Lately I’ve noticed something happening between my friend groups. There is a very large divide between the two main categories of my friends: those who have chosen to grow up, and those who have not.
I’m 36. I’ve lived on my own. I started my own businesses. My husband is 27 and has his own business and a 9 to 5 job.
When I’m not at work, I’m fixing things around my new place or parenthood. In other words, I’m an adult. I functioning as an adult, and my husband too. And even though we were dependent on family members before due to circumstances beyond our control, we still do the adult thing.
The same cannot be said of a significant group of our friends. I have already written about Renata, the girl who just doesn’t want to grow up. She’s not alone. I have also seen countless other men and women, all stuck at different stages of their development.
More and more people think that America treats adults like children, and that is terribly counterproductive
Children are not yet as mature as they were at my age. The more I talk to other parents, the more I realize there is something wrong with Gen-Alpha. Simply put, the milestones my friends and I achieved are no longer achieved at that age.
It first hit me during a conversation I had with my two friends who have two children. I was surprised to learn that my friend’s children are not allowed to use a microwave or stovetop at the age of ten.
When I heard that, I looked at my friends and asked, “Why can’t they cook? They’re old enough.” My friends shrugged and said, “I just don’t think they’re ready for it yet.” The cooking incident was far from the only one.
Children today are developing more slowly than any other generation
Even the first milestones are postponed, apart from cooking and cleaning. Research from 2018 shows that parents potty train their children later and later. In the past, most children were fully toilet trained between the ages of twelve and eighteen months, but that age has increased to three years.
I remembered seeing a disclaimer at a preschool that said, “Students must be toilet trained.” I was shocked because a child not being potty trained in kindergarten was a rarity when I was a child. It would tease you.
When I was younger, I was the one who was delayed. I wasn’t allowed to go outside unsupervised until I was fifteen. The only exception would be my time at the mall – and that’s because it was indoors.
Nowadays there are people aged 18 who still have a curfew or who are outright not allowed to go outside without parental permission. That’s alarming. It goes beyond helicopter parenting.
The postponed milestones are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg
Does anyone else know people who always seem to be saved by their parents? Or adults who still don’t know how to do laundry or file taxes?
If you’ve been on the dating scene, you probably also hear 30-year-old men insisting that they are ‘too young to settle down’ as if their three decades aren’t enough time to figure out what they want. The funny thing is that most people who behave this way know they are not behaving like the adults they should be.
I’ve heard so many adults brush off their inability to be functioning adults with a giggle and an “Oh, I can’t grow up today, tee-hee!” But it’s no laughing matter; it’s really scary.
America is breeding a country where development is being halted en masse
Have you ever seen those TikToks of Chinese kindergartens? They’re insane, and yet they did things I did as a kid. These TikToks show children as young as five learning foreign languages, cooking food, sewing and playing war games.
In America, teachers practically beg children that age to color in the lines. Nowadays, they also have to beg parents to potty train their children so that they do not soil themselves.
It’s no secret that a frightening number of American teens and young adults are lagging behind in social skills, reading, math, and even the most basic life skills. Many people who have just graduated will not be able to handle a typical workplace. That’s why I know so many people in their mid to late 30s who have never moved from their homes because they cannot hold down a job.
When their parents die or move into a retirement home, these individuals will be completely unprepared, and when this starts happening en masse, it will turn American culture upside down.
What happened to create America’s terrifying infantilization problem?
American culture is a perfect storm of factors that encourage and encourage people to act like overgrown children. Let me explain.
Frightened parents
The biggest problem I believe contributes to the infantilization of American teens is parenting. Most American parents are terrified of everything. It is a pathological level of fear. Sugar? Oh, that’s not possible. Your child develops diabetes and dies. Sharp objects at a young age? Oh no. They will stab themselves. Bad grades? I can’t have that. Little Timmy will feel bad.
In the past, people taught children that fire was dangerous by making them find out the hard way. It worked. You only have to learn it once to realize that fire is hot. Today, parents remove the proverbial fire and gently distract the child from a drawing of flames. This makes it almost impossible for children to learn how to deal with fire if they encounter one.
In other words, parents remove any risks their child may encounterno matter how big or small. By removing risks, they keep their children temporarily safe, but they also cripple those children’s ability to learn life skills in time.
I believe that if you give children responsibilities, they will rise to the occasion. The same can be said of new employees. Tell them to do something, and you’ll be surprised how quickly they figure it out on their own.
Weaponized incompetence
If you go on online forumsyou will see many teachers talking about how students pretend to be helpless by ‘losing pencils’ or saying their pencil is broken to complete an assignment. This is so-called weaponized incompetencethe act of pretending to be unable to do something just to pass the money on to someone else. It doesn’t stop in the classroom.
Adults, usually men, pretend to be incompetent to avoid chores. Their wives and girlfriends end up doing the same chores, even though the husband is often just as capable. People placed in caregiving positions, such as mothers, wives or teachers, often bear the brunt of the workload. Our society still blames people in the role of caregiver for others’ refusal to work.
I’ve even seen this in workplaces. Of course, people who try to weaponize the incompetence there tend to move pretty quickly… most of the time anyway. What people don’t realize is that weaponized incompetence can backfire. If you continue to act helpless, all the skills are yours Doing can erode over time. Most skills are a matter of ‘use it or lose it’.
I’ve seen so many men in their 20s and 30s revert to teenage behavior. The responsibilities that were a flex at age 10 are now just a nuisance at age 20, so they pass them on to their caregivers, whether it’s their mother or girlfriends. Eventually they start to deteriorate and act like children. Listen to their shock when they receive divorce papers.
No consequences
Actions have consequences. We find ourselves in a society that seems increasingly unwilling to hand out the consequences of these actions, and then we are shocked that people are acting like little children running amok. In real life it doesn’t matter if your feelings get hurt.
If you face bad circumstances, even if they are not your fault, society will see this as “the consequences of your actions.” They’ll ask you why you didn’t do X, Y, and Z, as if there was always a way to prevent something from happening. Unfortunately, part of this is because most people forget that sometimes things just happen, even to good people.
Giving people consequences that they have to deal with is an important part of letting them grow up. And yet we don’t ban bad customers who attack fast food workers from restaurants. We do not send students from schools. We only hold people accountable when we are forced to do so. Even the most patient people will have a breaking point with an immature person.
And more often than ever, we are raising people to adulthood who have never experienced real, life-changing consequences. When someone first experiences the consequences of their actions, it can be a huge shock to them. And because it’s so rare these days, they may not even learn that those consequences should be that way the standardnot the exception.
An American society made up entirely of children is a broken society
I’ll let you in on a secret: a society cannot function if 70% (unscientific estimate) of the population behaves like teenagers. What really scares me about our society is that we see people developing later and later, and we don’t ring any alarm bells. But we should. Because this is going to be a serious issue in a few years, so bookmark this piece so I can say I told you so.
Editor’s Note: This is part of YourTango’s Opinion section, where individual authors can provide different perspectives for broad political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.
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