Are there any grownups in the house?
Starting next week when Congress convenes, that question will apply to the People’s House as well, given the way they left off for the summer…
But Diana West calls our attention to the behavior that’s turned into an international tendency to remain immature and…..in need of a parent.
Q: What do Belgian Muslims calling for a ban on Easter eggs have to do with American parents hiring “parenting coaches” to put Junior to bed? And what do imperiled Easter eggs and the advent of parent coaching have to do with U.S. foreign policy? Furthermore, what does all of this have to do with the triumphant shriek of Western womanhood on wriggling into jeans fit for a seven-year-old?
A: Plenty. In fact, I could write a book about such recent events — only that I already have. It’s called The Death of the Grown-Up, and the phenomenon it describes — Western society’s relatively new tendency to replace maturity as the goal of human development with a state of perpetual adolescence — makes the connections obvious.
She connects those dots, with decisions (or lack thereof) in both Belgium and the U.S., specifics, that make the point. And they do.
In different realms, on different continents, both reactions, in Antwerp and in Boston, reveal the same alarming hollowness in the people who are supposed to be in charge. They both engage in a stunted mode of behavior that is aptly described as infantile. In the case of the European metropolis, it no longer has the self-knowledge, confidence or courage to flaunt the symbols that make up its identity; in the case of these American parents, they no longer have the self-knowledge, confidence or courage — or basic human instinct — to trust themselves to raise their young. Any way you cut it, it’s hard to label such behaviors as mature, responsible, or self-assertive, and they’re certainly not conducive to the propagation of the culture represented here on both a state and personal level. How did we get here? In a nutshell, a half-century or so of youth-oriented, adolescent-minded popular culture has taken its toll…
Once upon a time, such adolescent naivete would have driven the grown-ups crazy — or maybe I’m just nuts. How about if we call off the struggle to squeeze into play clothes and try to find out?
Speaking of juvenile pop culture and play clothes, we seem to be struggling more this year with back to school dress wear…
The good news is, wrestling with it is better than succumbing to it mindlessly. These articles are trying to halt that trend.