Peter Pan And Us: A Brief Reflection On Those Men Who Refuse To Grow Up

-Essay-

HAMBURG — There is a special kind of person, and let’s be honest, they’re mostly men, who are making a comeback of sorts: adults who just don’t want to grow up.

They were probably never gone, but right now they really can’t be overlooked. There’s Justin Timberlake, for example, who was pulled over by a young police officer while driving drunk a few months ago. But the U.S. singer didn’t really see the crime as his own, but rather as the police officer’s: the police officer didn’t recognize him

Then there’s 75-year-old German broadcaster Jan Hofer, who films an empty gym in an Instagram reel and captions it: “How I go to the gym and see all the women who are hotter than mine.” And Canadian singer Justin Bieber turned up to an event in a grey sweatsuit and Crocs, his hood pulled over his head, with his top-styled wife Hailey Bieber — next to him, she looked like she was taking her child to school.

Young professionals are everywhere on the internet. Bros with wrinkles and young women who flirt on TikTok about not being able to do grown-up things, saying they are “just a baby.” Millennials are particularly under suspicion, wrapping themselves up in their cosy blankets and wishing they were back in the womb of childhood while the world outside is coming to an end. Many have made themselves comfortable in this role.

I come across them all the time in real life, too. There was the broad-shouldered guy in the visitors’ stands at the Stuttgart game against Mainz in the German soccer league who exuded the impulse control of a toddler. I was the child in the situation. He made it clear with threatening looks that I wasn’t allowed to cheer for my club. It reminded me of a sentence from my first boyfriend. He was 20 and studying mechanical engineering. I was five years younger than him. Nevertheless, he liked to tell me how mature I was for my age.

A personality type

Simply put, anyone who glorifies not wanting to be an adult as a personality type is an embarrassment. It almost always happens at the expense of others. That’s why celebrities are particularly drawn to it. Thanks to the agents, tax advisors, chefs, lawyers and assistants who keep their agendas, they can be children without a second thought and romanticize the past at the same time.

The Kaulitz brothers, of the German music band Tokio Hotel, made it clear 10 years ago that they neither wanted to be sensible nor grow up (it’s a good thing that Tom Kaulitz has since married model Heidi Klum, who is 16 years older). American TV personality Paris Hilton sang last year in her song “Stay Young” that growing up is like being tamed.

Psychologist Dan Kinley came up with a term for this: Peter Pan syndrome.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is fighting like a defiant child on Twitter with bad memes. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio is looking for a younger girlfriend just in time for her 26th birthday. Canadian singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne has always been nostalgic (“Here’s to never growing up”). For all of them, adulthood is apparently something between boring, uncreative or too serious. In any case, it’s bad.

Which brings us to privileges: Staying a child is above all a male thing. Boys will be boys, of course. Serious question: Do you know any women who sometimes sigh and say: “Oh, how much I miss being a girl?”

Boys will be boys

I remember sitting on the balcony with a group of friends a few years ago. It was dark and we were talking about our youth. The men reminisced rather wistfully about adventures and friendships. We women were quick to remember eating disorders, how we looked after siblings and how we learnt to jam the key in our hand so that it worked as a weapon.

For the boys, the memory of their youth was one of freedom. Freedom that is in danger of being lost today under the pressure and expectations of adult life. Some men mourn that feeling for the rest of their lives.

Peter Pan syndrome is characterized by always looking to others for responsibility

In the 1980s, psychologist Dan Kinley came up with a term for this: Peter Pan syndrome. It is characterized by always looking to others for responsibility, having problems asking for help, and finding it difficult to regulate emotions. Like a child who is not allowed to eat a Kinder chocolate egg for breakfast, men with Peter Pan syndrome punish you with silence when they feel they have been treated unfairly — instead of entering into the conflict and only then being able to resolve it.

Perhaps this is because boys simply have more idealized and uninhibited childhoods to begin with. Research repeatedly confirms that boys tend to be encouraged in wilder characteristics and girls are more likely to be encouraged in sensible ones.

The Danish author Tove Ditlevsen wrote about her brother who, unlike her, had a “tailor-made childhood,” whereas she never really felt like a child. I think the adult expectation of not being allowed to cause problems, of being independent and sensible, often mixes with being a girl at a very early age.

Growing up is worth it

The cliché is as follows: Children are allowed to… be loud, for example, and jump on the trampoline and cry. They are allowed to color outside the lines. They can play in the mud and say pee-pee and poo-poo. Adults have to… go to work and know what they want. They must promise to be faithful until death do them part. They have to call the power company and accumulate property and go for cancer screenings.

I think it’s the other way round. Of course, being an adult comes with obligations, worries and a lot of responsibility — for yourself, your children and your ageing parents. But when you grow up, life can become really great. Precisely because you have both: the common sense to understand things and the freedom to enjoy them. Enjoyment is an adult concept. As long as it’s not at the expense of others.

And if things really aren’t funny, at least you know what to do. Unlike children.

Can children go into a karaoke box and shout “Ich liebe das Leben” (“I Love Life”) by Vicky Leandros into a microphone with their friends? Or decide they want to watch TV for a whole weekend? Recently, a friend and I rented a hotel room, threw on some raggedy clothes and watched winter sports, then between breakfast and check-out, reality TV. We had a stomach ache from the supermarket sushi, but it didn’t matter. The serious side of life is often quite funny. It’s fantastic when you can just do what you want.

And if things really aren’t funny, at least you know what to do. Unlike children. They scream and bite and hit. Otherwise they are helpless when they reach their own limits. They don’t realize that therapy can help against despair and that no feeling lasts forever. And they can’t buy a bottle of sparkling wine, cycle to a friend’s house and talk about how scary it is that their parents are getting old or that they still don’t know whether they want children.

For me, growing up is like being given a label-making machine that I can use to label everything.

Fear of the future.

Heartache.

Self-confidence.

Growing up is work, adulthood even more so. But it can make you freer. You just have to want it.