Human nature is best understood in terms of “neoteny,” a term which comes from two Greek words meaning “prolonged youthfulness”.  Human beings have retained the juvenile features of our primate ancestors: Biologists define us as “a sexually mature fetal ape” since we resemble infant apes much more than we resemble adult apes.  Moreover, human beings are born very immature compared to our relatives and our sexual maturation comes much later.  Biologists believe that natural selection has shaped human development by greatly prolonging our immaturity.  In this way, we preserve the plasticity and the potential for learning found in young primates. St. Augustine likened this developmental delay to archery: we more we pull the arrow backwards, the farther it can go forwards.  Perhaps our delayed maturation helps to explain our intellectual and cultural achievements? 

We see an analogous process of neoteny at work in human social and cultural history.  In the past, children often began to work and to marry as soon as they were physically capable of doing so.  Today, by contrast, we postpone working and marrying for decades.  We look upon child-laborers and child-brides with horror.  By many measures, young people today are much more immature today than in even the recent past. The markers of adulthood, such as marriage, jobs, and kids are attained at ever older ages.  We joke today that a fetus is not viable until after it graduates from medical school.  Indeed, the whole institution of compulsory universal public schooling is designed to delay maturation.

We are very conflicted about our children: on the one hand we want to prepare them for adulthood and the other hand we want to protect them from adulthood. What is called “helicopter parenting” reflects our desire to protect our children from the dangers of the adult world and to keep them safe; at the same time, however, helicopter parenting prolongs the immaturity of children.  Tiger Moms, by contrast, are focused on preparing children for adulthood, even at the cost of missing much of the joy of childhood.

Colleges today face the same sets of conflicting impulses when it comes to regulating student life and learning.  On the one hand, we offer students the sexual freedom of adults.  But when students predictably abuse this freedom, we treat them as children in need of “consent training,” restrictions on speech, and other kinds of therapeutic and disciplinary control.   We want students to become politically engaged at College, but then we attempt to protect them from the consequences of politics by restricting their speech so that no one is offended.  Now, even in classrooms, professors are being asked to provide “trigger warnings” before any sensitive or controversial ideas are introduced.  Colleges are providing female and minority students “safe spaces” where they are protected from unwelcome words or ideas.  Do students need this kind of “protection” or are they merely being coddled?  Do these protective measures prepare students for the rough-and-tumble of adult life or do they block maturation?