Albert Mohler: Arrested Development and the Civilizational Crisis
Monday, September 24, 2007

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.

Diana West traces this development in The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization, and the book is not to be missed. She sees this pattern of arrested development as disastrous for individuals and for society at large.

The literature on extended adolescence is considerable already. The fact is that most young Americans in their 20's are unmarried (including almost 3 of 4 young males). Young Americans are putting off marriage and family and many are even moving back in with mom and dad after college. That much of the picture has been clear for some time. 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."
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