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August 21, 2007
Big Kids
John Leo in the Wall Street Journal engages Diana West's Death of the Grown-Up,which argues that adult adolescence is a product of the 1960s rebellion, still with us today via the Boomers. Leo thinks she should have looked back to the 1920s for deeper roots for the fact that a video game of SpongeBob SquarePants, "intended for the 6-to-11 age group, draws almost 19 million viewers from the 18-to-49 crowd."
He's probably right that the Great Depression and World War II and the immediate post-war period focused people's minds on more serious things than fun and games. Remember that for what seems like a brief moment, after Sept. 11, 2001, people seemed to shift their concerns from entertaining themselves to more basic concerns. A few more people even darkened the doors of churches, where they wanted to find something serious and sober in the face of death.
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Do you think the 1920's was also a period of adult adolescence? It certainly seems to have been a fairly frivolous time for the well-off, judging from the music and literature of the time. I wonder if national trauma and tumult, like World War I and September 11, actually cause more infantilization than maturation in the long run.
Long-term hardship certainly causes cultural seriousness. But a short-term crisis followed by easy times might cause the opposite.
Posted by: Ethan C. | Aug 21, 2007 3:07:43 PM
I suspect the government schooling system if far more to blame than any particular "time period".
People are trained to not only do what they are told, but to remain perpetual children, with the mindset NOT to listen to their parents, but to the authority figures that they are assigned to in school.
Chris
Posted by: Chris | Aug 21, 2007 5:02:42 PM
Long-term hardship certainly causes cultural seriousness. But a short-term crisis followed by easy times might cause the opposite.
Especially when we're told (as we were after 9/11) that one way to express our patriotism was to keep consuming.
Posted by: Juli | Aug 22, 2007 2:01:38 AM
I don't know that the 1920s was actually a period of adult adolescence. After all, the children of the 20s survived the depression and produced the children that fought in World War II.
But Leo is right about the seeds of adult adolescence being sown in the 20s and even earlier. Robert Epstein's recent book "The Case Against Adolescence" describes in detail the various forces that lead to the infantilization of American youth and, consequently, the extension of the adolescent period into biological adulthood.
It really is a must-read for people interested in the topic.
Posted by: Matt Anderson | Aug 24, 2007 11:34:41 AM
My wife recently read an interview with Epstein in the HSLDA magazine and she noted it approvingly.
Posted by: Gene Godbold | Aug 29, 2007 9:36:18 AM
>>>I don't know that the 1920s was actually a period of adult adolescence. After all, the children of the 20s survived the depression and produced the children that fought in World War II.<<<
Of course, all the people writing about how mature that generation was only remember them when they were grandma and grandpa. I suggest that if one reads the diaries, letters and memoirs of the people of that generation, one will find that their behavior in their teens, twenties and even thirties, was just as gauche and immature as that of their equivalents today.
But then, people who weren't there have a nasty tendency to sentimenalize and idealize the past.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 29, 2007 9:55:22 AM
I'm not sure there ever was a "mature," generation, or even what exactly that might mean. We read of Noah's generation that they were 'eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark,' or in other words they were partying down with their bad cells. This fits in well, I think, with eastern anthropology - because we are mortal & will someday die we cling mightily to the things of the earth, and fall into all sorts of things that offer us temporal relief. I think that is the way it has been since the fall.
And just why are we hating on SpongeBob?
Posted by: Bob Gardner | Aug 29, 2007 10:28:39 AM
One difference was that in those days you usually had to get married to have an ongoing sexual relationship. So these immature guys married their immature girls, popped out a couple of kids, and lo and behold, they weren't so immature any more. Nowadays there are no such forces propelling young people toward maturity.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Aug 29, 2007 10:37:16 AM
>>>One difference was that in those days you usually had to get married to have an ongoing sexual relationship. So these immature guys married their immature girls, popped out a couple of kids, and lo and behold, they weren't so immature any more. Nowadays there are no such forces propelling young people toward maturity.<<<
The early middle ages in the West was very much like that. The aristocracy tended to marry young, pop out some kids, then put milady aside (usually into a convent, but sometimes they just tightened the bedcords around her neck) and went looking for the next young thing. After "Christianization", they latched onto the Church's rather tight rules about consanguinity (six degrees), as an excuse to divorce or nullify the marriage. The Church finally responded to this by loosening the rule to three degrees of consanguinty.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 29, 2007 10:51:15 AM
>>>And just why are we hating on SpongeBob?<<<
Not me! I think he's brilliant. In fact, I think we're living in the golden age of animation, but then, I'm not a very mature individual. I've been known to play video games, too.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 29, 2007 10:52:36 AM
Stuart my respect has dropped. Sponge Bob is drivel of the worst sort. I much prefer Kim Possible which is way more intelligent.
Posted by: Nick | Aug 29, 2007 1:34:14 PM
Kim possible is alright, but SpongeBob rates a bit higher in my book (maybe it's the name?). The Fairly Oddparents is good too, but I much prefer Super-Hero cartoons - the new Batman is really good, and the Spiderman they had on MTV a few years back was great animation (I didn't watch it while it aired though, just couldn't force myself to turn the TV to that channel for some reason).
"I've been known to play video games, too." A righteous activity indeed. I mostly am into the sports games myself. I'm a little disappointed that my 7 year old son can beat me at hockey pretty regularly now, but I still kick his butt at football!
Posted by: Bob Gardner | Aug 29, 2007 2:07:14 PM
>>>Stuart my respect has dropped. Sponge Bob is drivel of the worst sort. I much prefer Kim Possible which is way more intelligent.<<<
Let's be honest. Neither can hold a candle to "Pinky and the Brain".
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 29, 2007 2:12:09 PM
And you guys wonder why so few women comment on this blog!
Posted by: Judy Warner | Aug 29, 2007 2:13:17 PM
>>Let's be honest. Neither can hold a candle to "Pinky and the Brain".<<
Alas this is one is no longer on in my area.
Posted by: Bob Gardner | Aug 29, 2007 2:15:34 PM
Posted by: Bob Gardner | Aug 29, 2007 3:19:21 PM
>>>Alas this is one is no longer on in my area.<<<
Good news! The entire series is now available on DVD. You can pick it up at Target or any other distributer of mass produced limited editions.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 29, 2007 4:17:16 PM
>>>And you guys wonder why so few women comment on this blog!<<<
Geta and the girls adore Pinky and the Brain. If you watched a few episodes, you would see the family resemblance.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 29, 2007 4:18:18 PM
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