The reforms of the early twentieth century, preventing child labor and mandating education through high school, lengthened the pre-adult years. In earlier times, a person reaching adult size at age thirteen or fourteen was ready to do adult work. Now adult size was achieved as soon as ever, but preparation for adult responsibilities lasted until age eighteen or later. Thus the years ending in -teen became something new and distinctive. Depending on your point of view, these years were either to be savored as the best of times, combining childhood freedom with adult physical maturity, or endured as years of hazard, combining childish irresponsibility with adult urges. To match our gradual recognition of this new phenomenon, we adopted new terminology. First, in the 1920s, we began to use teenage to speak of clothes and activities, girls and boys, in the latter cases recognizing the teen years but still assigning them to childhood. About two decades later, against the backdrop of depression and war, teenager was born. The exact date has yet to be determined; the word makes a matter-of-fact appearance in a 1941 issue of Reader's Digest, but being derived from long-established teenage, it must have been around at least a few years earlier.