thread: 2005-08-30 : Coming-of-age Fantasy for Adults
On 2005-08-31, Meguey wrote:
Wo/Manhood != Adulthood, as has been said. I feel confident we can all point to 16 year olds who are more mature, farther along on Kohlberg's stages, and are making better choices for themselves than other 40+ year olds. It may be that the exceptions prove the rule, but there are two points I want to raise.
One is the shift in what consitutes adulthood; in some of the times that show up in gaming most often, a girl who had gone through menarche was considered adult and marriagable, even though she was 13. Many Bar and Bat Mitzvah still have "today I am a man /woman" in them, although the person saying that is only in 8th grade and is clearly not an adult in our modern Western culture. Also, you have increasing numbers of people doing well into their 30s what their parents did in their 20s and their grandparents stopped doing by their late teens, in terms of trying on different relationships and careers and living places. "30 is the new 20", and so adulthood gets pushed back, adolescence expanded.
The other point, and perhaps more pertinent to the game idea, is that 'coming-of-age' is not tied necessarily to a certain age. The story mentioned "and he never laid a hand on me or my mother again" could happen with the speaker being 12 or 22, or older.
About generational relationships: a second issue to explore is the shift from parent-child to adults-with-kin-ties. Children are highly emotionally enmeshed with their parents, adults are not or at least are less so. There is a letting go that must happen on both sides in order for the child to become fully an adult. I think I became an adult the moment I realized it wasn't my mother holding on to me and trying to run my life, but my desire to have her in that role and my fears of being on my own in a bigger sense. For more on healthy and unhealthy enmeshment, I very highly reccomend "Toxic Parents" by Susan Forward. Understanding what keeps one an emotional child is another side of the coming-of-age story.
