> I think there is something to the idea that in the U.S., each subsequent generation is more infantilized, whether by less economic control leading to stunted

> I think there is something to the idea that in the U.S., each subsequent generation is more infantilized, whether by less economic control leading to stunted growth (delayed home ownership, marriage, etc.) or simply by an entire market trying to tickle their childhood nostalgia by creating consumer products and content that appeals to less-than-adult tastes. "Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret, and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis