We've created this bizarre feedback loop of treating older and older people to like children, which causes older and older people to act like children.
Yes, kids have a great appetite to become more adult and take great pride in it. I suspect what the psychologist was observing was that children were eager to start doing the things that earn appreciation among adults. This doesn't translate at all to the affluent west where housework is taken for granted and doesn't earn anybody respect. I think kids are sensitive enough to intuit that it's because there's no social reward in proportion to the effort, and as a result people do as little as possible and pursue other ways to establish their social worth.
What's the advantage of kids being kids for a while? So that parents can have cute young people to play with for a little longer?
Some people may enjoy their childhood, but I don't see why they wouldn't similarly enjoy life as younger adults. Kids learn to read earlier, then they move on to more productive pursuits earlier.
If anything, I think it's insane that we encourage people to behave like children well into their 20's (c.f. college students complaining about costumes that are too scary). Historically we didn't do this; the real question is what is the long term effect of treating 15-22 year olds like children.
Yes. That’s definitely not a childish idea that seems to be based on the idea that you can will things into being simply by stamping your feet and holding your breath until the adults break down and give you ice cream.
Yes, exactly. And children should have opportunities to socialize with adults, in ways that aren't based on authority and following arbitrary rules. All of us who went to school know the feeling of disorientation when school ended and we had to face "the real world," which has very different rules and expectations than the school environment. Imagine raising children who didn't have to make that adjustment, because they only know "the real world."
Is there a word for the opposite? A desire to escape the pressure of being a child/younh adult? The pressure to be a child and do childlike things always annoyed me so...
They're akin to when you're a kid with friends and one of you starts cussing, the rest don't react negatively, and then you just f-bombing all the things. Some people don't want to be adults or approach life that way, they just want the veneer of adulthood.
My sample size is very small, but they just undo the whole adulthood thing and become children again. Live with parents, eat out of their fridge, hang out with friends and enjoy life
I'm more inclined to see it as trained behavior because this kind of thing varies by culture.
It's probably a combination of the culture and expectations around the individual rather than the individual themselves. Children are pretty often told they can be whoever they want to be by society, and so their bar is set pretty high. But when was the last time a 30 year received the message that they could be anybody they wanted to? People expect different things of older people, and the whole situation, with all of the narratives we use to define ourselves and others, is probably pretty self reinforcing. The attitude also likely shifts as you have a family and they grow up - again I think it's about what people expect. No studies to cite here, but just throwing out some ideas.
I learned how to socialize with adults by socializing with adults. I didn't have to wait til I was an adult to "spread my social wings" because there were always adults around to interact with. I feel fortunate to have skipped past the toxic, aggressive, immature socialization most young people have to put up with when they are segregated into the artificially age-stratified environment of a typical school system.
My point was basically that people tend to have this idea in their mind that for the most part, adults "behave like adults", in that they grow out of the negative social behaviors that are easily observed in a school setting, whereas the reality seems to be that what's actually happening is that this behavior simply becomes more sophisticated and better hidden, or ignored as if it didn't exist.
To get back to being a kid, one can decondition all that (while retaining adult sensibilities).
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