In Defense of Youth

A recent article in the National Post (Oct. 17, 2009) by Robert Fulford, the celebrated literary editor and journalist, has been gnawing at me since I read it. Entitled, “The Teenage-ification of Manhood,” it was the last in a series of articles by the Post regarding the tendency for modern young people – and too often not so young people -- to become adults at a later and later age, and often not to “grow up” (whatever that means) at all. It is a cruel column, and I dare say the preceding editorials on this subject, were equally mean. There is no need to rebut Fulford’s and the Post’s claims about a long road to adulthood, but there is a need to challenge just about everything else.

As usual, there is a problem with his use of words. For example, Fulford identifies “teenagers” as a social group (now apparently permanent) that emerged after the 1940s. These teenagers, Fulford sneers, are made up of “self-important newcomers” who have constituted themselves as something other than “just adults-in-waiting.” Fulford nods at retailers and overly generous parents as culprits in the creation of this class but insinuates throughout that teenagers themselves are responsible for their continued shallowness and selfishness, for being insouciant slackers who refuse the responsibilities the world has thrust upon them. The truth, of course, is that consumer-capitalism almost single-handedly created and single-handedly continues to maintain, the teenage condition. As can be seen by looking at developed and developing and so-called underdeveloped cultures, the crass consumerist and capitalist underpinnings of modernization and popular culture are all that support the continued existence of the sociological phenomena called the “teenager.” Without these underpinnings, we might resurrect the less derogatory, more benign, more agreeable terms of “young people” or “youth.”

Fulford also implies that to become and remain “adult” is the goal of human existence. It is the ultimate stage of accomplishment in one’s journey through life. An “adult” is superior to a child or an adolescent or a teenager. All conditions and stages of life other than adulthood, he and many other people unthinkingly suggest, are precedent to adulthood and are therefore necessarily incomplete and flawed stages when we consider them in isolation from the goal of adulthood. The calculus is clear: to be an adult is to be mature; to be mature is to be virtuous; to be virtuous is to be rational, emotionally composed, and willing to take responsibility for one’s actions.

This calculus for virtuous adulthood and deficient young people simply does not hold true. In fact, it might be stood on its head. We might say, without much exaggeration, that most adults are persons who have made up their minds about everything important. They are people who have fixed political and social and cultural and moral views. They have stopped growing intellectually and often morally. They have settled for their job, for their old opinions, for their old prejudices. They have given up and have often become cynical about most of the value-laden aspects of the world around them.

We might say, without much exaggeration, that most youth are persons who continue to explore different things in life. They are open to political, social, moral, and cultural change and improvement. They continue to grow intellectually and often morally. They have not settled on an occupation; they abandon old opinions for better new ones; they have not given up.

As for “maturity,” it strikes me that adults and youth (not infants and small children, of course) are about equal in the employment of rationality, emotional composure, and taking responsibility for their own actions. In my personal experience with university students, I believe that “youth” outscores “adults” in all of these categories.

But the condemnation of today’s adults must go further than that. People of my generation (I am on the cusp of being a “baby-boomer,” depending on which demographer you care to cite, and I was a “teenager”) have had many of the advantages of today’s youth, in regard to recreation and possessions and cultural opportunities. Robert Fulford and I have hardly suffered. In addition to that, we have prospered in our adulthood. We received excellent educations at no, or little, financial cost to ourselves. As “adults” we were able to buy houses and stereos and nice automobiles and sometimes even take comfortable vacations. Some of us are even secure in retirement.

Only those who are really old, those who no longer have any contact with vibrant youth, can have the gall to claim that young people are avoiding adulthood in order to continue their lives of play and irresponsibility. When I was first in graduate school I was sometimes accused (by individuals or by the press) of remaining in university to avoid “growing up.” Then, as Vietnam exploded, I was accused (by the same types of people) of remaining in university in order to avoid the draft (I was 1A through my grad school years and could have been called up at any time; I foolishly would have gone). Young people today have it worse. They are told to get good careers and to anchor themselves by establishing their own homes while at the same time society tells them they will never have “permanent” jobs but must continually re-tool themselves for ever-shifting workplace demands.

Incredibly, many young people attempt to conform to this contorted culture and to find their place in this near-impossible economic environment. I know of many students who have a university degree and also have acquired a practical craft skill. I know of many others who have one or two undergraduate degrees and usually a post-graduate degree. I even know some who have multiple graduate degrees. Many of these young people also have extensive volunteer experience. Almost all of them have enormous -- corruptly proffered and enforced, I might add -- student loans (for which they are blamed by “adults” who had to pay little on no tuition themselves). Remarkably, almost all have accommodated themselves – without anger – to having less hope for success and resources than those generations who preceded them (you know, those “adults” who have shifted the blame to the phantom character flaws of youth today). Many young people, of course, have been unable to overcome such the ludicrous Sisyphean challenge placed before them and must eke out what satisfactions they can in life even if they must prey on their parents good will to do so.

So, if you want to retard the aging process quit categorizing and criticizing all young people. Start spending some time with the young people around you. You will become more rational, emotionally composed, and, in the process, you might take more responsibility for yourself and the societal flaws you helped to bring about.