Amusingly, the future lasting effects of the goth culture is only now being researched:
It's every parent's nightmare. Their apparently well-adjusted child suddenly comes home with hair the colour of a coalface, a face whiter than anything made by Dulux, and announces, "Mummy, I'm a goth." However, according to a new study, parents of goths will probably end up boasting about their son/daughter the doctor, lawyer or bank manager. That is the surprising finding of Sussex University's Dunja Brill, whose doctorate in media and cultural studies looked at people with funny hair and eyeliner in London, Brighton and Cologne, and who is herself a former goth."Most youth subcultures encourage people to drop out of school and do illegal things," she says. "Most goths are well educated, however. They hardly ever drop out and are often the best pupils. The subculture encourages interest in classical education, especially the arts. I'd say goths are more likely to make careers in web design, computer programming ... even journalism."
Goth began in the 1970's It's interesting to speculate about what today's Hot Topic shoppers will do in the future, and there are an awful lot of adult/former goths to interview today. What are we doing? Did we continue to be geeks with lots of black t-shirts and weird tastes in music, like yours truly?
So perhaps parents shouldn't be too worried that a new generation of goths is cropping up again. There's a goth couple on Coronation Street. Hosein's bands include Black Wire, who wear black eyeliner, winklepickers and sound a lot like the Sisters of Mercy, although they had never heard them until they started rifling through his record collection. For some goths - who run T-shirt businesses or enterprises such as Whitby's biannual Gothic festival - goth can become a livelihood as well as a way of life. But most simply drop back into the mainstream.
Parents should not worry about goth just for the sake of worrying about goth. Researchers and psychologists who have far more experience and knowledge than I note that incidents of teenage violence are much more highly related to parental abuse, substance abuse, and lack of community support than to music or makeup choices.
Posted by kswygert at March 21, 2006 11:44 AM