Grow Up? Not So Fast

“The Perpetual Adolescent” is an observational piece by Joseph Epstein. He suggests that modern adult acts much more childish than the previous generations of middle aged people. A big part of acting like a younger person is dressing like a younger person. According to Epstein, the dressed down adult is the immature adult, which in turn leads to many adults trying to copy the modern and hip youth culture. This in turn created more relaxed environments across all career fields, leaving less “true” adults. He feels that American now want to stay young forever instead of maturing into the adults of their parent's generations. Epstein believes that this mentality is flawed, leaving the people in positions of power striving

Young people don’t maintain the same personality, feelings and views throughout their life. At some point in their life, which very often starts during adolescence, they start looking for their true identity. The transition into becoming a more mature person may be very exciting and very uncertain at the same time. It is a process that involves many changes shaped by the family, friends, environment, community and culture. Young people become more independent, dream of living their life the way they always wanted to, they explore the world, look for new possibilities. At the same time they still ponder their personal identity, are vulnerable and easily influenced by others. They take on new responsibilities, face new challenges and make mistakes.

He argues that we are taking too much time to grow up and mature, while those that have officially grown up are wasting time and money to remain young. Grown-ups now are dressed as if they were to be young people themselves, while youths are needing to be grown-ups and discard cash. He shows how the standards of society have changed dramatically, it helps his argument that views on youth are twisted and that people need to grow up faster and stay there. People have become more impatient, which is a sign of immaturity and youthfulness. Since a few grown-ups watch kid’s shows, for example, Family Guy, The Simpsons, they may contain grown-up substances, but in a juvenile way that causes for grown-ups to become juvenile themselves. He believes that maturity knows that time is running out, that there is not plenty of time left. His final thought is that to want to be young forever is actually the quickest way to grow

Today, people are out of tune with human civilization. This did not happen overnight. Due to people using negative words in their daily vocabulary change occurred. One evident cause is individual values. Constantly, the local daily paper is full of people committing wrongful acts of behavior. The band aid answer is contributed to one’s upbringing. While partially accurate it continues well beyond. An individual’s values are comprised of discipline and ethics. Very few children today receive a good old spanking that some old folks reminisce about when talking about the “good old days”. People who grew up over the past 25 years lack discipline, which has flowed into the work force. Discipline comes in various forms. Just like discipline a adults parental rights are eroding too. Society has put their nose in how parents raise their children. Parents are afraid to spank their child, have them perform additional chores, or stand in the corner with their nose touching the wall when they do wrong. The current laws tie parents’ hands. According to American Humane Association “an estimated 3.3 million reports of alleged abuse and/or neglect involving approximately 6 million children were made to local child protective services (CPS) agencies across the country. An estimated 899,000 of these children were determined to be victims of abuse

For children, over parenting "...can lead to an illusion of control over ... children, who may rebel as they grow older and shatter that illusion" because they do not feel as if they are earning respect (Hewitt). For healthy family relationships, their needs to be respect, and in overparenting, there seems to be none; For the child. The image of power over the child simply ruins the parent chance at respect. The child slowly loses respect for the parents and begins to rebel. For children “All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. And so there is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads”because they cannot stand to lose their freedom any longer (Gibbs 1). The world is facing a parenting rebellion, with children leading on the front lines. Disrespect leads to aggravation and children no longer want to be treated this way. This rebellion was created because of acts of in house rebellion. Children no longer listen to overprotective parents because while the parents think they have positive intentions, their children see the aftermath of overparenting. When children are told to do something, they just do not enjoy it as much as if they were able to make the decision on their own. This can lead to overall avoidance of the activity of reluctance to practice the activity. Children will often times try to fail at the sport, just so they can avoid the sport. When forced activity take place, suddenly the activity becomes a chore and the child no longer wants to participate. This is what parents see as rebellious, and they believe by overparenting, they can solve this problem; Wrong. Children will become more rebellious as overparenting increases. Parenting may seem to be helpful, but to lay back on the parenting

Children today are much more exposed to adulthood, forcing them to grow up quicker. We now put our children in positions where they must take care of themselves. In today’s society, many families struggle with divorce. This leads to parents fighting, dating other people, and moving around a lot to different homes. This is exposing children to things that taint their views on adulthood, leading to them trying to change it during childhood, losing their own in the process. This

According to conflict perspective, the powerful group in family is the parent and the powerless group is children. The children must undergo the socialization in order to grow up to an adult who has the ability to live in the society. Unfortunately, some of the aspects of socialization is harmful to children because the children forced to be depend on their parent to survive so that their parent will acquire an enormous power which can be tempted to exploit and abuse the children. The statistic has shown that among 3 million children in United States are abused, including more than 1200 who are murdered by their parents every year (Thio, 2007). From the condition above, we can conclude that the children are the prisoner of the society because

The first concept that is important to understand is agency. Although it is a hard term to define, it is outlined in The Social Study of Childhood, as the “capacity to make choices, and to impose those choices on the world.” (McNamee, 2016, p. 33) This is an important concept because it shows us that children have the capability to dictate the world surrounding them. It shows us that they are not just passive becomings but are beings that are competent enough to make their own judgements. Although there is a widespread belief that adults in places of authority; such as parents and teachers, have complete power over a child, this is not wholly true. Children are not only able to exercise their agency through rebelling against authority but they also practice agency through listening to their parents and teacher’s requests. A child who complies when their parents ask them to go to bed or do chores is actually being a social actor. Rebelling,

Robert Bly addresses that the community is slowly becoming a “World of Half Adults”. He illustrates to his readers that adolescents are not growing up into adults, they are stuck in the middle. Bly describes that America is drifting away from the “paternalistic” society, (where you get your structure, learn respect, and to grow from the example of his or her elders). Instead America is leaning towards a “sibling” society that provokes disrespect for elders, only wanting to “half ass” everything they do, and only reaching half of their full potential because of the lack of role models (page 57). Adolescents are not becoming adults because of parents, technology, and the “sibling” society.

The nation’s youth is the most important part of today’s society. These young children are the body and minds that will inherit the nation and its problems. The parent also has a very important responsibility in preparing youth for the world. However, poor parenting skills are too often being transferred to the youth. Poor parenting involves the use of excessive violence as a form of punishment. Children are placed in a horrific situation through abuse instigated by their parents that damages the child physically and psychologically.

During slavery, children had no choice but to learn discipline from an early age. Parents were forced to use harsh disciplinary methods on children as a survival method to prevent children from getting disciplined by slave masters.

In sociology, emerging adulthood is the period in time of an person’s life where they are between adolescence and adulthood. This term was proposed by Jeffrey Arnett, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University, in an article called American Psychologist. In the article he describes emerging adults as young individuals who do not have their own children, don’t own a home, or do not have a sufficient source of income to become completely independent (Arnett, 2000). There is another article that also describes these young individuals who are living in developed countries, however it is also experienced by young people who are in wealthy families in other areas of the world like Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (Galambos, 2007). Arnett suggests that emerging adults are between the ages of 18 and 25 years of age. Emerging adults are a step up from childhood but are not in a position to take on adulthood responsibilities. During this time in life many are open to new experiences which can be a positive to the morality of this upcoming generation of adults. Some people find themselves deciding to switch majors in college or even enrolling into different types of classes to explore their own interests in search for the best fit for their future careers. In many situations emerging adults take on a lower standard of living in order to leave home earlier, which allows that person independence and sense of self reliability they have yet to

Growing up the majority of society wished to be an adult just do things when and wherever they wanted. However, growing older and becoming an adult has made many people realize growing up is not all fun. Sociologist helps us identify the struggle of balancing all the roles in our life through role-strain or role conflict. Role strain is the tension experienced when there are contradictory expectations within one role. Moreover, role conflict is the experienced when we occupy two or more roles with contradictory expectations. With roles comes status. Also with status comes either achieved or ascribed. Achieved status is the status we earn, and ascribed status is an unborn status things we can not change. As mentioned before, we all have roles

The intricate nature of youth means that while some argue it is a universal stage of life, it is seen by many as a formation of sociocultural elements. Social construction can be defined as something that has been shaped by the values, interests or practices of a culture or society and this is evident in the youth demographic through its revolution in recent years. The markings of youth are social in formulation; highlighting the way in which young people have been influenced by differing trends and movements. Youth is a transitional phase, its age bracket extending and blurring; transcending global divides and traditions. Thus, it is the social context that surrounds youth which suggests that it is not a universal stage of life. Ultimately, the idea of youth when viewed in a historical and cultural context as well as in relation to other socially influenced concepts such as adulthood, can be observed as a social construction.

Growing up, as Tim Urban stated in his article; Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy “, we were raised “with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility” (par 6). Moreover, what our parents didn’t tell us, is that we have to devote most of our entire life to achieve those possibility. However, our parents’ generation - the baby boomers, born in the 50s, raised by our grandparents. Were raised to “build practical, secured careers” (Urban par 4) But another for them to get to stable career they have to go through hard time, bad decisions and loss of love ones.