Back in the day you were an infant, a child, or an adult. The pre-teen, teen, young adult, senior adult definitions are relatively new. In the early 1900’s you were a child or an adult. The 1950’s debuted the notion of teens years and early adulthood. Baby Boomers are well aware of the characterization of teen years in the movies and television. Days spent at the beach, countless hours on the telephone, afternoons devouring fries and a Coke™, or Friday nights watching a school game and then pizza – this is what teen life was like. Your interests were that of a child although your body was that of an adult. It was an era of the four E’s: experimentation, exploration, example, and experience.
The WWII and Korean War generation lost these years to world disorder. Their objective was to insure their children a life they believed had been missed. Their children enjoyed their teen time so much they elongated the period to include young adulthood. The generations following – Gen X, Millenials, and Gen Y, each contributed to the desire to push away the decisions and responsibilities associated with adulthood and retain the freedom and exploration associated with being a teen.
Few roadblocks have been created for the generations that have been born in the last fifty years or so. Why should there be barriers? Their parents had pushed the bar and watching their children do the same allowed the parent to live vicariously through the child. Landmark healthcare reform legislation passed earlier this month was responsive to the elongated freedom years by allowing “children” to remain on their parent’s insurance until age 25.
I realized that I was now an elder when the legislation was passed. Learning our children could remain on parent’s health plan until age 25 immediately made me think that when I was 25 I had two children, spouse, house, and job. The realization of this thought scared me – it was something my parent would have said!
We most often mark time through milestones or experiences. Birth, entry into school, bar mitzvah (ritual act of becoming an adult at 13 in the Jewish tradition), high school, college, children’s marriage is milestones I grew up with. Lately, I am finding a new grouping of milestones that possible is commensurate with the elongated life span and segmentation of those years.
My son bought a house. The housekeeper asked what we thought of our son’s home. This query threw me into a fit. “What house?” was all I could say. The reality was that our youngest son had been working with a realtor, found a home he liked, made an offer, had the offer accepted, and was about to close on his first home. My baby was buying a house. My baby was 24 years old.
I asked him how he could make such a major life decision alone. His response dumbfounded me: “I thought making this decision on my own was a sign of maturity.” There was a major voice inside that wanted to scream (and potentially other actions that would have met with disaster considering he is 24). There was a very small, still voice that simply agreed.
He owns the house. Over the last few months he has had mice, bugs, pipe that needed to be replaced, alarm system installation, yard work, and electrical work that needed to be completed. With each event, there was a call asking for help. We provided sweat equity time, financial support, advice, and listening time. With every response, check, or telephone call there was a desire to say “I told you so.”
Perhaps we never really grow up.
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