Catalano, et al., "Positive Youth Development Programs"

I'm going to begin this entry on a seemingly tangential topic: the American cinema. I wasn't alive to observe child and adolescent behavior in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, so regrettably most of what I know comes from such brilliant works of art as Pleasantville, Dirty Dancing, Caddyshack and basically every dance movie John Travolta ever made. Surprisingly, then, most of what I read in the Catalano piece jives (no pun intended) with what I thought I knew from my forays into popular culture's depictions of youth of the past. Films set more than 30 years in the past depict freewheeling booty-dancing teens trying valiantly to overcome the efforts of the town's elders to stop the dancing/sexing/whatever problem behavior is going on. Not surprisingly, these efforts failed in every similarly formulaic film I've ever seen.
According to the article, "prevention approaches began to emerge three decades ago." I tried to think of a historical event that might account for this timing. Catalano seems to indicate that this development was more related to the emergence of scholarship supporting the efficacy of programs targeting not the behaviors themselves, but the predictors of those behaviors. Thus, over time, the trend has been a broadening of the areas under the umbrella of youth development: from the individual youth to examinations at the family, school, and community levels; from the problem behavior to a variety of areas encompassing physical, mental, emotional, moral and even spiritual well-being; and from simply "forbidding the wrong" (i.e. fixing "problem behaviors") to "commanding the right" (i.e. actively encouraging positive behaviors).