This issue marks yet another transition in the life course of the
Journal of Youth and Adolescence: its 40th volume. The Journal’s 40-year history also happens to mark the birth and growth of the modern empirical study of adolescence (for a brief review of the journal’s history, see Levesque
2007a). The journal, under the leadership of its founding editor, Daniel Offer, played an important role in shepherding the field from its infancy to what it is today (see Levesque
2007b,
2008). As with the study of adolescence itself, the journal has grown tremendously over the past few years. Indeed, it seems to have hit a growth spurt over the past five, when the journal went from 6 issues per year to 12 and experienced a parallel leap in the number of articles per issue. …