young and educated
I make no secret of my love for historical romance novels so it's not surprising that it was in reading one that I came up with an idea. The main male character is often a male of the peerage in his late 20s to mid 30s who has spent his time with little to no responsibility. Boredom with this lifestyle plays a part in opening his heart and mind to whoever the main female character is. Now my idea, I'm wondering if our societies infantilizing young adults spring from what well could have been a real situation since in order to formally acquire titles and lands to manage the heir must wait for the death of their father which could well occur well into what we term middle age for the heir.
One story stood out to me because they described the hero of the story as a youth, mind you he was 37 but his parent was still alive so his life consisted of frivolous pursuits. Fast forward a few hundred years and now we have not only idle immature peers but due to universal education in many countries as well as a push for students to pursue higher degrees, we have the larger portion of any given generation going into their 30s without having taking on any responsibility that is relatable to their elders. We don't see students as adults, we treat even university students more and more like slightly older versions of high school students. Our expectations of their behavior is dreadfully low and sadly many are doing their best to live down to them.
It's kind of trippy to think that a move that was to improve society, education of everyone not just the privileged classes, could actually be at the heart of a steady decline in the maturity of those we seek to improve. We've moved from having a handful of people who didn't need to do anything serious with their time until well into adulthood but most of society beginning to work and raise families rather young to the majority of our youth extending their childhoods by virtue of not leaving the classroom until well after the law considers them to be adults.
I know when I was in my early twenties married with young children I had friends my age who were in university who seemed so much younger than me although we were all the same age. It's not that they weren't nice or working hard in school but the expectations from others were that these young adults in school would of course would be given slack in terms of behavior while I was held to a higher standard and given much less leeway simply due to appearing as a "real" grown up by virtue of being a wife and mother. Having visible responsibilities that older adults could easily relate to made them think of me as more one of them than they did my peers.
One story stood out to me because they described the hero of the story as a youth, mind you he was 37 but his parent was still alive so his life consisted of frivolous pursuits. Fast forward a few hundred years and now we have not only idle immature peers but due to universal education in many countries as well as a push for students to pursue higher degrees, we have the larger portion of any given generation going into their 30s without having taking on any responsibility that is relatable to their elders. We don't see students as adults, we treat even university students more and more like slightly older versions of high school students. Our expectations of their behavior is dreadfully low and sadly many are doing their best to live down to them.
It's kind of trippy to think that a move that was to improve society, education of everyone not just the privileged classes, could actually be at the heart of a steady decline in the maturity of those we seek to improve. We've moved from having a handful of people who didn't need to do anything serious with their time until well into adulthood but most of society beginning to work and raise families rather young to the majority of our youth extending their childhoods by virtue of not leaving the classroom until well after the law considers them to be adults.
I know when I was in my early twenties married with young children I had friends my age who were in university who seemed so much younger than me although we were all the same age. It's not that they weren't nice or working hard in school but the expectations from others were that these young adults in school would of course would be given slack in terms of behavior while I was held to a higher standard and given much less leeway simply due to appearing as a "real" grown up by virtue of being a wife and mother. Having visible responsibilities that older adults could easily relate to made them think of me as more one of them than they did my peers.
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