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If you were advertising for a parent, you couldn’t come up with a better job description than “must be prepared to worry twenty-four hours a day”. I often thought of this quote—from a character in a Stephen Fry novel—when my kids were small. The little monsters seemed to spend their whole time trying to injure themselves, whether by choking on hot dogs or cavorting on thin ice. Now they are big, I have a different worry. What kind of adults will they be? 

Many of my friends fret that their kids will never grow up. More precisely, they worry that young people these days are slower than previous generations to achieve the traditional markers of adulthood, such as moving out of the family home, attaining financial independence and starting families of their own. “Infantilised”, a bold new book by Keith Hayward, argues that today’s younger generation are indeed less mature than their predecessors were at the same age, thanks to a culture that devalues personal responsibility and promotes silliness. I think this is wrong. In a recent piece for our culture section, I explained why.

Robert Guest, deputy editor

Editor’s picks

Is Western culture stopping people from growing up?

Kidults are all around you

The rise of “kidulting”

Experiences that let adults act like children are booming

Why are more British adults still living with their parents?

It’s not just to get their laundry done

Why young men and women are drifting apart

Diverging worldviews could affect politics, families and more

How worried should people be about Generation Z?

Two new books fit into a familiar pattern of the old fretting about the young

How the young should invest

Markets have dealt them a bad hand. They could be playing it better

What is screen time doing to children?

Demands grow to restrict young people’s access to phones and social media