Teens at Risk

My pal SephardiLady has an interesting post up about the "teens at risk" issue, and the coverage of the issue in a Jewish publication. She points out that the articles in the magazine say all of the right things, such as preventing pushing teens away from Orthodox Judaism by not being too rigid in our expectations, and not demanding the high level of conformity that has been the norm in certain segments of the Orthodox world. I put a comment in her comment thread that is on something I've been mulling for a while:

Let me preface my statement by saying that I think that the openness with which the Orthodox world has begun to discuss the "teens at risk" issue can only be seen a positive development. That said, I still have to wonder if all this frequent and open discussion about the topic has actually removed much of the stigma from "going off the derech". When I was growing up, there was much more emotional baggage involved in stepping away from the community. There was no popular term to describe it (the "at risk" designation), people didn't have regular meetings and lectures to discuss being supportive of those teens who might be heading in that direction, the Jewish publications didn't address it in every issue. A friend of mine who has a teenaged daughter said that she sees a tremendous amount of defiance in her daughter and her daughters friends when they push the envelope of the guidelines their parents set for them. My friend says it's almost as if their attitude is "I'm at risk, the Rabbis say not to alienate me, whaddaya gonna do about it?". And the conventional wisdom these days is NOT to ratchet up the level of strictness, as opposed to how it would have been twenty years ago. I don't doubt that that attitude is well-advised, as I'm sure ratcheting up the restrictions would push these teens further away. But again, I wonder if all this acceptance and discussion has only made it a more, rather than less attractive way to attempt a teenage rebellion.

Now as I said in my comment, I still think that open discussion is essential to dealing with issues that affect the community such as this one. But I wonder if all of this open discussion and seeming acceptance of the actions of teens who are straying from the limits set by their parents, while the only way to deal with the problem, is just making this kind of rebellion less and less risky an option for Orthodox teens. If there is no fear of parental or educator disapproval, then that is one less deterrant.