After writing an essay about research indicating that childless people are happier than parents, I began to ponder the modern celebration of endless adolescence. There are websites devoted to deliberate childlessness, for example, as well as organizations that affirm intentional singlehood (and not in the monastic sense, for which, at least, there is some precedent in the early Church). There are websites for adult video gamers, for crying out loud, and of course every professional and college sports team has at least one website haunted by fanatics.

Some time ago I saw survey evidence regarding the milestones of adulthood, which researchers defined as: 1) leaving home, 2) finishing one’s schooling, 3) getting a job, 4) getting married, and 5) having children. Whereas in 1960, 65 percent of American males had passed these milestones by age 30, in 2000 only 31 percent had done so. The data for females was little different. Here we have an immediate casualty of America’s burgeoning inability to grow up — the fact that we have to use the clinical terms “male” and “female” more frequently, because “man” and “woman” must be applied with greater selectivity.

We are, it seems, a nation in regression. At least in the past we might have had the cold comfort of shame, but now it seems that the new mood is to proclaim childishness as a virtue. In general, however, I side with the writer at Happily Childfree, who proclaims: “If you don’t want those kids, it’s better to not have them.” I certainly don’t want to persuade any of that organization’s adherents to change their minds; we have enough self-centered people raising children already.

I have a friend in the Orthodox Church who tells me that the Church will not marry couples who express the desire to remain childless. The communion that yields life is so central to the Christian’s journey to godliness, in other words, that those who are unwilling to commit themselves to striving for it are judged unfit for marriage. It’s an idea that’s old-fashioned and revolutionary at the same time, and I think I like it.

At the core of this embrace of the Culture of Me, as I’ve written elsewhere, is the mistaken notion that individual happiness is the heart of human purpose. Hence the gleeful trotting out of research purporting to show that childless people are happier, or that marriage yields no real gain in happiness. These claims may well be true, but the people who bandy them about fail to discern that happiness is transient and shallow, whereas joy is deep and abiding. Joy is won — and here is the real bummer, for the permanent adolescent — by walking a path of suffering. This is why some people nod when they hear C.S. Lewis’s notion that the Christian life is sorrowful joy and joyful sorrow, while others shake their heads in puzzlement.

This is a question I always wanted my rhetoric students to address, although I thought the assignment might be controversial - and the assignees would be a little biased.  Here’s a quick precis of the current debate about making the change:

Arguments for 21: 1) It prevents deaths from drunk driving. 2) It prevents binge drinking. 3) Young people’s brains aren’t fully formed, so they’re more susceptible to alcohol. 4) It protects them from pressure to drink. 5) It saves taxpayers billions in medical costs and lost productivity. 6) The polls are on our side.

Arguments for 18: 1) The data on drunk driving are debatable. 2) Excess, not age, should be the issue. 3) The current drinking age “has forced drinking underground,” which results in binge drinking. 4) Other countries have lower drinking ages without harm. 5) If competence to drink requires a fully formed brain, set the age at 25, not 21. 6) If saving lives is paramount, why not “mandatory injections of alcohol for men between the ages of 50 and 65″?

Your thoughts?