I pray for it.
Posted on 08/19/2005 5:46:36 AM PDT by SLB
The transition to adulthood used to be one of the main goals of the young. Adulthood was seen to be a status worth achieving and was understood to be a set of responsibilities worth fulfilling. At least, that's the way it used to be. Now, an entire generation seems to be finding itself locked in the grip of eternal youth, unwilling or unable to grow up.
Concern about this phenomenon has been building for some time. Baby-boomer parents are perplexed when their adult-age children move back home, fail to find a job, and appear to be in no hurry to marry. Though the current generation of young adults includes some spectacular exceptions who have quickly moved into the fullness of adult responsibility, the generation as a whole seems to be waiting for something--but who knows what?--to happen.
Frederica Mathewes-Green sees the same phenomenon. In her brilliant essay published in the August/September 2005 edition of First Things, Mathewes-Green describes this new reality with striking clarity.
She begins with the movies. Describing herself as a fan of the old black-and-white classics from the 1930s and 1940s, Mathewes-Green remembers how young actors customarily played the part of mature adults. Actresses like Claudette Colbert and Jean Harlowe were "poised and elegant" onscreen. She notes, "Today even people much older don't have that kind of presence." She then compares Cary Grant with Hugh Grant. The first Grant was "poised and debonair" while the more recent Grant "portrayed a boyish, floppy-haired ditherer till he was forty." She cites reviewer Michael Atkinson, who dubbed today's immature male actors as "toddler-men." As Atkinson describes the distinction, "The conscious contrast between baby-faced, teen-voiced toddler-men movie actors and the Golden Age's grownups is unavoidable."
As Mathewes-Green explains, "Characters in these older movies appear to be an age nobody ever gets to be today. This isn't an observation about the actors themselves (who may have behaved in very juvenile ways privately); rather, it is about the way audiences expected grownups to act." Fast-forwarding to today's Hollywood culture, she observes: "Nobody has that old-style confident authority anymore. We've forgotten how to act like grownups."
Frederica Mathewes-Green is surely correct in seeing this contrast. Gladly, she not only depicts the reality as we now face it--she goes on to explain how we have arrived at such a state of institutionalized immaturity.
As she sees it, "The Baby Boomers fought adulthood every step of the way." In other words, Mathewes-Green points to the parents of this current generation of young adults as the locus of the problem. Speaking of her own generation, she remembers: "We turned blue jeans and T-shirts into the generational uniform. We stopped remembering the names of world political leaders and started remembering the names of movie stars' ex-boyfriends. We stopped participating in fraternal service organizations and started playing video games. We Boomers identified so strongly with being 'the younger generation' that now, paunchy and gray, we're bewildered. We have no idea how to be the older generation. We'll just have to go on being a cranky, creaky appendix to the younger one."
Mathewes-Green's analysis pushes back even further than the baby boomers. She blames the parents of the baby boomers for trying to protect that generation from the realities of a cruel world and a hard life. Having fought and survived the great trial of World War II, they wanted to protect their own young children. "They wanted their little ones never to experience the things they had," Mathewes-Green explains, "never to see such awful sights. Above all, they wanted to protect their children's innocence."
Mathewes-Green is a writer of great ability. Her picturesque imagery makes her point with poetic force. She describes the days "when large families lived together in very small houses" and when "paralyzed or senile family members were cared for at home." When the realities of life were not hidden away, institutionalized, and sanitized, children grew up understanding that life itself is a trial and that adulthood requires a willingness to grow up, take responsibility, fend for oneself, and fight for one's own.
In summary, Mathewes-Green believes that the parents of the 1950s "confused vulnerability with moral innocence. They failed to understand that children who were always encouraged to be childish would jump at the chance and turn childishness into a lifelong project. These parents were unprepared to respond when their children acquired the bodies of young adults and behaved with selfishness, defiance, and hedonism."
In her historical analysis, the parents of the baby boomers attempted to separate childhood and adulthood into two completely separate compartments of life. Childhood would be marked by innocence and adulthood by responsibility. As Mathewes-Green warns: "Be careful what you wish for." Missing from this picture is a period of urgent transition that would turn the child into an adult. What we face now is a generation of children in the bodies of adults.
Understanding the reality of the problem is a first step towards recovery. Nevertheless, mere description is insufficient as an answer to this crisis.
In days gone by, children learned how to be adults by living, working, and playing at the parents' side. The onset of age twelve or thirteen meant that time was running out on childhood. Traditional ceremonies like the Jewish Bar Mitzvah announced that adulthood was dawning. This point would be clearly understood by the young boy undergoing the Bar Mitzvah. "By the time his body was fully formed, he would be expected to do a full day's work. He could expect to enter the ranks of full-fledged grownups soon after and marry in his late teens. Childhood was a swift passageway to adulthood, and adulthood was a much-desired state of authority and respect."
Today's patterns of schooling do not, in the main, appear to produce a similar result. Instead, the educational process continues to coddle, reassure, and affirm young people without regard to their assumption of adult responsibilities. This approach, Mathewes-Green explains, prepares children "for a life that doesn't exist."
When a generation is continuously told that its options are limitless, its abilities are boundless, and its happiness is central, why should we be surprised that reality comes as such a difficult concept?
Mathewes-Green points to the delay of marriage as the most interesting indicator of what is happening. As she notes, the average first marriage now unites a bride age 25 with a groom age 27. "I'm intrigued by how patently unnatural that is," Mathewes-Green observes. "God designed our bodies to desire to mate much earlier, and through most of history cultures have accommodated that desire by enabling people to wed by their late teens or early twenties. People would postpone marriage until their late twenties only in cases of economic disaster or famine--times when people had to save up in order to marry."
Is the current generation of young adults too immature to marry? Mathewes-Green insists that if this is the case, it is only because the older generation has been telling them they are too immature to marry. Does early marriage lead to disaster? Mathewes-Green is ready to prescribe a dose of reality. "Fifty years ago, when the average bride was twenty, the divorce rate was half what it is now, because the culture encouraged and sustained marriage."
Look carefully at how she describes the personal impact produced by this pattern of delayed marriage: "During those lingering years of unmarried adulthood, young people may not be getting married, but they're still falling in love. They fall in love, and break up, and undergo terrible pain, but find that with time they get over it. This is true even if they remain chaste. By the time these young people marry, they may have had many opportunities to learn how to walk away from a promise. They've been training for divorce."
Rarely does one article contain so much common sense, moral wisdom, and promise. The way to recovery surely must start with a rediscovery of what adulthood means and a reaffirmation of why it is so important--both for the society and for individuals. Adulthood must be tied to actual, meaningful, and mature responsibilities--most importantly, marriage.
There is reason for hope. Many in this new generation demonstrate a willingness to buck the trend. They are the new pioneers of adulthood, and they will be uniquely qualified to influence their own peers and to reshape our own culture. Taking marriage seriously as a life-long commitment, they will be more inclined to raise children who will understand what it will take to live as adults in our time of confusion. They will understand that eternal youth is not a blessing, but a curse.
For further reading, see Dr. Mohler's commentaries, "The Generation That Won't Grow Up," and "Looking Back at 'The Mystery of Marriage,'" Parts One and Two. Audio of "The Mystery of Marriage" address is available here.
1) Men scare the hell out of feminists...and even real women who picked up some feminist thinking in college. A lot of "guys" become so because of cultural pressure to be non-threatening.
2) Embracing manhood is a big responsibility, and it takes work. Perpetual adolescence is a lot more fun - as long as your parents are willing to pay the bills.
3) Hollywood stopped holding up the Cary Grant types as role models a long time ago. Today we get Adam Sandler. ;)
"They're waiting for their boomer parents to die so they can recoup whatever is left of what the boomers stole from them."
Huh?
I remember working "illegally" in Ohio at age 17. You were supposed to have some sort of work permit papers from your parents, that I never bothered getting around to filling out. I rode the train the MS to Chicago by myself at age 8. Now US Airways has announced that "children" under 16 will not be alllowed to fly without and "adult". 15??? is not a child! I really hate the liberal politics and don't want to live with these people and their stupid rules anymore.
Let's put it this way... if the boomers grew up in the conditions their children grew up in, they'd be living with their parents in the nursing homes. Between the national debt, higher taxation, anti-marriage laws, outrageous housing and tuition costs, discriminatory laws, and the near-complete destruction of liberty, it should be no surprise that the boomers are the first American generation to manage to achive a reduced quality of life for their children.
This is about people who refuse to grow up. Do you feel how well that shoe fits? No?
My dad owned a small farm and a large farm implement business. I was employed and receiving a paycheck at 13 as dad believed in work and also payment for that work. My kids and even older friends of ours, are really surprised when I show them my social security statement that starts when I was 13.
You were NOT abusive, you were doing the right thing. If there is ever an example, look at Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) and how he handled his children and family. He and his wife live in the same little shotgun house he bought after WWII til he died. He was worth over $9 Billion then. Their kids got 0, none, nada help from dad as they entered adulthood. He made very very sure that they knew what it took to stand on their own as adults. I remember seeing a soundbite of his daughter, who was married and in her 20's at the time with one little baby saying, "Yeah, it's kinda strange when we (husband and her) need some of the plumbing fixed in the house and you know dad won't help." Dang straight. Dad knew you need to learn how solve problems like this on your own without running to him every time something breaks or goes wrong. Of course Sam did transfer his wealth before he died, but I think all of them learned their lessons. We won't see any Paris Hiltons or Nicole Ritchies.
I think there’s more to this trend than the author’s thesis. Specifically, economic success.
Why strive so hard to pay the psychological price for adulthood if success through everlasting childhood is all but guaranteed? Isn’t this a virtual inevitability of success, that the population will find some kind of equilibrium between progress and self sacrifice? When the vast majority can drift through 12-16 years of school and a light career on into a nice home, family and leisure, I’d be surprised if most didn’t refuse to grow up.
I take it a step further and propose that most adult children know vaguely what they’re doing and seek out others that are doing the same - kind of an unspoken understanding.
It's quantifiable in real numbers, and its effects fully saturate our culture. It can't be explained away as mere resentment.
Good points.
I knew this when I ran into more than a handful of kids working cash registers who can't count money. That skill is so basic to the very existence of any kind of society (even a tribalistic primative one), I don't see how we can have any future if large numbers of people can't count money.
It sounds like you're in major denial. What part of the concept of boomers stealing the resources of later generations doesn't compute for you? How much debt were you born with by virtue of being an American citizen? How many years' income did your education and your home cost you?
I pray for it.
Actors = trained monkeys, the whole lot of 'um.
"Society makes being a good parent very, very difficult."
So true! Sometimes you feel like you are rowing upstream against a very strong current! The Good Lord only blessed us with one child, but your experiences echo our own. I was a stay-at-home mom until our daughter was in school, and then I only worked parttime. We had a nice home, but not anything fancy. We had what we needed but never had money for a boat, RV, fancy vacation, etc. that our other friends seem to be able to afford. (Maybe they couldn't afford it -- maybe they were up to their eyeballs in debt.) When it came time for college, we helped out some, but our daughter worked and took out loans. She graduated a couple of years ago and now is repaying the loans. She is getting married in a few months, and she and her fiance are buying a house. They are coming up with the downpayment themselves. My daughter told me that they would never think of asking us for the money, that it was their responsibility. Makes me proud. We must have done something right!
That is a very astute observation Iris. One of the best I've seen. I've often used a similar illustration using the word, "control". Every human being without exception desires control over every aspect of their world. Some use physical strength to gain control. Some use weakness, and some even use illness to keep control of others around them. I've seen cases of women who control their entire family by being "critically" ill all of their lives, until they die at the age of 95. And of course, as you say, they desire love without ever realizing that love is from God.
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