July 2, 2008 6:40 AM

The American Second Adolescence.

Mary and I spend a lot of time talking about our teenagers now, because, frankly, I believe the most dangerous time in life transpires at two points along the timeline: 8th grade and that perilous passage between about eighteen and twenty-six or so. (I define anyone under twenty-seven as a teenager.)

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In 8th grade, I was vaguely aware that I was making a decision between leading a pointless life of girl-chasing and social posturing, or actually doing something. I decided I wanted to go to Harvard and be president of the United States. It didn't work out quite that way. I received the thick letter from Stanford, not Harvard, and I never heard the mysterious words, "bonesman, do you accept?" whispered over my shoulder at the snack bar in the student union. (Actually, I never even heard the words, "Synergy cooperative row house, do you accept a life of sprouts and hand-washed laundry?" either, but the point is that some percentage of thirteen year olds will descend into a life of thuggery, bad music, and really shallow ideas if they are not careful. Thirteen year olds need to start thinking about a plan, or, in this day and age, they will be covered with tattoos by their the time they are eighteen and preaching climate-change as a substitute for religion.

The other period of life that I see as dangerous is that period from eighteen to twenty six, the American second adolescence, where kids have a measure of independence, a driver's license, and a very strong sense of entitlement. (If the Bill of Rights were being written by the boy band generation, there would be a right to be free from boredom.) I don't think I recovered from the American second adolescence until I was about thirty-two or so. On one occasion, I griped to my brother, Scott, that the family wasn't helping out with our wedding very much.

"Why should they?" Scott said. "You don't do anything for the family."

The words stung, but I had to conclude that he was right, and I've seen this with lots of families--social occasions, parties, family trips are all planned around making the eighteen to twenty-six year olds happy, or wooing them back home at any price. Generally, people who are off at the community college, working, engineering their social life, looking for a mate, are really not part of the herd. They feel no real social obligation to the clan. They see the family as a tedious obligation and the pack of swirling singles as their primary identity--and it tends to make them very selfish. (There are always exceptions, of course. I know lots of people who never even went through the second adolescence, so chill.)

Sometimes, the second adolescence extends all the way into peoples' forties and fifties. Think about it. Seinfeld was a show about urban singles who were still acting like teenagers well into their middle age. Kramer? Jerry? George? Elaine? Out there in Seattle, Fraser Crane and his brother Niles were nerds, of course, but they were both emotional teenagers. What is the Office, really, but a bunch of teenagers selling paper? Have you ever met someone on, say, their fifth or sixth marriage? I can almost guarantee there's a teenager somewhere inside there, miffed they didn't get invited to the beach party. Liz Taylor, for example, never really survived the second adolescence.

You could write a book on the reasons for this, but I think a great deal of it has to do with the mythologizing of youth, and singlehood, and the never-ending hunt for the perfect lover. Instead of building a collective "City on a Hill" (an enterprise for grown-ups), instead of making the old virtues heroic, "Cheaper by the Dozen" has been replaced by James Dean in a black leather jacket, or trash-talking half-wits like Eminem and Chris Rock.

Tom Wolfe, author of Bonfire of the Vanities, was on to something when he said that Americans tend to think, and act, on the basis of perceived fashion. We like to think that we go to college to learn how to think, but it really teaches us how not to think, how to absorb the prevailing wisdom from the master bonesmen. (What else can you call Al Gore's equating global warming denial with holocaust denial, or Ben Stein's experience with the academy on the issue of intelligent design?)

With respect to second adolescence, the point is that the powers that be, in the world of the arts, have made marriage, family, and loyalty into second rate virtues. What do celebrities like Brad Pitt think they are teaching kids when they pretend to be good parents in Babel, but live out a life of betrayal in their off-screen life? (I'm not sure whose fault it was, Brad's or Jennifer's, but you know what I mean: celebrities believe they are not alive unless they are on a sexual/romantic hunt for the next conquest. As one observer put it, when you watch the Academy awards, you are seeing a roomful of high school drop outs. Think about it. It's true.)

Eventually, most people survive the second adolescence. God's truth wins out over Hollywood's, but..

it's a perilous journey.

More of the Farm Journal -- July 1, 2008