“With life spans stretching into the ninth decade, is it better for young people to experiment in their 20s before making choices they’ll have to live with for more than half a century? Or is adulthood now so malleable, with marriage and employment options constantly being reassessed, that young people would be better off just getting started on something, or else they’ll never catch up, consigned to remain always a few steps behind the early bloomers? Is emerging adulthood a rich and varied period for self-discovery, as Arnett says it is? Or is it just another term for self-indulgence?” — NY Times, “What Is It About 20-Somethings”
I couldn’t help but be terribly disappointed in this article, mainly because these big, profound, philosophical questions about the nature of growing up that it asks on page 2 get almost no resolution by page 10. The end takeaway seems to be, “Some people think yes, some people think no.” I would also venture to guess that people past their 20’s think “No, these kids need to grow up,” and those in or before their 20’s think, “Yes, I would love more time to be a freewheeling half-adult! Thanks, older generation, for supporting my delaying of responsibility!”
It’s extra funny when you pair this thought with another common understanding: ‘kids getting older younger’. By 5 or 6 kids are done with toys that use imagination, already graduated to computers and video games and already wanting to act, talk, and dress like the pre-teens a few years older than them. It’s as if everyone who isn’t adolescent yet can’t wait to get there, and once they’re there, they want to hang onto it for 20 whole years.
What’s wrong with these people? Adolescence was terrible! Awkward, confusing, often lonely, frequently boring — or was that just for me?
Maybe we’ve reached the real problem; America has made being an adolescent too sweet a deal. They’re protected from any kind of real failure or pain or even hurt feelings, and so who wouldn’t want to stay in that stage forever? Life without consequences must be great. And I just missed it by a few years. Damn.