25岁新的成年分界点？你还青春着！

But is there any danger we could be breeding a nation of young people reluctant to leave adolescence behind? TV sitcoms are littered with such comic stereotypes of juvenile adults
但是，如果下一代都迟迟不愿离开青春期，那会有什么样的弊端呢？情景喜剧中到处都能看到这种诙谐的长不大的人。

Then there are those characters who want to break away from their overbearing or protective parents or guardians and reach adulthood, but struggle to cut the family ties.
当然，也有年轻人渴望摆脱过于约束或宠溺的父母或监护人，希望尽快跨入成年，可也只能选择脱离家庭关系。

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, says we have infantilized young people and this has led to a growing number of young men and women in their late 20s still living at home.
弗兰克-福瑞迪是肯特大学的社会学教授，他说：人们总是把年轻人当孩子看待，结果造成很多年轻人到了20大几岁还住在父母家里。

"Often it's claimed it's for economic reasons, but actually it's not really for that," says Furedi. "There is a loss of the aspiration for independence and striking out on your own. When I went to university it would have been a social death to have been seen with your parents, whereas now it's the norm.
“通常借口总是经济原因，但其实并非如此，” 福瑞迪说，“对独立自主、自立生活的渴望大大削弱。我上大学那会儿，要是还跟父母住一起会被人耻笑，但现在这种情况已经屡见不鲜了。”

"So you have this kind of cultural shift which basically means that adolescence extends into your late twenties and that can hamper you in all kinds of ways, and I think what psychology does is it inadvertently reinforces that kind of passivity and powerlessness and immaturity and normalises that."
“所以才会出现这种文化转变——青春期甚至延长到了二十大几岁，而这有可能妨碍个人成长。我认为心理学无形中强化了这种被动、无助和不成熟，并且使这种现象普遍化。”

Furedi says that this infantilised culture has intensified a sense of "passive dependence" which can lead to difficulties in conducting mature adult relationships. There's evidence of this culture even in our viewing preferences.
福瑞迪还说，这种“孩子化”的文化加剧了“被动依赖”风气，给进入成熟成年期造成了困难。从人们的影视喜好上就能看出这种文化的盛行。

He does not agree that the modern world is far more difficult for young people to navigate.
福瑞迪并不认为现代社会已经艰难到让年轻人无法自立生存。

"I think that what it is, is not that the world has become crueller, it's just that we hold our children back from a very early age. When they're 11, 12, 13 we don't let them out on their own. When they're 14, 15, we hover all over them and insulate them from real-life experience. We treat university students the way we used to treat school pupils, so I think it's that type of cumulative effect of infantilisation which is responsible for this."
“我觉得问题并不是世界变得越来越残酷，而是我们从小就把孩子呵护得太紧。小孩到了11、12岁时还不敢放开让他们独自外出；到了14、15岁时，我们更是严加防范，把他们与现实生活隔离开来。我们现在对待大学生的方式就像以前对待小学生一样。所以在我看来，这就是‘孩子化’风气的症结所在。”