Recent Ruminations

At times I find myself wrangling with the idea of whether or not to become an adult. There does appear to be some element of choice in the matter these days, at least in the majority of the western world. Just because I am a thirty three year old, college educated professional female doesn’t mean I am automatically granted access to the wonderful world of adulthood. I sure as hell don’t feel like an adult. I’m often irresponsible and have trouble abiding by certain laws. I indulge in reckless whims on a regular basis. I eat cake for breakfast. I write personal emails at work. I put everything off until the last possible minute. I take naps on a fairly regular basis. I flirt unabashedly and happily reap the fruits that I sow. I don’t read the newspaper or watch the news and I am at best a sporadic voter. I don’t plan for the future, have no clue what I will live off of when I retire. Every couple of years I change jobs. All these adolescent behaviors overshadow my limited adult characteristics—I pay taxes and I earn a salary.

Among my peers, I know this protracted evasion of adulthood is a rapidly flourishing trend. There is even a name for this new breed of middle agers, grasping at whatever viable shred of jejune youthfulness that they can hold onto. Yupsters. Forty year olds who exhibit characteristics more typical of twenty year olds. I’ve dated a few of them and know first hand what about this phenomenon. And then there is that whole ‘sixty is the new forty’ initiative…which would make forty the new twenty? Adulthood keeps getting delayed, put off further down on the dusty road of life.

It seems like when my parents were in their thirties during the 1980’s, they were full fledged adults. There was no doubting their ranks in the then standard and inevitable pool of responsible adults. They watched Ronald Regan deliver speeches from the oval office from their Lazy-Boy recliners. They were the exhausted parents of four children. They planned yearly vacations to the Outerbanks. Always had a pet dog in the house. Annual dues were paid to the country club. The Toyota minivan was parked outside in the driveway along with the Chevrolet Cavalier. My dad coached our softball team. The newspaper came daily and was read, usually in the bathroom shrouded in my fathers stink and cigarette smoke. When did this automatic and expected initiation into adulthood become a choice?

I imagine this trend has something to do with our ever lengthening life span. Before we know it, retirement age will be 90 instead of 62 (by the way, when did it change from 55?). Way back in the days of “friends, Romans, countryman” the average life span was a mere 22 years and the concept of ‘childhood’ did not even exist. Perhaps there wasn’t time for it. Everyone was on the fast track to adulthood since their time on earth was practically over before it began. Who has time for hopscotch and sandboxes when the imperative milestones in life are waiting to be accomplished and time’s winged chariot is aggressively nipping at your Jesus water walkers?

So when water sanitation was methodically employed and diseases were less of a mystery, the fortunate souls in the 1600’s were afforded eight or so more years to the bargain that is life. It was about this time that someone started pedaling the concept of childhood. I’m guessing the invention of ‘a childhood’ can be attributed to a teacher who preferred to sing and dance, color and play games instead of teach Shakespeare and Ovid. For a while, the concept of childhood was limited to eight or so years. Despite its increase, the average life span of thirty years was still a brief flicker of flame in the grand scheme of things.

Question—when was it that childhood, the ephemeral stuff of youth, grew from a brief eight years to encompass the first two decades of one’s life? Of course I am lumping adolescence in with childhood since there is the ever increasing reality of not expecting responsible, adult behavior from a person until they are in their twenties (after all, the prefrontal cortex is still developing). Adolescence by definition ends at twenty years of age, and although the original meaning of the word in 1482 denoted becoming an adult and growing up, today’s adolescents are more or less lacking expectations from their elders to make substantial strides towards becoming mature adults. Somewhere along the timeline, there was a serious mitigation of expectations in regards to achieving maturation. I’m thinking the extension of childhood occurred in 1938 when the word teenager was added to the lexicon. The consequences of this simple eight letter configuration is that our ‘young adults’ today are seemingly exempt from the notion that they should be preening themselves for their imminent life as an adult. That they should be weeding out their prurient qualities and supplanting them with responsible adult tendencies. As it stands, the extension of childhood has created an ideal situation for the ever festering careless mentality of our supposedly-soon-to-be-productive members of society.

Which brings me back to the issue at hand which is not only my tottering on the precipice of adulthood, but a whole generation of waffling should-be adults delaying the plunge into the expectation-laden adult world. It seems that modern science has gifted us with a life span that is continuing to spiral upwards; the high ball of the average is currently 85 years. It only makes sense that if we are living longer, we can take longer to grow up, right? Who wants to be a hard working, productive citizen for even more years when you can be an irresponsible and indulgent kid for a longer period of time?

As for me, I did manage to pull off a simulacrum of adulthood back in my mid to late twenties. I was married, teaching, the owner of both a car and a mortgage. I sent my bills off dutifully on a monthly basis (more or less), owned a riding lawnmower, planted flowers all around the yard. I entertained other couples at dinner parties. My nieces and nephews came over to visit and we baked cakes and dyed Easter eggs. I had a cat. I filed my taxes when that time of year rolled around. I had the burden of a running list of household items in need of repair. I bought people presents when their birthdays rolled around. I baked apple, pumpkin, and banana nut bread for my friends and family at Christmas.


But then my simulation ceased to be. I went back to working in a restaurant, renting a less than luxurious apartment, storing my belongings in other people’s mortgaged homes. And after all this expounding on life expectancy and the recognition that (at least in America) morphing into an adult is something that, as each year passes, is taking place later and later in life, I think I can safely conclude that my foray into adulthood was premature. I was at least ten years too early. If recent trends are any indication, my current status as a shiftless, confused, non-committal individual is right on track with a significant portion of my generation and future generations.

This same philosophy does not hold true in developing nations, countries where people are not spoiled and softened by the cushion of capitalism and certain unalienable rights. I will not expound on the lack of childhood in developing countries, something I have only recently glimpsed but of which I am not fully apprised. I will have to write about that at a later time. For now, I left with the question of whether this ubiquitous extended adolescence is a gift or a curse?