Parents,

Thursday Thoughts has taken a break for the summer (I have been thinking on Thursdays!), but a recent blog post by Al Mohler is too important to miss.

On Monday, Dr. Mohler reviewed a book called The Death of the Grown Up. The premise:

This much is now clear — Americans are taking a lot longer to grow up. As a matter of fact, this society has developed a period of extended adolescence that is completely without precedent in human history.

Actually, that’s not news. Sociologists and cultural analysts have realized this for some years.  What apparently makes this book unique is a strange corollary:

What Diana West adds to this analysis is her perceptive observation of how older adults now act like adolescents and identify with adolescent culture.

As she explains, “More adults, ages eighteen to forty-nine, watch the Cartoon Network than watch CNN. Readers as old as twenty-five are buying “young adult” fiction written expressly for teens. The average video gamester was eighteen in 1990; now he’s going on thirty.”

This is a disturbing trend, unique in world history:

As West notes, teenagers of an older generation tried to identify with adult culture. Now, the tables are turned. In her words:

That was then. These days, of course, father and son dress more or less alike, from message-emblazoned t-shirts to chunky athletic shoes, both equally at ease in the baggy rumple of eternal summer camp. In the mature male, these trappings of adolescence have become more than a matter of comfort or style; they reveal a state of mind, a reflection of a personality that hasn’t fully developed, and doesn’t want to - or worse, doesn’t know how.

Her look at America’s adults is not very encouraging. She writes about “parents who need parents” and parents who facilitate the misbehavior of their teenage children. Few seem to know what an adult is supposed to look like, or how an adult supposed to act.

Too many parents have assumed that their teen needs them to be a friend and a peer more than a parent. Thus, too many teens don’t really have a parent. Teens need to be challenged to rise to maturity and adulthood rather than be led to the assumption that adolescence is preferable as they watch their parents take on teenage clothing styles, pastimes, and lingo.

I don’t think this problem is common in our church, but we must constantly guard against the insidious creep of culture into our homes and lives. Let us call our kids forward to maturity, teach them maturity, urge them to maturity, and celebrate maturity. May we share with Paul this same urgency and intention in preaching the gospel:

“Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” Colossians 1:28

Categories: Thursday Thoughts For Parents, five15 blog