Archbishop of Sydney

Slow To Grow Up

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
2/3/2008

Most Australians have never imagined a world without teenagers, without groups of self-confident adolescents moving through our shopping centres, beaches and sporting events with their ipods and mobiles.

In fact adolescence is an American invention, a consequence of most youngsters continuing their secondary education and then going onto universities or TAFE (Technical and Further Education) Colleges.

Access to upper secondary and tertiary education for most young women and men is a wonderful development and I regularly emphasize to youngsters that participation in the world of tomorrow requires education today.

As always every coin has two sides and long term studying does not induce maturity like a full-time job, or marriage!  Everyone has met a thirty year old adolescent somewhere.

Recently two North American sociologists claimed to have discovered another North American development, visible also here in Australia; yet another distinct and important stage between the teenage years and fully-fledged adult life, called “emerging adulthood” where education is continued, job switching is frequent, parental care extended (little or no rent, good food, laundry and phone services provided) and therefore marriage and parenthood put on the long finger.

Professor Christian Smith from the Notre Dame Centre for the Study of Religion and Society explains that many young people spend more than a decade between high school and marriage, often uncertain and undecided as they explore life’s competing options in unprecedented freedom from responsibility and in flight from religion.

The longer the period of instability and confusion the less likely a return to the religion of their teenage years.

Professor Robert Wuthnow is another sociologist of religion from Princeton University writing about 21 to 45 year olds, who has also analysed this phenomenon, claiming that the avalanche of new ideas and alternative life styles is presenting a challenge to the Churches as important as the entry of women into the paid workforce.

Religious practice in the United States is generally higher than in Australia (we have no equivalent of the Southern Bible Belt) and Wuthnow shows that the decline in regular worship there is almost entirely among those younger people who have never married.

He does not say much about premarital sex and cohabitation, but Smith acknowledges that sex, cohabitation and marriage are crucial factors, because young Christians who aspire to follow the traditional norms against premarital sex are living counter culturally in a hostile peer environment.

I wonder too how much the broken marriages of their parents induce an apprehension about permanent commitment and drive youngsters to seek happiness in premature sexual activity.

Both authors emphasis the lack of support our culture, including the Churches, offers to young adults after their first couple of decades.

Smith urges society to support marriage in the twenties, which has a good success record unlike teenage marriages.  Financial independence need not be absolutely essential before marriage.  He believes making and keeping promises produce authentic adults.