the-presence-of-youth have grave effects on the economic health of nations[15]. A growing number of researchers report that sweating-nausea-choking-etc-in-the-presence-of-youth affects the health of democracy..." (it then starts in on vilification... but people who have (say) aviophobia (fear of flying) don't vilify airplanes or pilots, I don't think, so I'm getting a disconnect here). Anyway, continuing, we get "Many social programs and social critics view sweating-nausea-choking-etc-in-the-presence-of-youth as a condemning force against youth throughout society, particularly when coupled with racism..." Yipes. This doesn't sound like any medical condition I've ever heard of.

Also, a sufferer would (I suppose) be as subject to symptoms of the disorder if in the presence of the kids in the church youth group as when he runs into a pack of edgy-looking kids hanging around the gas station or whatever... if not, the sufferer is not suffering from anxiety induced by youth per se, but by certain types of youth, which is a different thing altogether, is it not?... he may be suffering from mall-rat-o-phobia or whatever.

Granting that there are many cites throughout the article, which is good, still: the last paragraph of the article seems quite a long way off base to me. I mean, hello. In the USA anyway teens are, if anything, overly catered to in the commercial world. It's basically a received fact that advertising and TV programming and the like skew teen even though adults make (and spend) a lot more money than teens. I mean, does anyone think that "Well, the design for this new [insert product here] is OK, but I'm afraid teens are going to want it, can we dowdy it up a little to prevent that?" is a common sentiment. Sheesh.

I'm also having some problems with the citations. This as a cite for "...ephebiphobia is delineated as a type of anxiety disorder that is defined by the abnormal or irrational and persistant fear and/or loathing of teenagers or adolescence"? I'm looking through the cites now, some are good, others less so.

But it seems like this article needs to make up its mind if it's about a psychological phemomena or a sociological one. I've tagged it for now as being self-contradictory. Herostratus 05:16, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

That's too bad about the sensitivity of your spider-senses; I wonder what blatant lieing or forgery does. I've taken out all allusion to ephebiphobia as a medical condition, due to the lack of sufficient evidence supporting that claim. The citation that you said you have a problem with was meant to support the governmental claim, not the psycho-claim. The "self-contradictory" tag should be removed. Freechild 08:22, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Blatant lieing and forgery makes my head explode. Yes now I will remove the tag. I agree that there doesn't seem to be much or any support for this as an actual medical condition. Herostratus 13:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Arg, again, material introduced here is conflating the two things... I thought that we'd established that ephebiphobia is basically a social condition rather than medical, but now we have "Psychological literature has explored contention that childhood trauma causes most adult psychopathology, including ephebiphobia." I cannot accept this. Herostratus 16:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ephebiphobia or "Fear of youth?"

Would this article be better titled "Fear of youth", similar to the article Fear of childbirth, for which the Greek word is "Tokophobia"? Would it be better situated than using either ephebiphobia? - Freechild 22:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Movement from Ephebiphobia

I moved this article from its previous location because of an ongoing conversation on its talk page regarding the disagreement scholars have over what the title of the fear is, and paying attention to Wikipedia:Plain English. - Freechild 06:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to User:Rory096 for teaching me about the "move" tab above after I did this. Sorry to have created more work! - Freechild 06:32, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Popular culture examples

The following so-called examples of ephebiphobia in popular culture are interesting, but completely unsubstantiated. None of the following information should be included in the article without a reliable source; let's remember the mantra of no original research. • Freechild'sup? 08:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable citation

I am removing the following statement and citation from the article. I have attempted to review the sources via all major newspaper archives and search engines and nothing surfaces - I maintain it is made up. Following is the statement:

It has been linked to ephebophilia in scientific studies,[1] in a similar way to homophobia being linked to homosexual desires.

Made up. • Freechild'sup? 04:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)