I don't understand what exactly is the difference between adults and "pre-adults", in the author's opinion. Is it just that "pre-adults" haven't been "domesticated" by women who demand money and care?
A pre-adult is an embarrassing man-child who thinks playing videogames and posting anime on 4chan is something grownups do. It's a state of perpetual teen.
I've often asked myself whether some activity is useful, or entertaining, or just a waste of time. But I've never once asked myself whether it's "something grownups do". That smacks of ignoring any actual merits in favor of identity politics.
The article is basically a rant from someone who thinks their parenthood hobby should be universal, as though our little tribe of 6.7 billion still needs reinforcements.
Identity politics? No, it's a simple statement of maturity. Youth today live longer at home with their parents, for example, and adulthood is postponed longer than previous generations. Many of them justify it with bitterness toward standard expectations, such as with your comment about a "parenthood hobby" and your derision of population numbers.
"I will do X because my kind of people do X" is substituting stereotypes for reasoning. The very existence of standard expectations about how individual human beings conduct their lives is toxic, and I heartily approve of any resistance. Society can't possibly compensate you for sacrificing what you want in favor of what the majority is doing (whether or not they actually wanted to).
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If you don't have to be (fully) responsible for your survival, why not keep playing? If you know what you want out of life, go for it. However, some things take real effort, which can be a problem if you're not practiced where effort is concerned. Pay attention, though, as there are always those coming behind who ARE paying attention...
</soapbox>
Age 13 or 14 used to be a common age for performing "coming of age" (ie entrance to official adulthood) ceremonies. And girls were often married off at age 14 to 16, sometimes to much older men. Americans today generally find that practice appalling as well. The article does mention this earlier change, in somewhat different terms:
Pre-adulthood can be compared to adolescence, an idea invented in the mid-20th century as American teenagers were herded away from the fields and the workplace and into that new institution, the high school. For a long time, the poor and recent immigrants were not part of adolescent life; they went straight to work, since their families couldn't afford the lost labor and income. But the country had grown rich enough to carve out space and time to create a more highly educated citizenry and work force. Teenagers quickly became a marketing and cultural phenomenon. They also earned their own psychological profile. One of the most influential of the psychologists of adolescence was Erik Erikson, who described the stage as a "moratorium," a limbo between childhood and adulthood characterized by role confusion, emotional turmoil and identity conflict.
I have two sons, ages 21 and 23. They spend their days playing video games, getting the groceries and doing what household chores need to get done while I go off to a paid job. All three of us have plans to eventually make money online. All three of us remain frustrated (so far) with such goals. The primary reason for our on-going failure in that regard: I and my oldest son have a serious medical condition and most of our efforts go towards getting all there of us healthy after a lifetime of illness and relatively late diagnoses. So my family is part of this "phenomenon", and we are vastly better off for it than if they got jobs, got married, and all that other "adult" stuff. I think they are behaving far more responsibly and are far more independent-minded (in a healthy way) than most so-called adults of any age.
Given that our medical condition is one of the most expensive, chronic, incurable medical conditions you can have and that most of the medical expenses people like us typically incur are covered by insurance, state aid, federal aid, charities and write-offs (when people just can't pay and the hospital takes a loss), I think getting ourselves well is also the socially responsible thing to do, not mere self-indulgence. I remain frustrated that it gets so little attention (of the good sort -- I've gotten plenty of negative attention in online forums) and the diet and lifestyle approach to wellness is not more popular. I estimate there is about a billion dollars a year spent on the 30,000 or so people with CF in the US alone -- again, mostly being paid by other people in some fashion or another (ie your taxes help pay for this) -- and there is a recession on. It boggles my mind that no one seems to want to support this, promote this, etc.
Anyway, if (and that's a very big if) I ever get anywhere in terms of helping others with my condition get well, it will be due in very large part to my "lazy, good-for-nothing, unemployed bums of eternally adolescent sons who refuse to get real jobs". Even if I can't help anyone else, I cannot get well without the support of my unemployed sons. No, I don't want them getting jobs, thank you.
