On Childhood Expansion

“We’ve taught our children to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance.”

- DFW

Mankind has been increasing the duration of childhood over time.

Good or bad, I think extending this duration is a natural result of an advancing society. Technology and the market drive increases in childhood length. Norms are reset to view what were previously deemed adult humans as actually being childlike — intentionally constructed to delay the adulthood frontier.

Expectations by age get later and later. Drinking age goes up. Voting age goes up. Age of consent goes up. Child labor laws get stricter. Dependency on government-granted support increases. Boundaries that mark adulthood become less defined over time.

Increasingly egocentric parents are selfishly incentivized to prolong this duration because their identity gets attached to parenting activities. Their self-worth becomes conflated with how “good” of a childhood they are able to provide, creating a natural increase in over-accommodating the childhood experience over time.

I’m defining childhood as being exempt from the responsibility of your own survival. The quixotic day we can all stay in childhood forever will be the day we’ve removed all extant survival responsibilities.