Do you wear the same clothes as your
17-year-old niece? Listen to the same music (using the same technology)? Lust
after the same movie stars and obsess over the same TV series? Did you just
forget to grow up, or are we in the process of redefining adulthood?
Either way, it looks like the generation
gap is narrowing to the point of non-existence. It used to be that a big part
of growing up was rejecting the world of our parents and moving on - or at
least out - in order to create our own. But now, in our 30s and 40s, we are
often so similar in tastes and behavior to kids in their teens and early 20s
that there is little for them to reject.
Our parents listened to music we sneered
at; wore clothes we wouldn't be seen dead in and didn't get our slang. They
stayed in one job their whole lives, seldom travelled, and insured everything -
from the contents of their (only) household to their lives. They saw themselves
as adult and settled. We saw them as trapped. They saw self-sacrifice as a
virtue; we see it as an affliction. They measured their status by their
stability and respectability; we measure ours by our flexibility and freedom.
We are what we are because we defined
ourselves by what our parents were not. But while we insist on our right to
live the way we want to - with few commitments (to jobs, relationships or
locations); living on credit in a way that would have horrified our parents;
constantly in pursuit of what makes us as individuals happy rather than seeing
ourselves as part of a cycle, or something bigger than ourselves - are we
rejecting adulthood, or just redefining it?
What does it mean to be a grown-up? We'd
probably all agree that it - at least - involves being economically
self-sufficient; emotionally self-aware; capable of having and nurturing a
long-term relationship and being able to take responsibility for another person
and/or living creature. But does it also mean, as it would have in our parents'
generation, no longer studying; being of responsible and sober habits; and 'the
putting away of childish things', the pursuit of stability and the rejection of
hedonism?
Well, maybe not.
For various reasons - including how the
world of work has changed, and the fact that grown-up children no longer leave
home as soon as we did - many people now in their late 30s, 40s and 50s have
real friendships with people much younger (and older) than they are. We define
ourselves less by our age and more by our interests; more by what we have in
common than what sets us apart. If that means that we go out to listen to live
music or watch stand-up comedy twice a week because that's what interests us,
it doesn't necessarily follow that we will be bad parents, or that we will
underperform at work the next day. Freelancing and working flexitime have had a
significant impact on how we live our lives: it's perfectly possible, for
instance, to go out until the early hours, get the kids off to school the
following morning, go back to bed and then fire up the laptop later that
afternoon and work on into the evening until you're done. And that's exactly
how many of us are choosing to live our lives.
It's not just from the top down that the
generation gap is disappearing, either - it's also from the bottom up. When our
children leave school, they no longer leave home. It's too expensive. And what
would be the point? Their washing gets done, their beds are made, their food is
put on the table, there's wine or beer in the fridge, they can sleep with their
partners under our roofs. So why would they want to go anywhere? There is no
need. We socialize with their friends, we listen to their music. And we all
start to occupy the same blurred, ageless, undefined adulthood.
Is it a problem? Hard to say. We might need
to wait and see the kind of adults our children become before we can judge our
own success as parents, which is, after all, probably the only definition of
what it means to be a grown-up that really counts.
Oops, I forgot to grow up!
I'm not sure when I first realized that who
I am no longer matched the person others see. Perhaps it was when we flew to
the UK to attend my parents-in-law's 50th wedding anniversary. Feeling out of
my depth, I skulked over to my 19-year-old nieces to share a joke about how I
wasn't going to cope until the wine was flowing, and they smiled demurely and
moved away from their weird middle-aged aunt from Africa. I'd merrily assumed
we were on the same team, part of the 'young 'uns', champing at the bit to get
the party started, when all they saw was a woman old enough to be their mother.
"Whateva", as my eldest likes to
say; the discombobulation that set in then is now always with me. I will bask
in the flirtatious grin of a handsome young waiter, only realizing that his
solicitous attention is due to good upbringing ('be kind to your elders') when
I retire to the ladies and experience the usual shock of seeing a face in the mirror
that is no longer the one I think of as me. My waist keeps thickening; my arms
have turned flabby; my tits are sagging, but inside my head I am still the
carefree hedonist I was in my twenties, much to the chagrin of my 13-year-old
daughter. I know she would like a more grown-up mom, one who didn't start
flailing her arms about and shaking her hips to Katie Perry and Rihanna (Please
mom, not in public), or, after a long Sunday lunch, jump in the pool with all
her clothes on, or start blubbing when Justin Bieber sings 'One Less Lonely
Girl', Just you wait, I want to say to her; the yawning age gap you see now
will diminish as the years go by When I was 13 my mom was almost three times my
age - ancient. Now that we are both over the 45 mark, the 22-year age
difference seems irrelevant.
When I was little, I thought my parents had
it all - power, knowledge, fun. I couldn't wait to grow up. I was going to live
in a palace, on a steady diet of sweets, consumed as and when I pleased. Even
then I didn't associate growing up with responsibility, but with the freedom to
do exactly what I wanted.
School was a grim endurance contest but I
finally left home, moved cities, finished a tertiary degree, got a job.
Financially independent by 22, I was by most definitions now an adult. But -
waking up hungover most days, in a room strewn with dirty clothes, wondering
how I got home, with nothing in the fridge but a bit of old dope cake wrapped
up in foil - certainly not a grown-up.
They say youth is squandered on the young.
I wasted most of my twenties in a state of self-loathing and, with the peculiar
arrogance of the insecure, thought myself well above the hoi polloi. I was a
prickly little beast, and kept myself well tranquillized with prodigious
quantities of alcohol and a variety of drugs. By 26, an age some see as the
tipping point into adulthood, I was less responsible than I had been at 13 -
the straight-A student with long plaits who was terrified of losing her school
blazer was now unemployed, with a gleaming bald pate, and stomping around in
steel-toed Doc Martins.
I had just buried my half-brother who had
been understandably enraged by the cancer wasting away his 33-year-old body,
Watching his caged fury, 1 promised myself that 1 would start looking after
myself, that it was time to finally grow up and put aside my foolish
predilection for fun at all costs. But this - the fear of becoming a
responsible, boring adult – only spurred me deeper into decadence, and more
years sped by in a blur.
Pregnancy was the first period of
responsibility in 12 years. And God knows it was every bit as boring as I had
imagined it would be. For eight dreary months I avoided seeing anyone, I
struggled to make conversation, I realized that far from being the extroverted
party animal I had always assumed I was, I was actually a shy introvert. But I
didn't want to be curled up in the corner reading, working, or waiting for
sleep; I wanted to carouse, to be dazzled by lights and thumping music.
With my second pregnancy, three years
later, I faced up to the fact that with motherhood, as with employment, some
semblance of responsibility is required. Today there is always food in my
fridge, and the dirty clothes strewn on the floor are dutifully picked up and
washed. But I still wake up hungover on many mornings, having danced around the
dining room table with my playful husband, and toss the occasional plate out
the window in a burst of bonhomie. I still have no pension plan, no retirement
annuities. No hospital plan, and (don't tell the kids) no life insurance. Why
feed an industry that thrives on fear?
Perhaps we only truly become grown-up after
we have buried our own parents and, as orphans, finally step up to the plate of
adulthood. If so, perhaps I may retain my Peter Pan status, as there is every
chance that my strong, vibrant mother may outlive me. In another sign of
immaturity, I wonder if this will not indeed be better, for who better to wipe
the drool from my mouth than the woman who first changed my diapers as a baby?
As long as I have control over the morphine, A pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding
child, to the very end.
