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Where is the pride in accomplishment, the fact that we enjoy different things now that we’ve matured? People have been using Estuary English for so long to prove that they’re down wiv de kidz, that they’ve turned into toddlers themselves. The way they dress is utterly infantile: if not onesies, jeans and trainers with everything, of course, it not occurring to anyone that in a professional environment they might want to smarten up.
More ghastly still is the recent trend for adults to go out in public in their pajamas. Chris Evans, the biggest child of the lot, managed it when out filming Top Gear – remember the days when television presenters used to wear black tie? – but it’s not just him. In January the head teacher of Skerne Park Academy in Darlington had to ask parents to stop doing the school run in their nightwear. What hope for their own children to grow up?
People also won’t leave home, such is their desire to remain a child forever. Yes, we all know house prices have rocketed and the stock is in short supply, but not so long ago the desire to forge an independent life had people sharing bedsits, taking rooms in houses, anything to strike out for themselves. Not any more. In November last year, the Office For National Statistics reported that 27 per cent of men aged 25-29 were living with their parents (interestingly, only 15 per cent of women of the same age lived at home), and you can’t help but suspect that the idea of mummy doing all the cooking and cleaning is what’s keeping them there. No surprise that this is also the age of the “commitment-phobe”. Men used to take pride in being a breadwinner and providing for a family. It is a sign of utter immaturity that so many now want to duck out of that.
No one listens to classical music anymore – tune in to Desert Island Discs and it’s quite shocking the choices some of the most successful people in our midst will choose. People talk happily about ‘boys’ toys’ as if it’s somehow admirable to be fixated on what children call vroom vrooms. It’s no surprise that one of the most childish creatures in literature, Mr Toad, was fascinated by fast cars. Art now comes in the form of neon signs or graffiti. Some of the most successful artists in the stratosphere have made their very considerable fortunes by churning out pieces based on Disney cartoons.
Where is the profundity in our society? Where are the signs that we have actually grown up? We are unique in that in Western Europe at least we have lived for several generations without warfare and perhaps life has become so easy for us that we have lost the ability to mature. We have adults playing in ball pens, colouring in their colouring books, never able to settle down with each other because that’s something adults do. ‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child,’ wrote St Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians, ‘but when I became a man I put away childish things.’ These days – some hope.
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