Adulthood

Civilisation depends upon the moral character of adult citizens but modern society is exposing children to ‘adult influences’ whilst bigger and bigger government is facilitating infantile behaviour amongst many adults.

 "For over half a century we have only known prosperity, never experienced depression or mass unemployment, never fought wars except on the edges at other people's expense, never known the vicissitudes or extremes of human existence, comfortable in a continent that has enjoyed, for the most part, a similar existence and, having turned its back on grand visions and big dreams, opted for the quiet life.

Yet it is extremes, personal or political or both, which teach us the meaning of life. Without them, the excesses of the young provide a little of the excitement otherwise lacking. The outcome is a growing vacuity and shallowness. Britart may shock, but it hardly provides us with a deeper insight into the human condition. Hollywood movies may entertain, but they barely ever enlighten. Thinktanks may wheeze, but they are never profound. New Labour may spin, but it sure lacks substance. An adolescent culture is one that lives on the surface, unencumbered by memory, light on knowledge and devoid of wisdom."

- Martin Jacques - writing for The Guardian.

One of the most troubling features of modern society is the way in which childhood is being stolen by our materialistic and over-sexualised culture at the very same time in which many adults are being infantilised.

The robbery of childhood

Sit a child in front of the television and they’ll be targeted by a relentless barrage of messages that were once reserved for adults. Intruder capitalism invades the family home trying to sell clothes, toys and foods that many mums and dads cannot afford (certainly not without working longer hours and denying children the one priceless thing they need more than anything else – a loving and attentive parent).

Many of the programmes that today’s kids watch - and the magazines that they read - champion premature sexual experimentation. These messages are only reinforced by schools that expose younger and younger children to (not very safe) safe-sex education. Safe-sex messages often get lost in incoherent public approaches to high-risk behaviours. For example, use of a condom is less likely after a teenager has got ‘out-of-their-head’ at one of New Labour’s deregulated ‘factory pubs’. The downgraded status of cannabis is only going to expose more young people to pushers also trying to sell harder and still more dangerous drugs.

The corrosion of childhood might yet take on still darker forms as biotechnology gives parents opportunities to breed designer babies. The Beyond Therapy report showed how a whole variety of emerging technologies (combined with competition between parents and between nations) might encourage the breeding of children with enhanced athletic and intellectual skills – and, by extension, a duty-to-abort fetuses thought less likely to be ‘useful’.  Children are no longer gifts but products.

Sixties socialism’s adolescent adults

If childhood is being swamped by the materialism and over-sexualisation of our age – adults are being infantilised.

Much of the responsibility for this lies with the ideology of sixties socialism. During the 1960s counter-cultural movements – that rejected the importance of character, faith and family – took control of left-wing political parties. Since the sixties much of Britain’s establishment and - by the efforts of social libertarians - much of the Tory Party has fallen under the spell of permissive thinking. The vigorous virtues have been ditched in favour of an individual’s right to use drugs, enjoy an adulterous affair or whatever else takes his fancy.

Laissez-faire private morality is one half of sixties socialism – the other half is the emergence of a huge and non-judgmental welfare state that looks after the people who have fallen victim to the self-destructive and relationship-wrecking consequences of the ‘new morality’.

Character

The growth of infantile behaviour is hugely troubling for conservatives. Conservatives understand that civilisation depends upon adult citizens who...

(1) care about their neighbours...
(2) have the wherewithal to provide for their families (see marriageable men definition) and...
(3) who know the difference between right and wrong.

For conservatives the good character of adult citizens could not be more fundamental to their vision of society.