You may have heard of the Maturity Crisis, a supposed crisis that is happing to Millennials and Post-Millennials as of now. It seems that kids these days don't grow up or just don't want to become adults, whatever that means. I could babble on forever on this issue, but the main crux of this entire "crisis" to me seems to be around the word adult and what means to be an adult. The problem with this is, of course, is that the word adult is utterly meaningless, subjective, and purely cultural based, belonging the same category of words such as god, supernatural, and paranormal. Ask anybody what an adult is and you will get wildly and often conflicting answers, many of which are just plucked from whatever source it comes from or what was pickled into them from mass media and society at large. Adult is nothing more than a legal term with no (seemingly) real objective reality behind. It's not based on science, unlike say teenagers or infants for instance. What I'm saying is that we need better standards for picking legal ages. After all, 18-year-olds can have legal sex with anybody, as long they are other 18's.

Basically, adult is utterly subjective. We need to basis it in the sciences, rather than people who have no real idea of what they are talking about and hijack it to sell you shit.

- OT

Rather than targeting the word "adult" I'd suggest "voting competent" would sit more objectively in the cross hairs.

Keep It Real wrote:Rather than targeting the word "adult" I'd suggest "voting competent" would sit more objectively in the cross hairs.

That's good as well, but I think the crisis in question is more about what an adult is, rather than politic discernment.

What horribly bad thing is about to happen if this “crisis” of which you speak remains? I’m thinking it isn’t much of a goddamned crisis at all.

I think "meaningless", "subjective" and "purely cultural" all mean very different things.

Only one of them applies to the concept of being an adult - subjectivity, and that only to the extent it applies to many other concepts like beauty or intelligence. More of a Sorites paradox than a genuine problem.

I would strongly suspect that whatever complaints are made under the rubric of the current generations not growing up are not strictly related to concepts like age of consent, age of electoral competence, minimum wage laws or the like, but rather are directed at people's attitudes, choices of financial independence, living arrangements and the like. More hikikomori than paranormal.

It often comes across to me more like older people want to delegitimise younger people's arguments by juvenilising them. They want better wages, affordable housing, and proper healthcare and older folk tell them to grow up and welcome to adult life then go on about how hard they had it. Never mind that their generation weren't crippled by student dept and they could afford a house and car on a single salary.

It's bullshit.

I don't think I've ever met an older person who portrays the desire for better wages, affordable housing or decent healthcare as a lack of maturity, or indeed read the opinion of someone who does. I've probably led a sheltered life.

I did just do a bit of browsing to see if I could find information about a "maturity crisis", but google is only giving me one or two 15 to 20 year old articles which don't amount to a whole lot. I'm not, at this point, convinced there's any real body of opinion that there is a maturity crisis, so I'm not immediately inclined to either support or refute that body of opinion until it appears to me that it both (a) exists and (b) matters in some way.

I'm certainly not about to throw the word "adult" under the bus to make way for one of those options. It seems a solidly useful entry in the lexicon.

It's more an American thing. There's a perception millennials are a coddled generation who were given too much credit and praise and taught that everyone wins and the view is this has retarded their maturity and made them 'entitled'. Mostly by rightwingers.

Sounds like what Douglas Adams would call "SEP" then.

I'll probably understand the whole thing better once I grow up.

laklak wrote:I'll probably understand the whole thing better once I grow up.

I believe it was the philosopher Roger Daltrey who stated half a century ago: "Hope I die before I get old."

He's now old. And alive. Which is ironic, or something like that.

Mr. Skeptic wrote:You may have heard of the Maturity Crisis, a supposed crisis that is happing to Millennials and Post-Millennials as of now. It seems that kids these days don't grow up or just don't want to become adults, whatever that means.

Aside from points you and others have raised, there is a positive component to this.

It's not that long ago in our history (and is still a common phenomenon in many countries) that children have to 'grow up' early, start working alongside their parents to earn money, their parents can't afford to have them cared for, and they miss school.

150 years ago, they might have been saying the same thing about 12 year olds never having had it so good. To me, it looks like a desirable trajectory - there's no rush to become a productive member of society in traditional terms, and it's silly and poorly thought out that people just magically become adults when they reach a certain age - it's a long process, and there's no reason to suggest we had it right in the past.

Blackadder wrote:

laklak wrote:I'll probably understand the whole thing better once I grow up.

I believe it was the philosopher Roger Daltrey who stated half a century ago: "Hope I die before I get old."

He's now old. And alive. Which is ironic, or something like that.

Like rain on your wedding day, innit? Another member of the Who? School once said, "I wuz only doing reasearch like, yer worship". Deepity stuff.

The_Metatron wrote:What horribly bad thing is about to happen if this “crisis” of which you speak remains? I’m thinking it isn’t much of a goddamned crisis at all.

Beyond the realms of your own little tent, many millions of young people are currently entrenched within their own comfortable bedrooms, thinking that they have a good life.

If you don't see a crisis in that fact, then you're not the genius you may have considered yourself to be.

jamest wrote:

The_Metatron wrote:What horribly bad thing is about to happen if this “crisis” of which you speak remains? I’m thinking it isn’t much of a goddamned crisis at all.

Beyond the realms of your own little tent, many millions of young people are currently entrenched within their own comfortable bedrooms, thinking that they have a good life.

If you don't see a crisis in that fact, then you're not the genius you may have considered yourself to be.

If you just wrote 'fap' you could have saved yourself a lot of time and effort trying to be clever.

Animavore wrote:It's more an American thing. There's a perception millennials are a coddled generation who were given too much credit and praise and taught that everyone wins and the view is this has retarded their maturity and made them 'entitled'. Mostly by rightwingers.

I don't doubt this group of people exists. They're rich kids though, not millennials. Lots of us haven't experienced the lack of obstacles some rich kids do. No one put a downpayment on a home or helped me pay for school. Wedding? Kids? Can't afford it. I've got too much debt and the cost of living is too high for me to get on top of it.

Funny thing: my parents are actually very well off financially so it's not fair for me to say rich kids are spoilt. Some aren't.

I WISH I had a modicum of the self-worth and entitlement these sheltered, maturity-impaired people do though. Self-esteem must be cool.

Never heard of it and as others noted already, what exactly is the problem? I mean, even assuming there is such a thing, some people not behaving like "mature" (how is this different from the concept of "adult" btw?), why is it a problem?

Never did me any harm.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I don't doubt this group of people exists. They're rich kids though, not millennials. Lots of us haven't experienced the lack of obstacles some rich kids do. No one put a downpayment on a home or helped me pay for school. Wedding? Kids? Can't afford it. I've got too much debt and the cost of living is too high for me to get on top of it.

Reminds me of that species of article where the "millenial" is here to tell you how they managed to afford their house. And at some point they just slip in "and this $100,000 gift my parents gave me..."