Today, on the way in to work I heard a story on NPR about children who are staying in their parents home well into their 20’s. A young man was interviewed, and he sounded sincere, and I can sympathize with him on the fact that times are tough, jobs may be hard to find, and continuing to live with momma is certainly one way to keep a roof over your head.
400 years ago, the average person lived to be 35 years old before dying. The average work week was 80 hours. By the time a girl was fourteen years of age, she could expect to be married off to a man her father chose for her, and she should expect to be with child by the age of 15. She would be lucky if she survived childbearing.
If you were aristocracy, life was a lot different. You could still expect to be married and bearing children with a person you hardly knew, and still at a very early age, but because of cleaner living conditions, better working environments, better food and access to at least some kind of rudimentary health care, if you made it to age 21 anytime between 1500 and 1750, you likely would live to be in your mid fifties to early 60’s.
Most citizens of the United States today would perish should they have to live in conditions anything like what common citizens of Western Europe underwent for much of the period between 1300 and 1800. For much of the 100 years between 1300 and 1400, merely surviving the successive waves of the black plague that swept over the continent meant you were either of very hardy stock, extremely lucky, or a hermit who lived alone in the woods.
Many of the costume dramas that have been popular on TV the past few years, such as the Tudor’s, or the Borgia’s have the handsome leading men played by actors who might be in their late twenties, or early 30’s. It would be unseemly today, to acknowledge that some of these players were barely post-pubescent when they were married off, or at latest, mid-teens.
Over the years, we have demanded less and less of our children. They are no longer required to be adults by the time they are thirteen. Even today, Jewish people still perform the ceremony of Bat and Bar Mitzvah, where a girl is deemed of age at 12, and a boy at 13. In ancient times, these markers were not just ceremonial as they are today.
Having a productive lifespan of only two or three decades in our more distant past certainly meant that people had to live life faster. Children were expected to help with their keep and that of their families by doing whatever work they could perform.
I’m not sure that we haven’t gone too far though, when you see young people in their mid-twenties who continue to flounder, unable to determine a direction in life. Are we really helping them by letting them continue to depend on us for their living and well-being?
Even as recently as thirty years ago, by the time a child graduated from high school, it was expected that he would leave home. If not for service in the military, then for college, or for a job in another town. Certainly, by age 21, a young person was expected to be self-sufficient and no longer dependent on their parents for room and board and sustenance.
I think something is broken with our society. We are becoming softer and softer, and should really hard times come along, we have not given our young the necessary tools they need to overcome and succeed.
Just because we can now expect to live eight or nine decades or more, does not mean that we should not continue to teach our children how to be self-reliant, and like the robin in the back yard, perhaps boot them out of the nest so they can learn to fly.