Contrary to the then-popular view that juvenile delinquents should be led to respect societal norms, Goodman argued that young American men were justified in their disaffection because their society lacked the preconditions for growing up, such as consideration and self-respect, meaningful work, honorable community, sexual freedom, and spiritual sustenance.

Critiques on the relation between social norms and the individual psyche included David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (1950), William H. Whyte's The Organization Man (1956), and Vance Packard's The Status Seekers (1959).

Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd (1960) belongs to this tradition,[2] having consolidated, as historian Kevin Mattson put it, "a decade's worth of social criticism".

[3] Among American writers of the period, concern for proper childrearing and education loomed larger than questions of workplace conformity and middle-class standards.

[4] The image of the juvenile delinquent became a pervasive symbol for this decline, reflected in the rise of urban youth gang warfare and the popular portrayal of the maladjusted, non-conformist outsider in films and theater such as The Wild One (1953), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), East of Eden (1955), and West Side Story (1957).

[5] In Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System,[6] Paul Goodman faults American culture and values for the rise of juvenile delinquency in the late 1950s.

[10] He writes primarily about disaffected young men—urban juvenile delinquents and the beatnik subculture[11]—and refers to the prevalent sterile, conformist American social order as the "organized system".

Affluent, postwar advanced capitalism boasted high employment but, Goodman writes, at the cost of reliance on "artificial ... demand for useless goods" that created unfulfilling, bureaucratic work,[14] without a sense of purpose or service.

[14] The chapters of Growing Up Absurd apply this argument to facets of life including "Faith", "Jobs", "Patriotism", and sexuality ("Social Animal").

[8] Goodman describes the period's mechanical social order and its feeling of inescapability and forced conformity as an "apparently closed room" fixated on a "rat race".

[15] He posits that citizens traded the simple pleasures of daily life for the securities of living under an affluent, mechanized order enabled by corporations, a situation he calls "sociolatry".

[16] Goodman holds that "socializing" youth to play specialized roles in an adult society is inherently wrong for betraying their nature in the name of societal benefit.

[19] To create a society worthy for youth to want to join, Goodman resolves, certain "unfinished" revolutions must be brought to their conclusion on topics including companionship, democracy, free speech, pacifism, progressive education, syndicalism, and technology.

[8] Throughout the 1950s, Goodman developed his practice of Gestalt therapy and finished his epic novel The Empire City, which ends with its protagonist "spoiling for a fight" against a target the author was unable to articulate.

[22] In late 1958, mainstream editors began to court Goodman for works of social criticism after reading his articles in small political and cultural magazines.

Most treatments of the subject, he wrote, described the phenomenon as "unrelated incidents of individual pathology ... to be dealt with either sternly by the cops or benevolently by the psychiatrists".

[30] With the book's release planned for later in 1960, Goodman and Podhoretz revised over half the manuscript into three extended serial extracts for the editor's Commentary magazine reboot.

[39] Goodman dedicated Growing Up Absurd to the Gestalt psychotherapist Lore Perls for her role in helping train and mentor him as a therapist, cooling his defiance, and enabling him such that he could write the book.

[43] Americans had seen isolated headlines on juvenile delinquency but had not noticed the similar patterns between both urban youth and beatnik revolt against societal pressures.

To this new audience, Goodman read as both fresh and old-fashioned: a contemporary man of letters's unabashed advocacy for a moral culture with traditional values of faith, honor, vocation.

[15] Contemporaneously, public intellectual John K. Galbraith described Goodman's book as hard to read from its title to its appendix, in contrast to the increasingly commonplace slick and superficial mass market works of criticism.

[8] Fueled by the changing desires of the times, including a willingness to address societal issues, Growing Up Absurd transformed Goodman's outcast career and brought him public fame as a social critic[53][7] and educational theorist.

[19] Some of Goodman's ideas have been assimilated into mainstream thought: local community autonomy and decentralization, better balance between rural and urban life, morality-led technological advances, break-up of regimented schooling, art in mass media, and a culture less focused on a wasteful standard of living.

[15] Growing Up Absurd's main contribution, literary critic Kingsley Widmer contended, was in focusing public attention "on the discontents of the young and the lack of humane values in much of our technocracy".

[19] Though some criticized his flattery of his young followers,[15] Goodman also played the role of their Dutch uncle, receiving the respect of the 1960s youth generation despite issuing harsh opinions about them.

[15] Literary critic Adam Kirsch retrospectively suggested that Goodman appealed to the youth by flattering their ignorance and sense of moral superiority.

[60] Goodman's patriarchal assumptions about gender and treatment of women, exemplified in his focus on "man's work", were rebuked in early reviews and in the following decades.

[62] Looking back on Goodman's career, Kingsley Widmer panned Growing Up Absurd as rough, rambling, and mediocre despite its insights and sociological vision.

[57] Into the 21st century, Growing Up Absurd continues to appeal to "the adolescent's private sense of being misunderstood by a heartless and empty world" as young readers share online how the book has affected their lives.