Are Kids Staying Kids for Too Long?

This article, by Camille Paglia of Salon.com, raises a number of interesting points, from politics to pop culture. One however, stuck out in my mind. Are young adults (ages 18-25) revelling in their youth too long? Paglia refers to the recent pop culture debacles of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan as examples of when parents hinder the development of their children but refraining from teaching responsibility.

"What links the Lohan and Hilton cases is the weird behavior of the parents -- either flaky and dysfunctional or overbearing and coddling. The Lohan and Hilton mothers seem to reject aging by trying to keep their daughters in developmental limbo. Paris in particular seems to have become a psychic prisoner, turned into a flash-frozen marzipan doll by her belligerently benevolent mom. Neither family is typical, of course, but are the Hiltons exposing an unhealthy symbiosis in recent American family life? Adulthood keeps getting postponed for white middle-class girls, who even after they arrive at college are obsessively linked by umbilical cellphones to their hovering parents, who want to shield their progeny from all of life's nicks and scrapes."

Although Paris and Lindsay's experiences are hardly American culture's common denominator, there is something to be said for teaching your kids to take responsibility for themselves at an early age, rather than allowing them to rely on you as a parent long as possible. Rather than "postponing" their adulthood, we should teach our children to embrace it, even if it means having our children endure a few of "life's nicks and scrapes" along the way.

If Paris and Lindsay are any indication, "developmental limbo" leads to nowhere - at least in their cases - other than rehab or jail.