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.
