Growin' up too fast...or too slow...or both...

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on growing up in our culture.

Here's the thing: Endless are the studies and countless are the shrill advocacy groups, politicians and bewildered grandparents lamenting just how harshly kids are raised these days, how we're sexualizing them at younger and younger ages, front-loading them with far too much stress and hardship, and drowning them in the ugly realities of the world before they even hit puberty.

Possible upshot: We're robbing our children of any vestiges of true innocence, never giving them a shot at stability or happiness before they're stamped with a Disney branding iron and force fed to the demons of K Street, violent videogames, porn, prescription meds and oral sex on the school bus field trip. Perilous!

One of the reasons I don't pray is that my prayers for oral sex on school bus trips were never answered.

[...] ecause gosh golly, life is hard and rent is expensive, and who needs that when your parents let you move back home after college and live there well into your 30s, so you never have to fend for yourself, can't cook and don't know how to drive a car because you spent so much damn time on Facebook and MySpace that you never grew a real personality?

I lived at home until I was 26. See rent, expensive. Musta been ahead of my time. I do know how to drive a car. Sorta. Damn things sure are hard to lean inta turns. Probly wouldn't if we'da had all the social networking, but we had to go out to try to get laid and fail. I will let others comment on my personality, and it's none of my business what they think.

Possible upshot #2: A whole generation stuck in eternal, insufferable adolescence, emotionally stunted and immature, never fully desiring (or requiring) to settle down, "get serious," get a life. Marriage? Kids? A career? Maybe someday. Maybe when I'm, you know, 40.

So, which is it? Are we eternally adolescent or prematurely old? Reluctant to grow the hell up, or taking on way too much, far too quickly? Can it be both? I think it might be both.

Speaking for only myself, growing old at any age sucks and I'll stick with "eternally adolescent", thank you very much. I think we had it easier way back when than kids do today.

Enjoy.