Is Childhood a Permanent State Now?

            Some of us are old enough to remember when adults never wore sneakers. They didn’t play with toys either. Years ago, kids had their idols; Willie Mays, Elvis Presley and Grace Kelly, to name a few. Adults back then knew better than to idolize stars, be they athletes, actors or recording artists. Weren’t they too busy making something of their own lives to take more than a passing glance at celebrities? 

            But times have changed. Sometimes I think the difference between children and adults is mostly a matter of height, wrinkles and bald spots. I saw a man in his mid-thirties in a medical setting the other day wearing a Superman pajama top. Now I ask you, could you picture President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man who as a five star general led the D-Day invasion on the beaches of Normandy, in such a getup?

            I also saw a woman, well into her fifties with green hair and a lip ring that looked suspiciously like a piece of jewelry that would have looked great adorning a woman’s ear. Just for a moment imagine if you will, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walking around with green, or even purple hair.  

            There was a time when kids were expected to wear baseball caps and sneakers. Kids played with toys which were often designed to emulate real life. In the 1950’s for example, reflective of the times, girls had dolls and baby carriages. Boys had fire engines and model trains. As they became adults, ball caps were traded for fedoras. Wingtips replaced sneakers. Life became serious and young adults gave up toys for jobs, marriage and family. We don’t so much give up toys as we do replace them now. Don’t even think of suggesting that cell phones and i-Pads aren’t to some degree toys for adults. Listen, would Lee Iacocca have had time for Farmville when he was running Chrysler?

            Perhaps the most obvious piece of evidence that childhood may well be permanent is the way we dress. Adults and kids today dress pretty much alike. What started as business casual is now indistinguishable from kid casual as far as I can tell. Tattoos have replaced ties. I wonder if the transition from adulthood to a more or less permanent state of childhood is in some way accountable for our growing lack of civility. As kids we threw tantrums. It was allowed, sort of. We were kids after all. Adults these days seem to feel entitled to tantrums. And there is no one to pack them off in their Superman pajamas for misbehaving. I mean when did we start heckling First Ladies? 

One of the key differences between childhood and adulthood is the requirement that we accept responsibility for our actions. It seems to me that whether you’re talking about a Jodi Arias trying to beat a murder rap by blaming the victim, or a politician trying to pass the buck, accepting responsibility is not fashionable. A lot of people old enough to know better, simply want a do over, as if life itself was nothing more than a game of stickball.  

Whether we are actually extending childhood well beyond the traditional boundaries, advertisers certainly treat us like children. I just saw a commercial for Meow Mix. Two cats are singing, “meow, meow,” and so on. Just below the singing cats you can follow the bouncing ball with the translation running across the screen. Now unless the people at Meow Mix think kids are making household cat food buying decisions, it seems clear they don’t have much respect for adults.   

How about birthday parties? We loved them as kids. If you Google “adult birthday parties” you get more than 20 million options to choose from. Think about your grandparents for a moment. Do you recall extravagant birthday celebrations being routine for them?  Would a real adult be pleased if someone threw a Superman party for him? Well, maybe the guy I mentioned earlier would like it. I like to think at least some of us would detest the idea.

Is permanent childhood a bad thing? Perhaps not entirely. Childhood is indeed short, especially now when TV programming robs tots of their innocence in one evening. And we do live a lot longer than previous generations did. Maybe an extended childhood is inevitable. Still, I think most of us feel better when there are some real adults in our midst. Don’t look at me though. All I want for my birthday is a baseball board game with dice, please.