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.