For My Grown Up Readers

The following is the first question and answer from an interview that has been posted at National Review:

‘Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, childhood was a phase, adolescence did not exist and adulthood was the fulfillment of youth’s promise. No more,” Diana West writes in her book, The Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. West is worried that “eternal youth” is “fatal” and recently took questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: You note that more adults watch the Cartoon Network than CNN. Surely, you’ve seen Jack Cafferty. Is this really a problem?

Diana West: Not if that were the only statistic out there indicating a seismic cultural shift in sensibility has taken place that has made us more adolescent and less adult. Other such factoids include: the average video gamester was 18 in 1990; now he’s 33; the National Academy of Sciences has redefined adolescence as the period extending from the onset of puberty, around twelve, to age 30. And, leaving CNN aside, here’s another cartoon statistic: One third of the 56 million Americans who sat down in 2002 to watch SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon each month were between 18 and 49 years old. (Nickelodeon, incidentally, thought its core demographic group was the six- to eleven-year old set.)

These older fans may be chronological grown-ups, but their taste reveals an affinity for kidstuff their forebears didn’t share and almost certainly wouldn’t understand. The point is, aspects of the maturation cycle have stalled, leading to significant changes not only in pop culture, but in ourselves as a people.

“There isn’t any clear demarcation of what’s for parents and what’s for kids,” a former Hollywood studio executive told the Wall Street Journal. “We like the same music, we dress similarly.” The Death of the Grown-Up explores how, when and why this phenomenon came about, and, on a deeper level, what it is doing to us as a society and nation.

To read the entire interview, ( it's good stuff) please go here:

Interview on The Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is