Why do you think it takes 20 year olds in today's society so much longer to mature than the 20 year olds of the 1950s?

People are lazy now.

I think one of the reasons was that people got married and had children earlier in the 50’s. That put a lot of responsibility on people in their late ‘teens and early twenties, and they had to mature faster. In general, people are waiting longer to start families, which allows them more time to “play”.

I do think that young people are far more sophisticated than they were back then, though. The two are not the same.

In the 50s, the ‘teenager’ phase of life was only beginning to be recognised. Before that, it would be straight from child to adult and people would settle down and marry in their late teens/ early twenties more and be out in the workplace earning their living. So they had to mature faster. They weren’t necessarily feeling mature inside, but society meant they had to act like adults pretty soon.

Now we let people have this teenage stage, where people can be more free and enjoy themselves before the responsibilities of being an adult set in, as college does not finish until 21 and there is no pressure to get married and have a family like there used to be. You only have to watch films set in the 50s to see that teenagers were expected to be more grown up then- try ones like ‘The Last Picture Show’ or ‘Rebel Without a Cause’, they both show the start of teenage culture and how people started to rebel against this expectation that they have to live those sort of lives.

The 50s is actually the era where people started not having to mature as fast, so it is probably the last decade you will really see that early maturity occuring in most cases.

Plus you have to remember that people who were 20 in the fifties will remember the Second World War, which would have affected them and probabyl made them more mature- and they would be aware of the Vietnam War which started in the mid fifties and that a lot of people would have to go and fight in that- that would make anyone grow up fast.

Life is more complicated than it was in the 1950’s. People need far more life skills to get by on their own now than they did back then. Back then a single breadwinner could support a family so the husband worked and the wife ran the household. Now most families need two breadwinners to get by so both parents are overworked and constantly juggling their responsibilities. People used to be able to enjoy a comfortable middle class existence with nothing more than a high school diploma and a willingness to work hard. Now most people without a college education live in poverty so we need at least 4 more years of schooling to get by than we used to. Since the cost of living has risen faster than wages it is too expensive for young people to move out on their own. When I was in my 20’s I supported myself working part time in restaurants and had money left over for college and going out every now and then for beer and pizza; now kids working full time at unskilled jobs can’t even pay for food and rent with their wages so most of them still get help from their parents. Preparing for adulthood simply takes longer now. Also kids were freer back then. We didn’t have tons of homework like today so as soon as a few chores were done we were on our own. Parents didn’t have to know where their kids were every minute and the only rule was to be home by supper or by dark. They didn’t constantly worry about us and we survived. I think all this time to ourselves helped make us more independent. Now parents hover over their kids so much that they feel vulnerable and helpless without their parents.

So many kids today are SPOILED… but back then you hard to work for your cut… And in the last 60 years ethis have completely diminished…