Nathaniel B. Broyles

“A Reaction Paper on the Amish Tradition of Rumspringa”

PSY 291 - Developmental Psychology II

Prof. Elizabeth Geiling

August 17, 2011

Rumspringa. The word itself conjures up images of a wild bacchanalia fueled by copious

amounts of Jamaican spirits. In fact, the first time that I had heard of Rumspringa it was through the

medium of a coming of age teen comedy called “Sex Drive,” the plot of which can be accurately summed

up in the movie’s title. I had always assumed that the tradition of Rumspringa was a fictitious creation as

a part of one of the movie’s sub-plots. The idea of a tradition of “Amish Teens Gone Wild” seemed so

far-fetched as to be unbelievable. Through the documentary shown in class, I have learned that

Rumspringa is, in fact, an honored and long-standing Amish rite of passage that all Amish adolescents

must pass through. It is, for many reasons, quite a different experience than what the typical American

teenage goes through on their journey to adulthood.

The practice of allowing Amish teens to experience the “English” world for themselves prior to

making their oaths to the Church makes a great deal of sense. After all, how can one be expected to

pledge the rest of one’s life to the Amish way of life if one has never experienced all of the temptations

of English living? The idea, of course, being that a teenager will get some small sense of what English

living is all about and getting it “out of their system” so that they can pledge the remainder of their lives

to the Amish church with no regrets. The problems with this rite of passage are twofold. First, the time

of Rumspringa begins at the age of 16 and the youth are wholly unprepared for the alien lifestyle that

they are being tossed into with a “sink or swim” attitude from their elders.

Is it child abuse to arbitrarily deny a child access to an education past the 8th grade? It is the

Amish belief that education breeds a sense of excessive pride, which is an unconscionable sin in their

belief system. One hundred years ago, it would not have been uncommon that the vast majority of

adults in the United States had not completed, or even begun, a high school education. At that period in

time, communities were still relatively isolated from one another and it was not uncommon that a

person might never travel beyond a 50-mile radius of the place of their birth. Travelling via horse and

buggy was not an aberration but more the rule as the personal automobile was still in its infancy. In the

21st century, however, it is necessary for a person to have, at minimum, a high school education in order

to qualify for any job for which they might conceivably be able to earn a living wage. In the Amish

communities, an education is not necessary and so there are the economic necessities of real life that

work to force teens to remain in the Amish communities.

The rigid isolation that Amish children are subjected to also serves to work against the teens

going through the Rumspringa tradition. For the first sixteen years of their lives, Amish children live a

simple life as close to that of 1800’s American homesteaders as possible in today’s day and age. The

Amish elders do not necessarily allow something into their communities based solely on the level of

technology it was created with but rather based upon the potential effect it will have on the community.

Televisions, radios, automobiles, etc. are all threats to the Amish way of living as they represent easy

access and exposure to the English culture whose corrupting influence they guard so zealously against.

This isolation can lead to devastating effects on the adolescent Amish who, for the first time, are

exposed to all of the “temptations” that they have been kept from all of their lives.

Amish teens going through Rumspringa never encounter restrictions on their actions by parents

or church elders. They might experience someone telling them that they are “disappointed” or are

“unhappy with you doing this” but at no point is there a time when they are outright forbidden from

engaging in “English” behavior. Much of this permissiveness is due to the belief that nearly anything is

allowable during the time of Rumspringa because the adolescent is getting everything out of the system

while preparing to enter the Church as an adult and settle down to a more ascetic lifestyle. This,

unfortunately, leads to Amish teenagers often engaging in self-destructive behavior. The majority of

these teenagers will go through their Rumspringa experience, dabble in alcohol and partying, and step

into the English world only to discover that they have no tools with which to cope and survive there. For

others, however, those first steps into freedom with no restrictions can lead to disaster. Drug addiction,

alcoholism, mental health issues, pregnancy, and other problems are all possible futures facing those

teens that, whether intentionally or otherwise, go overboard in attempting to experience everything

that they had previously been denied knowledge of.

Today, over 90% of Amish teens will eventually return to the Amish communities and join the

Church. It is the highest retention rate since the inception of the Amish Church. Is it a happy coincidence

that Amish tradition works so much to the advantage of the Church? The Rumspringa teens seem to be

deliberately set up for failure with virtually no chance to succeed in the outside world. If they do make

the decision to not join the Church, they face a long and difficult road of minimum wage jobs and lower-

class lifestyle with no education. It is no wonder that even those who choose to attempt to survive as

one of the English eventually move back to the Amish where they will always have a home and a job

waiting for them. It may be a cynical way of looking at things but it appears almost as if the Amish

Church is some sinister, shadowy organization whose only aim is to grow its membership through

whatever means are necessary. That is, perhaps, being a touch more imaginative than is necessary but it

would certainly not be remiss to say that the Amish insistence on retaining traditions without regard for

the state of the world as it is today does more harm to its youth than good. After all, even the Catholic

Church, famous for its dogma and refusal to update their teachings to be more in line with the realities

of the modern world, has unbent a little from their rigid stances in recent years.