Teenage life is tough. You're at the mercy of parents, teachers, and
siblings, all of whom insist on continuing to treat you like a kid and
refuse to leave you alone. So what do you do when it all gets to be too
much? You retreat to your room (and maybe slam the door).
Even in our era of Snapchat and hoverboards, bedrooms remain a key part
of teenage life, one of the only areas where a teen can exert control
and find some privacy. And while these separate bedrooms only became
commonplace after World War II, the idea of the teen bedroom has been
around for a long time. With Get Out of My Room!, Jason Reid digs into
the deep historical roots of the teen bedroom and its surprising
cultural power. He starts in the first half of the nineteenth century,
when urban-dwelling middle-class families began to consider offering
teens their own spaces in the home, and he traces that concept through
subsequent decades, as social, economic, cultural, and demographic
changes caused it to become more widespread. Along the way, Reid shows
us how the teen bedroom, with its stuffed animals, movie posters, AM
radios, and other trappings of youthful identity, reflected the growing
involvement of young people in American popular culture, and also how
teens and parents, in the shadow of ongoing social changes, continually
negotiated the boundaries of this intensely personal space.
Richly detailed and full of surprising stories and insights, Get Out of
My Room! is sure to offer insight and entertainment to anyone with
wistful memories of their teenage years. (But little brothers should
definitely keep out.)
