Summary: Adultolescence

In the article Adultolescence, the idea of how we live our lives is challenged. The article starts out by stating all the societal differences between todays culture and the last time we doubled human life expectancy. Sonia Arrison states that since we now have more time to be alive and experience the world, the age at which we do things has increased. Now I know I talked about this in my discussion post, but Arrison claims that she believes society could eventually be in the era of the 70 year old mother. Not only do I believe this is not feasible, but even if it was, I do not believe that it is safe. Many health risks for newborn children increase drastically past age 40, so who knows what would happen if we had 70 year olds delivering children? Not only would the rate of health risks for newborns increase, but the rate of death during labor would increase significantly as well, sending children into the world with no mothers. Arrison goes on to say that stretching out the human lifespan gives rise to new maturity periods in our lives. She talks about how adolescence (a period between childhood and adulthood) arose when people started living longer, and that a new concept, Adultolescence, has now come to fruition in society as a time between adolescence and adulthood. This made me wonder, why do we keep pushing adulthood back? Why have no stages of life arisen when people take on new roles after adulthood before settling into the golden years? One possible explanation for this is the deterioration of the human body physiologically. As we age, our bodies break down and fail to perform as perfectly as they once did. Perhaps the reason we as a society are experiencing new diseases and breakdowns is because people are around long enough to come in contact with them. Perhaps as we age medical technology will progress in such a way that we do not experience these troubles, opening up a new window of our lives. One famous paradigm is that when we are young we have time and energy, but no money. When we are adults, we have money and energy, but no time. Finally when we reach the golden years we have time and money, but no energy. I believe that as the culture of society shifts, we will finally be able to reach a point of life when we have time, money, and energy. We will have the wisdom and experience of elders with the energy of millennials, and life will open up in new ways.

The Nuclear Family

The nuclear family is a topic that I personally always found to be a unique issue for all families. In my family, my mom is actually the "bread winner" while my dad was usually the one that was home in time to run me to practice or wherever I needed to go. Both my parents are very hardworking, my father is a diesel mechanic (often working 60 hours a week doing hard manual labor) while my mother recently retired from her human resources position at a bank up on the Main Line outside Philly (commuting 2 hours each way 4 times a week) so it would not really be possible to say one parent works harder than the other. The important part is that both of them did everything they could do give me everything I could want, and I am not just talking about money. If your parents don't work enough, you wont have enough to get by, but if they work too much, children miss out on important developmental interaction and instillment of family values. Since my mom had such a far commute, she was not home until later during the week, and as a result, my dad and I spent a lot of time together and although he did not make as much money as my mom, the irreplaceable knowledge and interaction he gave me was something I don't think a lot of families think about. The article posted talks about disparity of income and preprogrammed roles in society, when the most important thing parents can do for their kids is to actually be parents and teach them the things they cannot learn at school or buy in a store. Viewing one parent as more productive than the other in the professional world is part of what fosters societies view of gender roles being so specific. What we learn starts at home, and many of us grow up to be like our parents, intentional or not. If a child grows up with a father who pays the bills and a mother who does not contribute to the income of the family, that child will be more likely to grow up believing the role of women in society is to remain domestic and take care of the home. Then when the child grows up and experiences life other than the way it was learned to him, he will feel as if he is not doing a good job. Now as previously stated, every family acts differently and all people learn things in different ways, but the things we learn as children are the most ingrained in our minds. Society cannot move forward and progress without changing the things closest to peoples hearts and minds. If a child grows up in a home with both parents contributing to the income equally while both parents also contribute to the home culture equally, the child will have the best chance of growing up and viewing all people equally. Another point of this article that I find interesting is when men do not know how to perform the most simple household tasks like dressing a child. Maybe this is just me speaking from my life, but who dressed you when you were a kid? How did they do it? How do you dress yourself? And at the very least todays society has access to the internet to figure it out.

Modern Love

Our generation has so many more resources than previous generations. Resources, like the internet, can help with anything from researching a topic to finding the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with. However, there are people who believe that love should be a natural occurrence and that we shouldn't rely on outside sources to find the one who is right for us. In todays day and age, people are used to finding everything as soon as they need it and having the world at their fingertips. I believe this is detrimental to love because feelings cannot be rushed. People can only feel the way they do and nothing else, which is why it should not be expected for all relationships to work out perfectly. Online dating provides a caveat to this theory by introducing the idea of flooding our inboxes with "matches" and tons of options of people who feel the same way we do. The problem is this is not a new idea. Believe it or not, there are thousands of matches sitting right in front of all of us, all it takes is a little communication. Personally I have never used online dating, but I question how people who do communicate in person after they finally meet. Is it awkward at first? Do you feel a need for space from one another because you are used to not having to talk face to face? One benefit I think online dating provides is an area of extra trust between two people. Shows like Catfish illustrate the possibility that the person you met online is not the person they say they are, and to finally meet the person and realize that they are who they say they are, at least in my mind, would add an extra degree of trust. At the end of the day, I think it comes down to the type of person you are. Some people feel more comfortable behind a screen, while others need face-to-face interaction. Perhaps people who use online dating prefer to communicate behind a screen and thats why they have better luck using online dating as opposed to meeting face to face. In this day and age, people are so accustomed to texting and emailing, so maybe it makes sense that online dating is gaining so much popularity.

Youtube, I tube, We all tube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VqsbvG40Ww

This video displays the reactions of various small children when proposed with simple gender role stereotypes. It is evident that many of the children are actively aware of what gender category they fall into and what is expected of both genders by society. One thing that is unclear from the video is whether the children are actually sure of their identity or if they are merely voicing society's expectations for them. This video is most likely not meant to target children, but to display how early these thoughts form in the minds of children to adults and others who are generally curious. While this video does a suitable job of illustrating the time in a persons life they become aware of gender roles, it does not do justice to the fact that some children merely repeat what they are told and do not actually believe what they are saying because if "grown-ups" say it then it must be true, right? This does not mean that all of the children who were interviewed in the video actually would feel comfortable identifying with said gender roles. The video does not do a good job of shedding light on what age children start to become aware that they might not want to fit into one of societies socially constructed genders and that they might be different. Is it really right to propose a template of how to live and act to individuals whose minds are so easily molded? Are children capable of defining these lines on their own? What would happen if no such guidelines were introduced and children were merely  left to define their personalities on their own?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srnaXW9ZgZc

This video contradicts the first video because the little girl does not want to fall into the societal gender role proposed to her. She questions, "Why do all the girls have to like princesses? Some girls like princesses and some like superheroes..." In the first video, the children all wanted to play with the toy that they felt they were supposed to play with, where as the little girl in the second video clearly does not want to follow the lead of so many girls her age. Now a girl who wants to play with superheroes instead of dolls doesn't exactly rewrite the book on gender identity or sexuality, but it shows how people don't always want to walk the paths that society wants them to walk. While it is entirely possible that the little girl in the second video had a different upbringing that the children in the first video, the message is the same. The second video is most likely meant to reach the average American, since it was aired on CNN news. Although CNN has been slotted as the televised "left" to Fox news on the "right", the target audience most likely was not the only audience to see the video, seeing as how the event made its way to youtube. The child in the second video demonstrates how society is moving in a way that opens up so many opportunities for all groups of people. Perhaps if the trend continues this way, the world will have more male fashion designers and more female comic book writers, not to mention countless  other occupational possibilities.