This concludes my series on growing up. It’s a long one, but I had a lot to say. If you’re just coming in, I’d recommend that you read parts one and two first.
We have it easy. I did, and most people my age growing up in this country do too. We’ve been babied, and the thing is that we don’t even realize it.
Growing up was not always what it is now. Now we expect children to begin to mature around the age of ten, and we expect them to rebel and run wild during their teenage years, and then after they’ve worked the rebellion out of their system we expect them to settle down and act like they’re adults by about the time that they’re twenty-one. And then as a reward we make it legal for them to drink, but that’s a different thought for a different time.
But it used to be different. A hundred years ago it was completely different, and two hundred years ago the growing-up process was such a different thing that it seems harsh to us now. I don’t think that children were called “teenagers” quite as often, if at all, because there was no useful distinction to be made by using that word. You were a child, and then you were an adult. That was all there was to it.
Being a child was different, though. As I understand it, children two hundred years ago were expected to act quite a bit like adults, and in some ways the expectations for their conduct were stricter. They made almost no decisions for themselves. They had to learn to help their families with whatever the family trade was, and when they were old enough they went to school, and when they came home from school every day they still had chores and duties to help their families. I suppose I am thinking principally of farmers when I say this, but there used to be many more families living and working on farms than there are now. Children today might have chores, but these tasks are nothing like what was expected of children two hundred years ago.
They were instructed not to speak unless they were spoken to. My father used to say to us what Laura Ingalls Wilder reports that her father said to her when she was young: “Children should be seen and not heard.” I remember this most when I was younger and there were just two of us, and my sister and I were much better at being heard than seen. Our parents were quite lenient with us on that point, but I remember thinking how hard it must have been to be a child when Laura was young.
Children spent all of their childhood learning to be adults. In their early teenage years, they were expected to cross over very quickly. They might go to bed a child and wake up the next morning an adult. Suddenly all the expectations of grown-up-ness were thrust upon them, and they had to assume grown-up responsibilities and act like their parents. It might have been a bit of a rude awakening, but not quite as much as we imagine now, because they had been training for this day ever since they could remember. These children had never been babied.
You must also remember how slowly things changed at the time. Now we don’t mind too much when children throw everything their parents thought was good out the window; in fact, we expect it. I’m not talking so much about hard-hitting things like morals, although it happens with that too. Small things get tossed out and reinvented, things that are ultimately unimportant: clothes, music, ways of talking. Children grow up and do all these things totally different from their parents, but we accept that it’s just the way things are.
But it hasn’t always been. In fact, this sort of change is a recent development. It wasn’t uncommon in the nineteenth century for children to like pretty much all the same things their parents did. They listened to the same music, wore the same clothes, talked the same way. Things changed, but very slowly. It seems so foreign, but it makes tons of sense when you consider the way they grew up. They went from being kids, having their parents tell them how to do everything, to being grown-ups, and it happened almost overnight. There was no period of time set aside for them to experiment and decide to be different. They became adults while still under the childish influences of their parents. They carried their parents’ tastes with them into their adult life. Their children did the same, as did their grandchildren. Nothing changed. Well, not much.
There were practical reasons for growing up in a hurry, of course – it wasn’t just that the adults were trying to stifle change (they probably didn’t even realize that they were). If you were a boy, it was important for you to be an adult as soon as possible so that you could help out in an adult capacity. If you were a girl, you were a burden on your parents for as long as they had to provide for you. You had to get married so that you would have a husband to provide for you and so that your parents could concentrate their limited resources on raising the rest of the brood.
This is a gross overgeneralization, and I know that. But this was reality for so many people that it’s almost scary to consider. I remember reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books when I was young, and I remember one thing that she records which shocked me and made a huge impression.
In the book By the Shores of Silver Lake, when Laura is thirteen, she goes with her cousin to retrieve the laundry from the woman whom her cousin’s family pays to do their washing. (By the way, to Laura this is unheard of and rather amazing – that they would pay someone else to do laundry! You can imagine how shocked she would be by the way we do laundry now.) The woman who does the wash says to them, “You must excuse the way I look. My girl was married yesterday.” When Laura’s cousin is incredulous, the woman says proudly, “Her Pa says thirteen’s pretty young, but she’s got her a good man and I say it’s better to settle down young.”
Laura and her cousin return home very sober. They are both nearly the same age as the girl. Their families of course are not pushing them to marry quite so young, since thirteen was early for getting married even at the time. But they are struck by how close they are to adulthood, and remark about the married girl that “she can’t play any more now.”
Maybe that’s why children push back against growing up for so long. They can’t bear to stop being young. We don’t think of teenagers as children, but we don’t consider them adults, either. They represent a time of life that has developed out of an age of luxury, and a world in which everything changes so quickly that their culture is drastically different from that of their parents.
This demographic has contributed to the world in tons of significant ways, of course. They’ve brought us music that continues to shock the older generation, modes of dress that seem downright scandalous to their parents, and their desire to push forward has made all kinds of useful technology possible. The way our world is structured today, these youth have a place and a purpose. In their own way, they have an important role to play. But I still maintain that they are being babied. They don’t have to be adults yet. They’re still kids, but with a freedom not afforded to children. They have all the privileges of grown-ups without any of the responsibility.
I was married seven months ago, two weeks after my twentieth birthday. I stopped keeping track of the number of people who remarked how young I was. Historically, though, I’m really on the late end of things. The people who still think of me as a child are the ones who have babied my generation and allowed them to remain children when their historic counterparts were well into adulthood.
It would be a rude awakening indeed if all of the teenagers of the twenty-first century were suddenly told that they were adults and must start acting the part. They would rebel. But two hundred years ago, rebellion was not the rule but the exception. Children went to bed in the blissful dependence of youth and woke up with the stern, cold expectations of adulthood. It wasn’t quite as bad as all that, but it was hard. They lived differently, but they weren’t so different from us.
Perhaps it was the lack of a transitional period which made children long for Peter Pan’s Neverland. Perhaps it was the extending of a time that many children would rather skip over that makes 13 going on 30 so hilariously relevant. Have we been doing it all wrong? Was the sudden adulthood too abrupt? Is the teenage transition too long?
I don’t have a fabulous answer. But think about this, if you would. Be as careful as you can with the people who are still growing up. It’s not easy, and it’s a process that will shape the rest of their lives. Ask yourself: when did we decide that children needed to spend so much time learning to be adults, and if they really do need it, why do we push them to act older than they are?
Some adults are still growing up, too. I know I am. But I refuse to become sightless, blind, and well-wrapped-up. I’m going into grownupishness with my eyes wide open and trying not to forget that I was once a child. In some ways, I will never quite leave that behind me.
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