Maturating TeenagersMaturating Teenagers: Then and NowIn the late 1800s and early 1900s, children were put to work at a very young age. They cleaned, cooked, tended the land their family owned and also took care of the other brothers and sisters in the house. These responsibilities pushed children to mature and grow faster than expected. Robert Frost presents this theme in his poem “Out, Out—.” In this poem, he shows how young children take on adult responsibilities, which causes adolescents to age earlier in life. By comparing yesterday's times and today's times, people will discover that not only do children grow up and age at a young age, but they do so in two different ways. When Frost wrote this poem, it was around the time when few children went to school because they had to stay home and help their parents tend the land in order to survive . In “Out, Out—,” Frost introduces a young boy who lives with his family in Vermont and is expected to work his land like a grown man would. At the beginning of the poem, the young boy is cutting wood with a saw. Frost says, "The circular saw roared and crackled in the yard and made dust and dropped sticks of wood the length of a stove..." In this statement, Frost explains how the young boy cuts the wood , which feels more like work than help. chore. This was not unusual for teenagers of the time, because as soon as they were of working age, they began working to support their families. For these families to survive properly in their time, they needed to have many children in order to have enough workers to work the land. If they had no children, or very few, their land would produce nothing and therefore the family would not survive. Therefore, children were produced for the sole purpose that, as soon as they came of age, they would be put to work so that their own and future families would survive. The many responsibilities that children were responsible for were usually tasks such as chopping wood, cooking, cleaning, and caring for any animals the family may own. The boy in this poem has taken on so many responsibilities as a young child that he is forced to become an older man in order to provide and keep his family alive..