General Housekeeping
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September and October were ridiculously busy for my husband and myself. It was the season for people to finally tie the knot. During these types of gatherings, you get to meet interesting people and catch up with old friends you haven’t seen in some time.
At one of the weddings, I had the unenviable displeasure of getting to know a group of gentlemen who were life-long childhood friends that attended the wedding of the couple. Occupying an unclaimed table, we got around to conversing and exchanging polite, friendly small-talk. The men had varied careers: a doctor, a military officer, a forklift operator for a big box store, a financial adviser. As a social introvert, I have learned through the gauntlet of adulthood that is trial and error how to conduct small-talk and develop deeper conversation, a useful skill in practice with clients who are, at times, conversationally limited to one word answers.
And thus it was revealed, in full display, how utterly boorish these men were.
Of the four men present, three were unattached, and one had been dating a girl for four years. When politely asked if they were going to get married soon, the man offhandedly without a hint of self-consciousness, replied that she wasn’t really mature enough yet (at 28), and he thought he’d give her another four years to work out if she wanted children — he himself already at the prime age of 32. The other three men admitted they never wanted to get married — one even glibly joked, though half-seriously, that there was nothing better than sleeping in till 2 p.m. on a Sunday. “Why would I want a girlfriend when I can do whatever I want?” he asked. The realization that his comment had landed poorly did not tickle his brain.
The conversation revolved around somewhat adolescent topics, of drinking and reminiscing about boyhood experiences of high school, to the exclusion of the other four adults at the table, all four of whom are not only conversant in pop-culture, movies, books, and politics, but poetry, philosophy, and theology.
We tried to have deeper conversation and even lighter-hearted topics, but to no avail, the four gentlemen split around the table resorted to more base humor and stories of their college youth, leaving us to wonder,
How had we managed to be seated at a table with four men, from vastly different walks of life, all around the country, who could not converse with other similarly aged adults, on experiences they had that extended beyond high school and college?
Of the groom, none of the men could really speak to who he was, his character, or tell a story that invited others into knowing and caring for the man more fully—his kindness, his steadfastness, his patience and love for the bride, and even his good-natured sense of humor about a small fender bender earlier in the year.
They had nothing to say about someone for whom they’d flown hundreds of miles and paid for fuel, lodging, and food to pay witness to his wedding. Despite three of them in possession of professional degrees and extensive experience — one an officer, one a doctor, the other a Masters to achieve his certification in finance, countless hours of expertise honed—none of them could evidence anything remotely interesting or intelligent in terms of opinion outside of low-brow, low-hanging fruit, the desire to get to the bar and get drunk, or sequester themselves away from other adults and reminisce about a boyhood that should have been left behind long ago.
As sad and damning as that story is, the fuller, broader context speaks to a larger pattern I’ve seen over the years since I began living on my own. The trouble with essays such as these is that one draws generalizations to inform a broader opinion and diagnosis, for humans are complex and unique unto themselves, and paradoxically, often fall into similar categories of failures, foibles, and follies, providing endless fodder for humorists, comedians, and essayists over generations to mine.
There’s been a general growing abdication of responsibility in adulthood, and all the trappings related, for quite some time, the largest share within Millenials and Zoomers. I’ll save my criticisms of Gen X and the Boomers, with their own forms of failure, and contributions to the current cultural and moral rot for some other rant, though as our forebears, perhaps they bear some responsibility. If Sam Bankman Fried is any indication, he’s a star example of poor formation bearing disastrous fruit and consequences on unsuspecting people. I don’t say blame the parents all the time — people have free will to accept or reject what they are raised with — but an unexamined life is no excuse for poor behavior.
Which brings us around to today’s point.
The men have an immaturity problem. Cue the cheering women who get onto the stage, fists held aloft in agreement. If the men in the above example are a problem, what of the women? They too present their own challenge and a deserving condemnation to boot.
One summer, I tagged along with my older cousin on our uncle’s boat, hitting up bars around the lake during a weekend visit in Wisconsin. One conversation I was a part of, with one of her college friends, gave me the first inclination that something was … amiss with the people in my age bracket.
Standing around the kitchen, she self-consciously relayed laughing about how she couldn’t cook and hated to, but she could clean the hell out of her apartment. It was an odd self-effacing comment, especially for someone who appeared so self-confident in her 25-year-old skin, a large gap to my 22-year-old mind. How was this woman not able to perform a basic function — and take a sense of pride in her incompetence? The humorous confessional bit aside, it was the first time I’d ever heard someone admit with self-conscious humor that she couldn’t take care of herself in one of the most basic ways.
Adults, to my recollection, being working class, had never much complained let alone joked how they struggled or failed to manage what was simply expected of you to do. As I moved through the professional world upon moving to D.C., the self-effacing admission, with a sense of relief rather than embarrassment, that one did not know how to perform basic life skills, became common.
It was tittered by young women at parties, how hard it was to cook, seeking sympathy for the difficulty of getting laundry done, how much of a chore it was to do housework, getting up earlier than 8am, with a conspiratorial grin and admission. It was a strangely shared affectation and the pretension dripped. Perhaps it is a holdover from the Protestant work ethic, or the Midwestern culture of tough, practical, bootstrap people I grew up around, but the regular complaint about the difficulty of basic chores sounded precious, asinine, and trite.
In various conversation with men at parties, and even dating various ones over the years, I’d found a similar dynamic, though some of the basic skills differed. The men struggled to know how to keep after folding clean laundry, keep their apartment (or bedroom)—which doesn’t even border on the same comparable size to a house—neat and orderly; could barely do basic cookery, though I wager some of the men I’ve met are better cooks by sheer fact that they can cook compared to the numerous women who … can’t.
In one humorous aside, my husband’s spiritual director, a Dominican Friar, on hearing that I could cook, commented to him how lucky he was to be marrying woman who knew the skill at all.
The men can’t change the oil, perhaps not a tire; have no handy skills to speak of, such as using a hammer, screwdriver, fix plumbing, do basic mending—a skill my brothers, brother-in-law, and myself have all mastered to varying degrees—cannot pitch a tent, start a fire, read a map, or manage a budget.
The women, by comparison, often, do not do these things, let alone do them well. I have a handful of friends who are exceptions to this, but among both the seculars and the Catholics—who seem marginally in the barest sense, better at it—quite a number are, well, incompetent. And it ranges across ages from twenties into their thirties.
Not because they have some handicap, but more often, are apathetic.
For those who may be experiencing some internal defense and criticism in this condemnation, please understand this:
Being unable to complete articles of daily living (ADLs) is a sign of some kind of issue, whether it is depression, anxiety, or some form of mental illness or mental disability that interferes with one’s ability to competently take care of oneself.
To undescore this, here is the criteria for the basic ADLs1:
Basic ADLs
The basic ADL include the following categories:
Ambulating: The extent of an individual’s ability to move from one position to another and walk independently.
Feeding: The ability of a person to feed oneself.
Dressing: The ability to select appropriate clothes and to put the clothes on.
Personal hygiene: The ability to bathe and groom oneself and maintain dental hygiene, nail, and hair care.
Continence: The ability to control bladder and bowel function.
Toileting: The ability to get to and from the toilet, using it appropriately, and cleaning oneself.
The category of competency falls under what are called Instrumental ADLs2. Emphasis my own, grammar mistakes theirs:
The instrumental ADLs are those that require more complex thinking skills, including organizational skills.
Transportation and shopping: Ability to procure groceries, attend events Managing transportation, either via driving or by organizing other means of transport.
Managing finances: This includes the ability to pay bills and managing financial assets.
Shopping and meal preparation, i.e., everything required to get a meal on the table. It also covers shopping for clothing and other items required for daily life.
Housecleaning and home maintenance. Cleaning kitchens after eating, maintaining living areas reasonably clean and tidy, and keeping up with home maintenance.
Managing communication with others: The ability to manage telephone and mail.
Managing medications: Ability to obtain medications and taking them as directed.
These criteria come from the National Institute of Health, and is used in assessment for understanding how mental functioning impacts the ability to complete these tasks. It determines level of competency and whether or not we recommend clients to be bumped up to a higher or lower level of care, based on their capacity and ability to complete these tasks in their life for themselves. As in, residential treatment facilities due to intellectual disabilities, including issues with executive function — controlled primarily by the prefrontal cortex, also responsible for regulation of emotion, making decisions, and organizational capabilities, among other faculties.
I use these criteria to rule out certain issues: ADHD, intellectual disability and mental handicap, learning disabilities, processing and auditory disorders; while none of these are my specialties, it helps to rule-out what isn’t causing a problem. The average adult should be moderately functional in the ability to complete all of the above listed areas, with varying degrees of competency. If the person cannot complete them on a daily level, we address their level of functionality and, depending on the specialist, work toward helping that person gain functionality.
In doubt, I showed this list to my husband while writing this week’s newsletter, and he concurred, that a large proportion of the young adults that we had met, both secular and Catholic Christians, including the men in the example above, did not meet at least half of the instrumental ADLs.
Most of the people that I run through in my mental Rollodex do not have ADD/ADHD, Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, severe, moderate, or mild intellectual disability, psychosis, or severe Schizophrenia, developmental delay, or learning disorder, to name a few categories I do use to determine functionality. These folks do not meet those criteria in almost any of those categories.
And yet.
It isn’t a lack of mental ability to organize, an inability to understand tasks and order them appropriately to the hours of the day. What it belies is an underlying immaturity and difficulty, or refusal to accept our responsibilities. I don’t have an answer as to why, generationally, this is, but I have my suspicions.
At its root, there is an underlying attitude of adolescent thinking, and my guess is, it is rooted in an arrested stage of emotional developmental. Not all models and theories that are taught in school are a good fit, or at best, even a perfect one. To support this thesis, I’m going to work from Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development.
The model is imperfect, but I use it when performing a mental status examination during an intake assessment. Where, mentally, is my client at, on a developmental level? As my former supervisor used to say, “How old, mentally, do you think they are?”
The attitudes I see in peers and in clients follow this brief, in-exhaustive list. :
That’s too hard.
That sounds like a lot of work, or, That’s too much trouble to learn/do/perform.
Oh, I don’t like X. That’s my boundary. (Usually related to chores, maintenance, learning a skill they don’t have/haven’t mastered.)
I have X, it makes it difficult for me to do activities. I just can’t do it.3
Yeah but I just don’t want to.
I hate doing X, I’d rather just leave it and take care of it later.
It’s not a big deal, it’s not bothering anyone. (Leaves problem to sit for days, weeks, or in some cases, months…)
I’m comfortable with the way it is now, why would I change/do x?
Ugh, I have to get up early. (Earlier than 7 or 8 a.m., possibly later in the morning)
Dating is so hard; I’m just going to enjoy being single and focusing on my career.
Or, The men are all immature and don’t know how to behave/how to act/how to treat me right. I’m happy being single.
Or, The women are all so demanding. They have these unrealistic standards/demands/are selfish. Being in a relationship is just too hard/it’s not worth the cost.
Oh I hate/don’t like cooking cooking, I order out all the time.
Lack of industriousness, motivation, or willingness to take care of:
Basic home/space cleaning and care, inside and outside.
Managing logistics and transportation, or being unwilling to go great distances out of the way due to incentive cost.
Managing communication consistently, also, oddly, being freaked out about phone calls.
I might add a second list, of behaviors, self-admitted and observed:
Intellectual rationalization of lack of basic skills
Undeveloped ego that attacks criticism instead of working to develop critical insight
Apathetic attitude toward genuine “self-actualization” and growth, seeks shortcuts
Adolescent in emotional life and retreats into child’s complaint of life’s difficulties, inconvenience, stress, complains without recognizing change is in self-first
Seeks others to affirm/comfort, or seeks little comforts often, shrinks from criticism
Finds fault in others, rather than saying “I must change because I don’t like myself” to “Others must change because it is hard for me to change, and the fault is with them”
Withdraw, rather than engage, with others
Hides nature of true self from others, and especially from themselves through denial
As one or more of their refrains roll out in a conversation, in my head I think, Well, no shit it’s hard, because it is.
In addition, a large pushback has been an unwillingness to learn to how to complete these tasks in the first place. Often the charge is thrown at men who live in continued college-level-esque squalor, with varying degrees of cleanliness. Conversations will lapse into others displacing responsibility when a legitimate concern or criticism is leveled of a behavior, habit, or incident that has occurred. I hear it in the recollections and attitudes of clients, and men and women in my age group and younger.
I refer back to Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development.
As we age, we go through different developmental stages that, upon mastery, enable us to move to the next stage through childhood into adulthood. Let’s take a look at boxes four and five, from the bottom— the blue and green:
Industry vs. Inferiority
Industry vs. Inferiority4 occurs approximately between ages 6 to 11, or 7 to 12, depending on the textbook you’re reading. In this period of child development, children are learning skills and are assessed for their ability to complete those tasks. The main question of this stage is “How can I be good or bad?” and ultimately informs the child in their skill of competency. In this stage they may begin to notice that they are better at skills than others, or may struggle compared to others. It is during this stage that parents and caregivers are to encourage their child’s ability and from which issues of self-esteem about being “good” or “bad” have their root that manifests later in adulthood.
If we do not master “competencies”, or receive and internalize criticism for a poorly done job as “you are bad”—meaning “you are a bad person”, it frames human value on a performance, conditional based measure.
For a person with a poorly formed core, either by perception or in reality — not all homes are loving, and some people do take things harder than they need to — this core message eats into a healthy ego formation, leading to those issues of self-confidence mentioned earlier.
Identity (Intimacy) vs. Isolation.
In this stage5, if the person has a healthy, well-formed ego and has confidence in their ability to complete tasks and work on their skills toward mastery, they move into Identity vs. Isolation. The core question of this stage is “Will I be loved” or “Am I loved?” At its most basic, it is a question of “Am I loved for whom I am, as I am?”
From this stage, we begin to form our identity of who we are and what we believe, and during the adolescent and teen years, experiment and rebel, to an extent, against the values we have been raised with. We take on new behaviors, try things on, habits, people, and attitudes, until we have determined sufficiently what our values are, our core beliefs, and how those two, along with a well-formed sense of self, create our core identity and allow us to understand that we move separate from others through the world. These values and beliefs form our structured framework for how we believe or understand how the world works. We form attachments and relationships, develop community, and expand our “world” into deeper connections of friendships and partners.
Eventually, we move from the world of “me, my, I” to being other-person focused, to “us, we”. For those who are not well-formed and have a weakened ego that leads to co-dependency or narcissism, that struggle to move beyond issues outside of the self to focus on others becomes harder and harder to accomplish as time goes forward.
Part of what allows this development is the formation—emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and even physical—of ourselves as people.
I would posit some of the current malaise and apathy is everything these days seems passé, or more importantly, due to the convenience of much of life, there is no incentive cost to put in the effort. Everything is hackable, or at least, there is a menial peon to hire to do the work for you: buy your groceries, pick up your food, deliver your packages.
But then the reality of life hits. You can’t always hire someone to do everything for you, and letting things sit in squalor or mess can lead to consequences say, of having your electric and gas cancelled.
Most of us at some time will date, even date seriously, and many may end up getting married or cohabitating. At some point, we all have to pay the piper for the things we did not learn or learn to do when we had the chance before we get into a relationship, either with roommates, friends, or lovers. When pets and/or children are added to the mix, all of the chores and life skills — having a budget, doing laundry, sweeping and mopping, dusting, paying bills ON TIME—seem overwhelming. And because these skills were neglected or put off, the conscience begins to rub at the back of your mind about how incompetent you are.
Let’s phrase this a different way.
Taking care of yourself and striving for competency is a life-long struggle. There comes a point in the mastery of any skill, where drudgery feels less of a chore because you have mastered achieving the skill or the task enough to become good at it.
There was a quote in a knitting book that I read many years ago (I knit, among other old-fashioned hobbies)6.
“As a fortune cookie once told me, ‘Everything is difficult until it becomes easy.’”
To have mastery over skills, one has to have the belief that they are capable to achieve competency. To do so, there needs to be a sacrifice of the old attitude, I can’t to I can or I am able.
My husband made the point, that the attitude of “It’s too hard”, “It’s difficult”, “I can’t” becomes habituated to a point that it’s automatic and reflexive. It becomes a mantra, an easy fallback without true reflection or real consideration of whether that person actually has the inability to complete the task—due to time, lack of strength, or knowledge. Some tasks are not able to be completed, but the difference is between the sacrifice of the now for the betterment of your future self, vs giving into the tyrant of the child that has taught themselves, over and over, that they can’t, reinforcing a lie— sometimes that stems from learned helplessness, from selfishness, laziness, or an old wound—that protects them.
If ego has not matured enough to be willing to “die” to itself for the sake of others or for their “future self”, they will be stuck in that cycle of refusal and avoidance. Period. What happens when this failure to develop is pointed out or called forth from the dark recesses of denial and dismissal in which it hides?
In cases where the person is being criticized for the lack of skill or an even a failure to do whatever the thing is, the instinct is to protect itself from attack. In return, it attacks, defends, dismisses, blames, or deflects, even turning it back on the “accuser”, even if the accuser is the conscience, and the person distracts with something paltry to avoid facing the reality of their own failures, leading to shame and self-loathing as one cycles further down into a rabbit pit to hide the truth of their own disappointment, usually, in themselves.
All this is done in service to protect the ego, frozen in time, that has never grown. It is like the heart from the C.S. Lewis quote that never risks loving7:
“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
The ego is wrapped in dismissals and denials, hiding in paltry amusements and distractions, intellectual accolades and career achievements to prove to itself its worth, utilizing psychological tricks and life-hacks to “optimize”, a sleight-of-hand to fool themselves into self-mastery, but it is a soul unwilling to face the ugly light of truth: their own fear of inadequacy and true lack of competency and skill.
And in truth, at least on this earth, our hells are man-made and self-inflicted.
Iron sharpens iron: The abdication of stewardship
If you are raised in a culture and surrounded by people who do not model the formation of good habits, of cleaning up after yourself, of caring for your house and keeping it in order, of being responsible to others, keeping your word, and showing up when you say that you will, of making a point to remember — it is immensely hard to break free of that culture and those ingrained habits if you have not been shown another path toward doing things a bit differently.
My guess is, that many of the young adults — some do not do this, but there’s a large swathe I have observed — are surrounded by others of a listless generation, with families, teachers, and community members that have continually reinforced a lot of these behaviors by normalizing them. Monkey see, monkey do.
Given the general attitudes of many leaders and politicians, and the infection of narcissism, of “You do you” without any of the deeper critical analysis of the problematic philosophy that sits behind that phrase — where all criticism is dismissed with personal preference and “truth” as the god that dictates decisions, rather than a genuine assessment of wants vs needs and setting those wants aside as pleasures — of people who JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain) or DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender) their choices, rationalize or intellectualize, it is not any real wonder that the current and next generations cannot take an honest accounting of themselves and perpetually wallow in adolescence.
Instead of taking up the banners, we regress into mollycoddling ourselves, inhabiting an infantile emotional life. We distract and are mollified by a thousand entertainments. Instead of doing the hard work of changing ourselves, adolescent adults demand other adults change for them and accept them in their weak state.
Why grow up?
To complain. To whinge and whine. To distract from the suffering of uncomfortable feelings. To shirk off duties. To pout, put off, avoid. To displace blame or responsibility, and play the “But you do this” or “You said that” game.
This is how children behave, and it is understandable for their developmental level. Their conception of the world is limited because they struggle with the nuance and complexities of life. For where they’re at, that’s alright. With time, they grow into understanding that life is not always fair, our lives do not end neatly tied in happily-ever-after rainbows, and that life is work.
Their world is simple, but shallow, and limited in their scope.
Do you really want to live that kind of shallow life?
If your answer is yes, or more likely, an excuse of “X is too hard” or a rationalization for your behavior, then there’s nothing I can do for you. Stop reading, shut off whatever device you are using, and find something else more pleasant to numb the corners of your mind.
The battle is lost, because it is a battle you have to fight for yourself, of yourself against yourself, over and over. You’ve already given up by asking someone else (me, a stranger on the internet) to be a stand-in parent and make the decision for you.
Otherwise, you have to make the life or death decision to change. Because you do. Your life depends on it, quite literally, either by living it and taking up the banner, or slinking away from the demands of it.
I leave you with a poem by Edward R. Sill.
THIS I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:--
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields.
A prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge,
And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel--
That blue blade that the king's son bears, -- but this
Blunt thing--!" he snapped and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.
Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.
Pax Christi 🕊️
This week, I have a couple of things I’d like to recommend that came out this past week, for your reading pleasure:
Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals by
, in which there is an interesting view that too many intellectuals, who fall often into the nerd category, are not generating enough intelligent, thought-provoking pieces of art or literature. I argue people have to be well-read outside of limited niches or pulp fiction, and willing to push themselves. Without the incentive to do so, they stay willfully stuck.How I Read by
, which provides a thoughtful and honest take about really expanding your horizons, that neatly ties in with the cultural commentary of the above👆piece.
National Institute of Health, Activities of Daily Living.
Ibid.
This is more attitude, not actual ability or capacity.
Kendra Cherry, MSEd, Verywell Mind, Industry vs. Inferiority in Psychosocial Development: Stage Four of Psychosocial Development, December 29, 2022.
Kendra Cherry, MSEd, Verywell Mind, Intimacy vs. Isolation: Psychosocial Stage 6, February 28, 2023.
Knitting, crocheting, spinning wool into yarn, cooking, making sauerkraut, jewelry making, sewing, and all-around fixing things including: broken pottery, blinds, doors, plumbing, and using power tools, glue and clamps for various home repair projects. Poverty and necessity makes one pretty handy and ingenious when the need is dire.
I am Gen X and have struggled with “adulting” since before that was a thing. I appreciate this piece on so many levels. I will add that people don’t come with any of these skills installed. Humans have to be taught how to do everything. Every single thing. And all the ADL’a are things that require years of both active and passive instruction to master. Traditionally they were taught by parent, older (and younger-in the case of patience, learning by teaching, etc) siblings, extended families, peer pressure….but now all the tiny families are atomized, isolated, parents divorced, never married, both working and kids being raised by daycare and school—places where you don’t (can’t) learn ADL’s because ADL’s are skills you learn in a home and family
Yes! Thank you, Rachael. I appreciated this one so much.