Through the Eyes of Children

By Melissa Ludtke

AUNTS, UNCLES AND COUSINS from faraway places came to celebrate the last bar mitzvah of the generation. Balloons danced in the early summer air. That morning Josh Maisel, then 13, entered Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, Me., as a child, and he emerged, in the eyes of his faith, a man. Serious duties replaced the weightlessness of his younger years. As a child, Josh had listened to Scripture and learned; as an adult, Josh is allowed to read from the Torah so that he can pass on his family's faith to a new generation.

At 14, Josh is astute enough to understand that his bar mitzvah was more a ceremonial aspiration than a sudden transformation. Between childhood and adulthood lies the ridiculous and treacherous territory of adolescence. It is a region full of dangers, brainless impulses, hormonal furies. And it must be crossed.

Josh has just successfully passed one milestone in the process: his freshman year of high school. His still boyish face is framed by a square- edged haircut. Josh has always been small for his age. That bothers him but does not slow him down. Barely 5 ft. tall, he competes in a sport of giants: his ambidextrous dribbling helped him become starting point guard on the ninth-grade basketball team at Belmont High School in suburban Boston.

Childhood has not been an easy path for Josh. He will never forget the night nearly nine years ago when his parents told him they were divorcing. "My sister Dana and I really liked watching the TV show Mork and Mindy, so my parents decided to tell us right before the show so we could watch it afterward," he says. "I don't think we ever got around to watching it. I just remember crying."

As he grew older, Josh's pain subsided, but he knew that his life would never be the same again. "It just takes time," he says. Time, and a sense that he was not going through this alone. "A couple of years later, my best friend's parents got divorced. Then a lot of other kids' parents got divorced. I guess when it happened to me, it was just starting." When asked about his greatest worry as a child, Josh replied, somewhat absently, "War. It's scary to think what could happen." But at the mention of his parents' divorce, Josh adds, "Now that I think about it, war looks really small compared with that."

His parents Sandy and Mary Lou Maisel were college sweethearts when they were married at 21. They were divorced when Josh was six. Sandy Maisel, 42, is a professor of government who recently finished one year of teaching at Harvard. Usually Sandy teaches at Colby College in Waterville, where Josh was raised. Sandy took over full-time custody of Josh and his older sister Dana, now 16, after the divorce. On certain weekends and selected holidays, Josh and Dana spend time with their mother, who runs a management-consulting business in southern Maine.

Within a few years of the divorce, Sandy remarried, and Josh's family grew by two. His stepmother is Joyce McPhetres Maisel, 31, a college counselor who, like Sandy, was divorced. She has a nine-year-old son, Dylan McPhetres. The new family structure can get confusing. Dylan calls his stepfather "Sandy." Dana and Josh call him "Dad" and their stepmother "Joyce." Bouncing back and forth can trip Dylan up. "Sometimes I call my dad 'Josh' because I'm used to saying his name," says Dylan. "Once I called my stepmother 'Mom' and I also called Sandy 'Dad' once. It is really difficult saying all the different names, especially of all the relatives, because I've had really a lot of names in my life."

On a Friday afternoon, Josh's mix-and-match family is in the bleachers at Belmont High watching him play basketball. Sandy shouts loudly at each play Josh makes. Joyce arrives from work at half time. Mary Lou sits with Dana a short distance away. That night she'll drive the kids two hours north for a planned three-day holiday weekend; Dylan will be dropped off in Kennebunk, Me., to spend time with his father. A different parent will bring all three children back to Belmont. Parenthood in the late 20th century: love and logistics and chagrin.

When Josh comes out of the locker room, he kisses his father, hugs Joyce, gives his mom a kiss and says softly to her, "I have basketball practice on Monday. It's important to me." The coach called practice when the team lost. Josh wants to be with his team even if it means cutting short his visit with Mom. The delicate letting-go stage of parenting has begun.

Hurried and hushed negotiations commence. Mary Lou huddles with Sandy and Joyce to discuss logistical changes involved in meeting Josh's request. Dylan will have to return early. Dana too. Within ten minutes, it's settled. Sandy and Joyce will make the round-trip drive on Sunday. Josh will be at practice.

In Belmont parental expectations are high. Parents typically work in high- pressure, top-dollar professional jobs around Boston. In many families both parents work full time, as Josh's do. Success is trumpeted at Josh's school, as it is in Josh's family. More than one-third of the Maisels in his father's generation made Phi Beta Kappa. In Belmont some 90% of high school students go to college. Many fear dire consequences if they do not get into the "right" college, and competition for those cherished spots is keen. "In Belmont it's the gold medal or nothing," a parent said. "The bronze is not enough."

Like all the other ninth-graders in Belmont, Josh took a semester-long health class taught by Joan MacClary. Josh filled his notebook with all sorts of facts: for example, alcohol reduces sperm count, though he noted in parentheses that "it will go back up." And Josh knows that because he weighs about 100 lbs. he would be legally drunk after three drinks.

"I don't want you to memorize what these drugs do," MacClary tells the class one day. "You can look that up in a book. I want you to understand why people use drugs." A girl asks, "Is marijuana worse or better than alcohol?" Josh volunteers an answer: "Worse, because it's illegal." His teacher is not so certain. "That's a tough question," she says, noting that scientists are still trying to figure out how dangerous marijuana is. She is not recommending either drug to the students but trying to get them to recognize that alcohol is also a drug that can be abused. In Belmont alcohol is the drug that kids are most likely to encounter at a young age.

To those in Josh's generation, the word party is no longer a noun but a verb with a specific definition: no parents, plenty of alcohol, possibly some other drugs. When kids party in one of Belmont's large, comfortable homes, the result can be hundreds of dollars' worth of property damage. Word spreads quickly whenever a youngster's parents leave town for the weekend. Kegs of beer are tapped, and kids descend in crowds. Almost before it begins, the party -- which may have started as an invitation to four friends to come by -- is out of any one youngster's control. So why do parents leave kids by themselves for a weekend? Says a Belmont parent: "We are trying to show the kids how much we trust them."

Peer groups fill the role that family once held for adolescents. For starters, kids spend more time with peers nowadays; parents are not home so much. Peers are often the ones who establish limits, or an absence of limits, for one another. Josh says he does not want to try marijuana, for the moment at least. Ditto for drinking. But Josh does worry that without a buddy to help him say no, he might be tempted to join in if his friends were doing it. "I haven't really had the urge to drink or use drugs, and I haven't been pressured," he says. "I have kind of decided I can wait those couple of years till I'm older."

Josh knows that he still wrestles with "a little angel and a little devil" inside his head. "Like, I know I shouldn't do something because the angel tells me I shouldn't. But sometimes I do it anyway," he says. "That's one thing. As I've grown older, I usually don't do what the devil tells me." But Josh knows kids whose devilish side won out and who did not wait to try alcohol or other drugs or sex.

In the afternoons, kids turn on TV soap operas and see adults drinking to feel comfortable, using drugs for fun, having sex with each other's mates. Or on the Oprah Winfrey Show they hear adults talk -- sometimes brag -- about similar behavior. Self-restraint no longer seems like a very adult way to act. Kids have pressures too, so youngsters who cannot wait to grow up now figure they know how.

Sandy and Joyce set limits. If Josh or Dana has a party at home, the parents can walk in at any time. Neither Josh nor Dana may go to a party at a house when parents aren't there. When the kids go out, they must call in if they change locations. "We want to know where they are, period," says Joyce. "They don't have an option not to tell us."

"Do you like the idea that your parents set limits?" Josh is asked.

"No. Yeah, I do," he says, uncertain of what he thinks about this confusing topic. "I mean, I don't like to have limits, but I understand why there are limits. But when I'm being limited, I don't like it."

If parents did not set limits, how would he know what is right for him?

"Kids don't, and that's where you have problems, because if parents are very lenient and don't set limits, then kids will never learn that there is a limit and that they should stop at some point," he says. "That's when they go and start experimenting with that stuff."

Can he imagine what it would be like if his parents set no limits on what he could do or when he could do it?

"I think that kids think they look good now if they don't have limits, but it's worse in the end," Josh replies.

At 7:30 the next morning, Josh, dressed in his usual school-day outfit of jeans, sweatshirt and sneakers, sits in English class. Most of the girls, who , are taller than Josh, wear short skirts and white ankle-length socks with their sneakers. Between classes, kids primp in front of mirrors on locker doors. Lip glosses glow at the start of each class. An open locker door reveals a picture of a sunset with these words underneath: "Let's get drunk and go to heaven." A few kids kiss amid the shuffling crowd. Over the decades the smooching pose has not changed: girls stand nonchalantly as boys, elbow bent against the locker, shield the stolen kiss from view.

Josh's class is studying Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The play, almost four centuries old, is about adolescent rebellion, a phenomenon that remains eerily constant through changing times. "Back then kids were expected to be adults when they turned 13 or so," says Josh of the play's tragic heroes, who are the same age he is. "The difference now is, kids don't have to."

Sometimes Josh imagines what being an adult will be like. "I will have to really look after myself and not have somebody looking over my shoulder to be sure I'm doing the right thing," he says. "And I'll have to teach my kids the things I've been taught."