MID- & LATE CHILDHOOD

By: Joshua Glenn
July 28, 2023

Josh’s New Wave/punk band, c. 10th grade

One in a series of posts elaborating on Josh Glenn’s TEN STAGES OF MAN hypothesis — as first floated in January.

TEN STAGES OF MAN: CHILDHOOD 00–03: PROTO-CHILDHOOD | 04–13: EARLY & MID-CHILDHOOD | 14–23: MID- & LATE CHILDHOOD / “TEENS.” ADULTHOOD 24–33: EARLY ADULTHOOD / “TWENTIES” | 34–43: MID-ADULTHOOD / “THIRTIES” | 44–53: LATE ADULTHOOD / “FORTIES.” MIDDLE AGE 54–63: EARLY MIDDLE AGE / “FIFTIES” | 64–73: MID-MIDDLE AGE / “SIXTIES” | 74–83: LATE MIDDLE AGE / “SEVENTIES.” OLD AGE 84 & up: OLD AGE / “EIGHTIES” & up.

What follows are preliminary observations and autobiographical data. I’ll continue to update this post, and we’ll see if it coheres into something like a theory.

14–23
MID- & LATE CHILDHOOD
“TEENS”

This post is about our (cultural, not calendrical) “teens.” In my schema, 13–14 are cusp years between your “teens” and the previous phase of life. Perhaps that isn’t so difficult for you to agree with. But what about my contention that 23–24 are cusp years between your “teens” and the next phase of life.

Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? But I stand by this statement. A young person of 22 or 23 has a lot more in common with a 14-year-old than any of us likes to admit. Adolescence, by the way, is not a life stage. Adolescence overlaps the later phase of Early & Mid-Childhood and the beginning phase of Mid- & Late Childhood.

Ages 14–23 were, for me, junior high school, high school, and college. I started 8th grade at Boston Latin a month before I turned 14, and graduated BLS when I was 18. A month before I turned 19, I started college.

I met Susan, to whom I’ve been married now for nearly 30 years, when I was 19; we started dating shortly after I turned 20.

Photo taken (by John Cradock) during my year off from college.

Susan and I took a year off from college, then graduated in 1991. I turned 23 shortly after starting my senior year.

During that year, a cusp year between two macro-stages of life for me — Childhood and Adulthood — I began publishing a zine. (I talk about Luvboat Earth here.)

In our culture the average undergraduate student, after completing four years of courses, graduates college at the age of 21 or 22. And the average age at which people move out of their parent’s home is between 24 and 27. Daniel Levinson, a psychologist and pioneer in the field of “positive adult development,” describes ages 16–24 as the “Early Adult Transition” phase. And research that led to Jeffrey Arnett’s theory of “Emerging Adulthood” reveals that most Americans between the ages of 18 (the apex, in my schema, of Mid- & Late Childhood) and 25 (the first non-cusp year, in my schema, of Early Adulthood) are unable to give a definitive answer to the question, “Are you an adult?” Their answer tends to be: “I have aspects of being an adult but I also have aspects of not being an adult yet.” Right!

Terms I’ve seen used for the years from 18/19 through 23/24s include: “transition age youth,” “delayed adulthood,” “extended adolescence,” “youthhood,” “adultolescence,” and “the twixter years.” I don’t like how pejorative-sounding and/or vague most of these are. I like Jeffrey Arnett’s term “emerging adulthood” best, I suppose, because it’s descriptive, not pejorative. It suggests that the person in this phase is becoming an adult… but they’re not quite there yet. Which is more true to our experience than the notion that we arbitrarily become adults at some legal age.

MID- & LATE CHILDHOOD

Categories

Tags