Many have commented on Kay Hymowitz' interesting but not overly-deep report in City Journal about the young single men of America - Child-Man in the Promised Land. A quote:
Now meet the twenty-first-century you, also 26. You’ve finished college and work in a cubicle in a large Chicago financial-services firm. You live in an apartment with a few single guy friends. In your spare time, you play basketball with your buddies, download the latest indie songs from iTunes, have some fun with the Xbox 360, take a leisurely shower, massage some product into your hair and face—and then it’s off to bars and parties, where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes. They come from everywhere: California, Tokyo, Alaska, Australia. Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?
Not so long ago, the average mid-twentysomething had achieved most of adulthood’s milestones—high school degree, financial independence, marriage, and children. These days, he lingers—happily—in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. Decades in unfolding, this limbo may not seem like news to many, but in fact it is to the early twenty-first century what adolescence was to the early twentieth: a momentous sociological development of profound economic and cultural import. Some call this new period “emerging adulthood,” others “extended adolescence”...
Of course it is a sort of extended adolescence - or at least of relative freedom from some of the big burdens of life. Shrinkwrapped finds the information to be as gloomy as does Hymowitz, but I am not so sure it really is. Our pediatrician used to say about our kids, "Don't worry. I can guarantee they will be out of diapers by age 18."
