Kay S. Hymowitz argues that too many men in their 20s are living in a new kind of extended adolescence.
After all, popular culture has been crowded with pre-adults for almost two decades. Hollywood started the affair in the early 1990s with movies like “Singles,” “Reality Bites,” “Single White Female” and “Swingers.” Television soon deepened the relationship, giving us the agreeable company of Monica, Joey, Rachel and Ross; Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer; Carrie, Miranda, et al.
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The knowledge economy gives the educated young an unprecedented opportunity to think about work in personal terms. They are looking not just for jobs but for “careers,” work in which they can exercise their talents and express their deepest passions. They expect their careers to give shape to their identity. For today’s pre-adults, “what you do” is almost synonymous with “who you are,”
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Pre-adulthood can be compared to adolescence, an idea invented in the mid-20th century as American teenagers were herded away from the fields and the workplace and into that new institution, the high school.
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Marketers and culture creators help to promote pre-adulthood as a lifestyle. And like adolescence, pre-adulthood is a class-based social phenomenon, reserved for the relatively well-to-do.
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“quarter-life crisis,”
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It has delayed a stable sense of identity, dramatically expanded the pool of possible spouses, mystified courtship routines and helped to throw into doubt the very meaning of marriage.
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American men have been struggling with finding an acceptable adult identity since at least the mid-19th century. … They turned to hobbies and adventures, like hunting and fishing. … In his disregard for domestic life, the playboy was prologue for today’s pre-adult male.
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What explains this puerile shallowness? I see it as an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men. … husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.
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Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There’s nothing they have to do.
They might as well just have another beer.
