Confessions of a Perpetual Adolescent
“From the picture on his blog, Mr. Hanscom looks like he is about 23.”
So begins a critique of my most recent PJM article on parenting. First some background on why I’m taking that guess about my age as a compliment.
It’s hard to admit, but I’ve been carded while trying to purchase a lottery ticket.
Twice. In the same store. By the same employee.
It should be noted that the legal age to play the California Lottery is 18. My 18th birthday was in 1994, and I bought those scratch-off tickets last year.
Doubt about my real age has not only proven to be an obstacle at the local Longs Drug Store. In fact, my behavior has actually been influenced by the anticipation of the dreaded double take.
For example, it’s helped me avoid certain vices. One of the main reasons I don’t gamble much is that security usually approaches me the moment I step foot into a casino.
“Surely, he’s exaggerating!” you might be saying. Well, consider the following. During my years as a substitute elementary school teacher, visitors to the classroom often mistook me for a student.
It should be obvious by now that I look young. While my eyeglasses seem to add a few years to most people’s estimation of my age, they don’t propel me beyond the teenage years. But I’m starting to understand that growing up is not entirely beyond my control. After recently re-reading Joseph Epstein’s classic Weekly Standard essay, “The Perpetual Adolescent,” one person came to mind. Me.
Epstein begins his piece by pointing out that in the 1940s men wore suits to baseball games. He writes: “How different from today, when a good part of the crowd at any ballgame, no matter what the age, is wearing jeans and team caps and T-shirts.” As I write this essay from the Pajamas Media office in El Segundo, I’m wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and the same type of Adidas shoes that my 15-year-old brother owns.
Still, I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Epstein writes that when he was young, “by 30, one was supposed to be settled in life: wife, children, house, job.” On the cusp of 31, I’ve got a wife, no children, a condo, and a job. Pretty darn close.
But not close enough, which takes me back to the post above. After incorrectly (but more accurately than most) guessing my age, Jenny Hatch advises me to wait about 25 years and then: “Find a nice young woman, get married, and then welcome a few screaming balls of fury into your life, and after those children have hit 18, please, share with us your views on how to properly parent the well adjusted child.”
I responded to Hatch by email, making her aware of the fact that I’ve been married for more than five years. But she’s absolutely right that I don’t yet have children. Helping my parents out with a younger brother 15 years my junior and teaching hundreds of kids over the years is no substitute for life’s most difficult task: raising children of your own.
So I’d like to take this opportunity to credit all the parents I criticized in those parenting pieces with at least giving it a try.
While American fertility may be a little above the replacement rate at 2.1 children per woman, my friends and I don’t feel remotely ready to have children. Whether we care to admit it or not, we’re a lot like Western Europeans in this regard: We want to live the good life, unencumbered by dirty diapers and tantrums at toy stores.
There’s much more to it than that, of course. Writing in the Washington Post last year, Robert J. Samuelson provided some reasons for declining birth rates in the West: higher incomes, later and fewer marriages, more divorces and contraception. If the marriage and celibacy rates (the first one low, the second one nil) of the people on my Yahoo buddy list are anything to go by, these usual suspects definitely play a big role in my generation’s rush to wait.
Speaking of “waiting,” the fact that young men no longer have to wait to get married before having sex is another reason so many of us don’t know how to hold a baby in our arms. The truth is that guys today often feel like children in a candy store: So little time, so much to choose from. Much has already been written on how feminism and the sexual revolution ended up hurting women in the long run. The idea that men and women are no different from each other sexually has had some devastating effects. Wendy L. Walsh put it best:
“We act like he’s one of the boys from work. And then we get upset when he treats us like one of the boys from work — achieving his goal (in this case, sex) and then moving to a new project.”
Much less ink has been spilled over how men are damaged from “moving to a new project.” A common complaint from single women these days is that most men they meet act like little boys. When I hear this lament, I’m always reminded of that scene in “Swingers,” where the eternally single guys are on the couch playing Nintendo ice hockey before going to the club to hunt for prey. (Recall the wisdom of Vince Vaughn: “And she’s just like this little bunny, who’s just kinda cowering in the corner.”) It turns out girls want to have the car door opened for them and to get flowers every once in a while.
A return to chivalry would also be good for men. While acting like little boys might bring us guys pleasure in the short-run, becoming real men is what provides lasting happiness. Indeed, the guy who ends up happiest in “Swingers” is the character played by John Favreau, easily the most gentlemanly member of his clique and the one who develops an emotional connection with a woman. He’s also the only one viewers can imagine becoming a father in the near future.
I don’t think we have to wait till the Bible Belt stretches to Los Angeles before more Americans decide to plan parenthood before going to Planned Parenthood. One thing my young looks have taught me is that the desire to grow up can be a strong one-even stronger than not wanting to grow up. If the goal of personal growth were to replace the perpetual quest for personal excitement, life’s greatest gift would perhaps stop feeling like life’s greatest chore to so many.
I’ll try and remember this the next time a dubious store clerk ask for my ID. Although bringing a stroller along would solve this problem entirely.
Aaron Hanscom is a Los Angeles-based editor for Pajamas Media; his own blog is Scribblings.
I was a late bloomer, didn’t really hit puberty ’til college, married at 34, firstborn at 40. I use that late-bloomer excuse for my late start, but I think there’s something to it.
Anyway, last night at Family Jeopardy my 7-year-old son rings in to the answer, “This famous animated movie featured two dogs sharing a plate of pasta.”
After stumbling and finally brain-farting the question away, he groped around for a second then blurted out, “Noodles for poodles!” We’ll laugh about that for the next 30 years, God willing.
Don’t hurry, but don’t miss it.
No offense but I think it’s an Occam’s razor moment here.
“Whether we care to admit it or not, we’re a lot like Western Europeans in this regard: We want to live the good life, unencumbered by dirty diapers and tantrums at toy stores.
There’s much more to it than that, of course.”
Ya sure?
Don’t forget, Gen X was raised with anti-pregnancy propaganda aimed at us our entire lives. Combine that with the traditional male dread of commitment and look where we are now.
New and improved! The diapers and tantrums only last a few years!
The love, companionship, pride, and sheer awe last forever. Having kids is the high point of my life. It IS the good life.
amen to this. we have completely lost track of what’s important-I’m not immune. I’m 31 and I can’t foresee a time when my desire to have children will outweigh my obsession with my career but I’m hoping to break out of this cycle soon…
If I had a penny for every time someone asked me when I plan on having kids, Id be one rich girl. Im 30 and happily married, and while I realy want children, Im also not ready! Definitely need to behave like a child for a few more years, before looking after one.
Thanks for the article Aaron!
Looking at the history of the last 500 years in Western civilization we can see that “childhood” has grown longer and longer.
In pre-industrial agricultural culture, children began performing actual productive work around the age of 6. By the age of 14 or so they became able to many of the things we reserve for adults, such as joining the military.
Now days, a person may not even join the work force until their mid-20′s. Professionals may not begin work until their late 20′s. It takes much longer now to train an individual to be a productive adult.
Our culture has adapted by gradually stretching out the period of a person’s life we call childhood. We find nothing odd about people in their late 20′s or early 30′s behaving in ways that previous generations would have labeled childish and irresponsible.
Extended childhood is not the only factor but I think it a major one. It also explains much of the conflict between social conservatives and social progressives. The former believe that adulthood starts much earlier than the later.
I’m not buying this whole “male fear of commitment” hogwash. I’m pretty sure that’s a relatively recent phenomenon brought about by the trends that Aaron discusses.
It seems to me that in the old days, getting married was how you got to have your own place, your own stuff, your own life. Commitment was the sine qua non of independence.
Now, such is not the case, so we all play the field.
Having kids is the most fun I have ever had…
You get to buy the toys you never had as a kid…
You get to play with them in sports, games, etc.
Helping your kids to succeed in school and life over time…
Yes, it takes teamwork with your wife to accomplish this.
But it is still the most fun I have ever had…!!!!
I’m 56 and have 10 children. My oldest is 31 and my youngest is 9. I can’t envision a world without them. I can’t imagine happiness without them. I’m not advocating that everyone have 10 children. But, the world needs more children with educated and loving parents. If such people fail to procreate, the world will be worse for it. Forget all of the overpopulation hype and planned parenthood spin. Simply search your heart for the what you think is best for you and your spouse. It doesn’t matter if the answer comes out to be 1, 10, or 25. Having children is a blessing that should be carefully considered and enjoyed throughout your life. There is nothing that can replace the individual fulfillment and joy that comes from responsible parenthood.
We allow young people to drive at 15 (in some states), join the military at 17, and vote at 18… yet a 3-year OIF veteran who’s been driving for 5 years still cannot legally drink a beer if he’s under 21.
And we wonder why we have such a skewed attitude toward maturity.
I’m glad I waited until I was ready (37 in my case) to become a parent, but I wish I’d been ready sooner. Although I’ve always been willing to take responsibility as it comes, I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Turns out I wanted to be Dad.
I consider it the payoff for growing up.
I’m 20, female, and living in Los Angeles. The article certainly rang true with me as a woman as well. 50 years ago I’d probably have a husband, a promising career sitting around the house, and a few children. What a scary thought as I can’t even fathom what it would be like having a kid, let alone the fact that I have no desire whatsoever for one. And neither can any of my female friends. I think the fact that people are waiting so long to have children or opting not to have any at all is not just a product of men, as I too sometimes feel like “a kid in a candy store”. I wonder if this article would apply to middle America? Great article!
I thought I was a late bloomer too. As an ex-gay, ex-hippy, brand new Christian, I had virtually no experience with adult reponsabilities, much less with a comiited relationship, much less with women. I was pitifully adolescent to put it mildly. Then, while in Bible school, I fell in love with a woman, a single mother with two boys. At th age of 28, after two and a half years of hopeless hemming and hawing, I took the leap, as the saying goes. But for me, it was more like Evil Kneivel jumping the Grand Canyon…blindfolded…on a moped…sitting backwards.
Twenty-four wild years later, and three more awesome, beautiful, too-amazing-to-be-terrestrial kids later, boy, am I glad I did…and none too late!
All to say…get with the program, Aaron! Time’s a-wastin’and you got things to do and places to go. There is hardly anything more fulfilling ad exciting than being a parent.
Jeanne beat me to it. Having kids IS the good life. Nothing that came before compares to it, even remotely. But, as with so many things in life, it really doesn’t matter how many times people tell you this; it’s one of those things you can only learn from experience.
Kudos for pointing out that the sexual revolution also hurt men. It indeed has prolonged their adolescence. After all, what motivation do they have for growing up into men? This article actually provides a compelling reason.
Just a bit about the personal outlook of one born in 1928.
In my teens I looked forward to marriage and having kids as the normal thing. In my early twenties I formed very definite ideas about what I would be looking for in a wife, but did not seriously search until I was about twenty five and had some prospects of being able to support a wife and family. My wife and I were married when I was 28 and she was 22 and are still married after 51 years– but we had to continually work at it. We now have four offspring, 13 grandchildren (3 adopted). Each year has been better than the last. It may sound dull, but living it has been anything but!
The core of the sexual revolution is no commitments. Indeed committing, and particularly the biggest: having kids, was and is seen as “stupid” and a marker of lower class status.
No one wants to be lower class, or stupid, so they don’t have kids. It’s neither trendy nor cool nor hip nor edgy.
Women can and will of course, dump any guy for a higher-status one when one comes along (no commitments remember). Men for their part will also dump any woman for a “hotter” woman when she’s available. The legacy of the Sexual Revolution.
This reality further erodes any desire to commit by having kids. Being a single parent is no fun and it’s a certainty given that romance is like employment on at will basis. I.E. you can be fired at any time. And generally will when something better comes along as it always does.
For women of course, their fertility window closes fast. By age 30 it is more difficult to conceive, and by age 40 very very difficult, with even the best and most hideously expensive fertility treatments offering no guarantee. True some women in their post 40′s can conceive, but then George Burns smoked cigars into his nineties. Some folks are just genetically blessed, most are not.
We don’t have a very good societal model that encourages women to commit to a man when their fertility is highest (and there are the fewest birth defects or problems like autism which are associated with births of women post 35). And then allow/encourage women to re-enter the workforce without career penalty.
The result is that of course, women who have kids in their twenties (mostly religious women) have offspring outnumbering their secular peers by huge margins (having a kid past 35 means generally, one child at best given biological reality).
The future belongs to religious conservatives because demography is destiny.
I’m 31, not married, no children and in the military stationed in Tampa. I’m currently dating 3 different women.
Life is good.
Hey all, including our host, Aaron
Just read the referred.
Grow Up, America!
http://victorhanson.com/articles/thornton082407.html
One more thing to toss into the mix here: My wife (52) and I (49) just finished moving our youngest (20) into her latest college apartment. It about killed us, physically. Previous generations, methinks, knew something we’ve lost…that the raw physical stamina one has in one’s earlier years, the twenties and thirties, is THE most important success factor in raising kids. I see these parents today, in their late thirties/early forties, with barely kindergarten-aged kids, and I wonder if they realize how much less physically capable they’re going to in 12-14 years — right when their kids hit college…
HAVE KIDS EARLIER! You’ll be glad you did!
There’s a difference between not wanting kids and wanting them but delaying it indefinitely if your wife wants them and you have agreed.
The first choice I can respect. The second – not so much. As one commenter pointed out, fertility can’t be taken for granted in a woman’s 30′s. You could be dooming her to uncomfortable, unpleasant, and expensive fertility treatments that can play havoc with her health. Also, since women usually make much of the life/career sacrifices for kids, she should have a major say in the timing. You can delay to have fun in your 30′s, but you pay the price in your late 40′s and 50′s. You have a kid at 30 — by age 40, they are 10 and while not independent, big enough to take care of themselves to a relative extent. You put it off till 38 — and you are still changing diapers at 40. And when you are 50 — you either have a 20 year old off at college or work, or you have a 12 year old at home.
And when you decide to “do your kid time” on the late side — you have less energy to deal with it…
So if you think you’re getting away with something by delaying childbearing – think again!
Among 20- and 30-somethings of a certain type – overeducated, non-Christian, urban, hip, politicized – there is a repugnant tendency to look down on people who have children. I think it’s definitely tied to a lack of common sense, a lack of chivalry, a lack of commitment, and a general lack of maturity. These folks somehow see themselves as being better than the “breeders”, and they’re more than willing to politicize the issue, moaning about overpopulation and carbon footprints while they’re at it. It’s completely asinine, for reasons I don’t have to explain to anyone on this thread.
I am 38 and childless, and just had a tubal ligation to ensure that I won’t have kids. I find that parents in whom I confide understand my motivations and understand that I am making a personal choice that reflects my deepest desires. On the other hand, the professionally childless react to my news as though I’ve done this somehow to support their “stance”, as though it was a political decision. It’s bizarre.
Aaron,
I can understand your reluctance to have children. And I would like to throw out an idea that many do not consider when preparing for parenting in this day and age.
I am a natural childbirth teacher and have watched the national childbirth scene degrade over the past ten years to something really ugly and deadly.
Wether young adults are conciously aware of it or not, it is a jungle out there for the young families of America.
Just this past week a new report came out sharing the surprising news that for the first time in decades the maternal mortality rate is going up in America.
Maybe for you, looking at your wife, best friend, lover, and life partner, you are thinking to yourself, “how can I deal with the guilt of this beautiful body being cut up just so my child can be born into the world?”
Father guilt is a real and deadly thing, and especially for the young person who has grown up with parents telling them over and over how horrifing his birth was, and how challenging it is to nurture one of those “screaming balls of fury”, that even the thought of dealing with that emotion on top of taking care of a wife who has been tortured and needlessly traumetized during birth is not something young men want to face.
So they delay and delay and come up with a thousand different reason why NOT to have the baby.
I don’t blame you and I don’t judge anyone as a perpetual adolescent.
I would prefer to talk about the real reason that young people are avoiding babies. Young couples are SCARED!!! Rightfully so.
For many the spectre of the financial costs, the possibility of disability or even death, coupled with the many pitfalls around post birth issues, post partum depression, raging autism levels, etc etc etc… is just too much for many families to consider.
No, I don’t judge you, or anyone, for making the decision to remain childless. I did feel comfortable heckling you a little about raising children and believe you have responded in a very grown up way by contacting me in private and then writing this thoughtful piece on our conversation.
What I would like to do is challenge anyone reading to do a little research on the current debates that are raging about how children should be born, and the impact drug and surgery birth has on family life.
I’ve been writing about it for the past ten years. Here is a good round up of recent media interest and blog responses to husband/wife home birth.
http://www.naturalfamilyblog.com/archives/cat_diy_homebirth_debate.html
Jenny Hatch
I wonder whether perpetual adolescence (and you can count me as an adherent, or sufferer, or however you care to classify it) isn’t the only thing at work here.
In a way, raising a family is like voting in an election: Your individual contribution (or lack thereof) to the continuation of society, quite frankly, amounts to virtually nothing in the grand scheme of things. You can be like Darrell a few posts back and have 10 kids, and raise them all to be wonderful human beings and good, productive citizens, but 10 more good citizens really doesn’t amount to much by itself in a nation of 300 million people, and all of their children, over whose birth and upbringing you have no significant degree of control.
Note the operative phrase that I emphasized above. It means that having and raising children isn’t an investment in the future of your society, but rather a high-stakes wager on it. How high are the stakes? Only the well-being and happiness of your children in that future. If other people and their children take American society to hell in a hybrid handbasket, the 10 wonderful and productive new citizens you spent all those years raising will still be going along for the ride. Having children amounts to gambling that they can find happiness in whatever world awaits them, no matter how strange or grim – except (and here’s the kicker) that those same children are the ones who’ll have to pay off your bet if you lose. Yet how many would-be parents really take all this into consideration? Not many, I’d wager (no pun intended) – and precisely because they can neither predict not control the future, and therefore don’t give much thought to it. Rational ignorance is bliss.
Joshua,
Not having children because they may not have a happy life seems rather defeatist to me. As does the idea that most, or as you say many, parents do not take this into consideration when blissfully welcoming babies into their home.
I have had many, many discussions with mothers who have out loud expressed concerns to me about what sort of a world they were bringing children into.
Calling people who choose to bring children into the world ignorant, or even suggesting that we are blissfully unaware of the various pitfalls of life was the original conversation I was having with Aaron on my blog.
His accusation that being a “helicopter” parent was a bad thing was the reason I responded to his piece in the first place. Helicopter or concious parents understand the various pitfalls and problems that modern society has in place to rob out children of their ultimate happiness.
But these pitfalls are nothing new. What made a person unhappy in the year 1000 BC are the same things that make a person unhappy in 2007 AD. Breakage of the ten commandments have a domino effect on a persons ability to feel true joy and happiness during life.
Or as the scriptures say “wickedness never was happiness”.
My larger concern with this topic is the willingness of those who do not have children to fling various judgements and prejudices at those of us who have welcomed many children into our lives. And it was why I wrote a blog entry about Aarons original post.
Public signs of misbehavior do not indicate anything about how effective or ineffective various parents are with raising children.
I’m reminded of a story by Steven Covey, can’t remember which book I read it in, but it was an illustration of perception.
The story went something like this:
A man and his children sat down on a subway train for a ride home. The children were behaving in a crazy manner, running all over the train, bumping into other passengers and basically creating havoc while the distracted father ignored them and refused to discipline them. Indeed he seemed completely oblivious to what they were doing.
As the other passengers increasingly became upset and angered by the childrens behavior, one brave person decided to confront the father.
“Sir, will you control your children, they are being most disruptive.”
The Father startled and finally noticed his little ones running frantically around the train.
Then he said to the man who confronted him, “My wife just died. We were at the hospital and are now going home without her. I guess they don’t know how to deal with the loss, I don’t either.”
With that confession, perceptions shifted from judgement to compassion.
My point to Aaron the other day and to you today is please, save the judgement and contempt for the true criminals in our society. Not parents who are doing the daily work that goes with raising children.
It is the most difficult work in our society. Raising a healthy happy child may seem like a gamble to you, but I want to testify to you that lasting eternal happiness is our destiny as human beings and the eternal joy that is wrapped up in parenting is the ultimate in the human experience.
The main thrust of my work on the internet is to help parents better deal with and prevent the pitfalls and shadows that stand lurking, ready to rob them of financial health, physical well being, and in some cases even life and wellness by blindly trusting those professionals who have a vested interest in our sickness culture.
The current medical culture is killing us. That is what needs to change.
Jenny Hatch