Do You Need Children to "Grow Up"?

The odyssey generation just won’t grow up

ARE you reaching your thirties but do not feel grown up? Still unhitched and childless or wandering from one career to the next? If so, you are part of an “odyssey generation” identified by American researchers.

“There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age,” David Brooks, a cultural commentator, noted last week. “Now there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age.”

The odyssey years cover the ever-widening transition period between student life and adulthood, according to William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “The word ‘odyssey’ captures the sense of exploration,” he said. “The three basic undertakings of adulthood are to get a job, to find a mate and to reproduce. There has been a massive deferral of all those commitments.” . . .

I know a former college professor, married with three children, who is now enrolled in law school at 32, dissatisfied with his previously chosen profession. Does he somehow fail the "adult" test because he is wandering careers? Are 80 year old women in nursing homes still adolescents merely because they never had children? Is my friend, who has already lived on three continents and works night and day to support herself, doomed to never reach adulthood merely because she doesn't believe in marriage? And what of the man who moves in with his ailing mother, or the woman who goes back to her parents' house to save for a down payment on a home? Is everyone who misses one of the proscribed steps from this article somehow failing?

I will agree that there are people in their late 20s who are still adolescents. I know some who live with their parents out of sheer laziness, working just enough part time hours to afford CDs and video games. But the idea that there is this set life "checklist" that we must complete on schedule is downright offensive and stifling. Rather, we should treat people as individuals, and look to the holistic person to further our discussion of extended adolescents. It might not be convenient for those wishing to tout statistics for their findings, but it is intellectually honest.

The first comment on the article expressed a similar sentiment:

Why assume that reproduction is a necessary part of adulthood? . . . With six billion souls in the world it's not as if reproducing is some kind of social duty, so perhaps it is time to reconsider what makes for a fulfilling adult life. It may just be something other than a mortgage and kids.

Anne Ronald, Birmingham, UK

Although another commenter reasoned that:

People say that it is a necessary part of adult life as it is the driving reson [sic] for our being and ultimately the only worthwhile and strongest insticnt [sic] in the world, to pass on your genes and keep your part of life alive. look to the origin of the species and survival of the fittest to try and understand!

This reasoning is troubling. Our earliest ancestors survived by fighting, which later took root as tribal warfare in many parts of the world. Indeed, it was seen as a rite of passage for young men to go off and fight, to kill an enemy and further the "survival of the fittest". At some point, most societies moved beyond seeing violence as a prerequisite to adulthood. As Nobel Peace Prize-winning Al Gore pointed out in his film, overpopulation is a very real and severe threat. It may be time to similarly move beyond out view of procreation as a rite of passage.

I am sure most of my readers know married persons and/or parents who could rightly be called adolescents, and plenty of single, childfree folks who have achieved adulthood even in their 20s. I understand the need for proxies, but we need better ones. Sometimes making intelligent decisions about whether marriage and children are right for you is the most mature act you can make.

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