Good Business_ Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [177]
Suburban teenagers. The anthropologist Jules Henry (1965) gave a profoundly insightful description of what growing up in suburban communities entailed a generation ago. More recently Schwartz (1987) compared six Midwestern communities in terms of what opportunities they gave adolescents for experiencing freedom and self-respect, and found striking differences from one community to the next, which suggests that sweeping generalizations about what is involved in being a teenager in our society might not be very accurate.
If parents talked more. In one study of adolescents at a very good suburban high school, we found that although teenagers spent 12.7 percent of their waking time with parents, time alone with fathers amounted to an average of only five minutes a day, half of which was spent watching television together (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson 1984, p. 73). It is difficult to imagine how any deep communication of values can occur in such short periods. It might be true that it is “quality time” that counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality.
Teenage pregnancy. The United States now leads other developed countries in teenage pregnancies, abortions, and childbearing. For every 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 19, 96 get pregnant in the United States each year. Next is France, with 43 pregnancies per 1,000 (Mall 1985). The number of out-of-wedlock births to teenagers has doubled between 1960 and 1980 (Schiamberg 1988, p. 718). At present rates, it has been estimated that 40 percent of today’s 14-year-old girls will become pregnant at least once before they turn 20 (Wallis et al. 1985).
Families that provide flow. The characteristics of families that facilitate the development of autotelic personalities in children are being studied by Rathunde (1988).
Positive moods with friends. When teenagers are with friends, they report very significantly higher levels of happiness, self-esteem, strength, and motivation—but lower levels of concentration and cognitive efficiency—than they report in any other social context (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson 1984). The same pattern is true for older people studied with the ESM. For example, married adults and retired couples report more intense positive moods when they are with friends than when they are with their spouses or children—or anyone else.
Drinking patterns. The different patterns of public drinking, and the resultant patterns of social interaction that they make possible, have been described in Csikszentmihalyi (1968).
Instrumental versus expressive. The distinction between these two functions was introduced into the sociological literature by Talcott Parsons (1942). For a contemporary application, see Schwartz (1987), who argues that one of the main problems with teenagers is that there are too few opportunities for expressive behavior within the boundaries of society, and thus they have to resort to deviance.
Politics. Hannah Arendt (1958) defines politics as the mode of interaction that allows individuals to get objective feedback about their strengths and weaknesses. In a political situation, where a person is given a chance to argue a point of view and to convince peers of its worth, the hidden capabilities of an individual are allowed to surface. But this kind of impartial feedback can only occur in a “public realm” where each person is willing to listen and evaluate others on their merit. According to Arendt the public realm is the best medium for personal growth, creativity, and self-revelation.
Irrationality of economic approaches. Max Weber (1930 [1958]), in his famous essay on the Protestant ethic, argued that the apparent rationality of economic calculation was deceptive. Hard work, savings, investment, the entire