The Peter Pan Phenomenon
(Part 2 of “We’re All Peter Pan – The Growing Refusal To Mature”)
by Chris Kamalski
“It simply doesn’t explain today’s peculiar Peter Pan phenomenon, where young adults appear not to want to grow up, as a choiceless response to financial unpredictability. What is happening here is that a very new social phenomenon – and a troubling social phenomenon at that – is being written off as a simple byproduct of economic downturn. In reality, the reason many young adults stay at home, having their shirts ironed and their dinners cooked, is because they live in a culture that doesn’t encourage, far less celebrate, independence and personal responsibility. Ours is an era in which the adult world is continually depicted as scary and full of pitfalls, in which we’re all coaxed to view ourselves as potential victims, ‘damaged goods,’ fragile creatures who need experts or therapists or welfarists to help keep us afloat and keep our self-esteem intact. In such circumstances, it isn’t surprising so many people who are biologically adult choose to put off the moment when they become morally, properly adult.” (Brendon O’Neill, in an opinion piece in The Telegraph entitled ‘These Sad Peter Pans Live With Their Parents Because They Want To, Not Because They Can’t Afford To Move Out’)
A 2012 study released by the Office for National Statistics in England reported the astonishing reality that over three million men and women in the 20 to 34 age-range were still living at home with their parents in 2011, an over 20% increase since 1997 in the number of young adults that still claimed their childhood bedroom as ‘their room.’ This study found that an astounding one in three men, and one in six women in this age group still live at home! A growing social phenomenon in many cultures worldwide, experts have staked out innumerable positions as to why this is taking place, from the lingering global recession to rising university costs, from the recent credit squeeze (fewer young adults qualify for home loans today than before the economic downturn of late 2008) to the difficulty of sustaining permanent employment in a stable company. Yet a question lingers as a disturbing through-line underneath all these possible explanations: As every generation prior has done, why not simply make a way to leave the nest for the independence and freedom that serves as the passage into adulthood?
Other complex cultural factors may be in play in addition to the economic reasons often cited as the explanations for this burgeoning trend, from growing research on late adolescent brain development into the mid to late 20’s, to the inescapable reality that ‘helicopter parents’ may simply not be ready to release their grown children into adulthood. Upon reflection however, one is left with the nagging sense that our coddled, immature, cocooned young adults simply do not want to grow up. Labeled “The Peter Pan Phenomenon” by Brendon O’Neill, it’s as if a growing generation of young adults is not only unable to grow up, they are increasingly unwilling to.
I find myself filled with mixed feelings as I consider this reality. On one hand, I am dumbfounded at the deliberate refusal to mature, unsure why barely 50% of US teenagers would get their driver’s license by the age of 19 when I gleefully passed my examination as a landmark rite-of-passage on my 16th birthday in 1995, similar to every other friend of mine. And yet I identify with the struggle of my generation, still uncomfortably reliant on external financial support, laughing in recognition with the early 30’s stunted adolescence of young adult comedies such as New Girl.
Is my generation lacking a defining event such as the Great Depression, World War II, or the end of apartheid to kickstart its path towards adulthood? Or is the path to maturity more of an internal unfolding, a continual effort little by little in cooperation with the Spirit to shed one’s childishness and embrace the gift that is found in becoming an adult? Turning to the Scriptures, I am undone still further by the unanimity of exhortation towards adulthood found throughout the New Testament:
“Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil, be infants, but in your thinking be adults” (1 Corinthians 14:20).
“You are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity” (Hebrews 5:11-6:1).
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me” (1 Corinthians 13:11).
“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Ephesians 4:14-16).
Father, may we embrace the hard, but gloriously deliberate, path towards adulthood, no longer willing to refuse maturity at the expense of comforts that childishness brings. Our culture may not understand, but grant us the courage to pursue adulthood, regardless of the refusal to mature that exists around, and within us. You desire for us to grow ‘into him who is the Head, that is, Christ’ (Ephesians 4:15). May we do so with a humility that is contagious.