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.
