Why do children want to grow up?  Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that . . . adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can do drugs, have sex, make babies, and get money. . . . For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents?

—Thomas Szasz

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