Modern Day Peter Pans
Once upon a time, there lived a stunted man who the award-winning writer and
broadcaster Jon Savage depicted in his book, Teenage, as a child troubled by his brother’s death
and trapped in a “horrid nightmare” of a marriage (79). During his young, tender adolescent
years, he endured the loss of his mother and sister. To cope with all the moroseness
encompassing his life and soothe his troubled mind, he took strolls in Kensington Gardens where
“he began to turn to other people’s children for solace.” This, Savage asserts, “was not only a
substitute for parenthood but a reflection of his own self-diagnosed dilemma: He was a boy who
could not grow up” (79). For those of you trying to extrapolate this character’s identity—no, it is
not Michael Jackson, though his picture in fig. 1 would suggest otherwise. This man was none
other than J. M. Barrie, the playwright of the nostalgic children’s production, Peter Pan.
Not only did Barrie create an alternate reality where individuals could succumb to their
nagging childish tendencies free of guilt, but he was also the first documented individual to
succumb to the allure of this fantasy world. A little over a century later, the number of diagnosed
cases of this Peter Pan Syndrome has multiplied in size. This syndrome, formally dubbed as Peur
Aeturnus, affects adults both young and old who haven’t fully matured—mentally or
emotionally—out of their adolescent state, and who still possess a maternal attachment to their
caregivers. It’s as if Barrie’s theatrical performance dug its way deep into the heart of our society
at the turn of the 20th century, remained sedentary as its tentacle-like roots spread throughout the
soil of our subconscious, and sprouted up like an invasive species of crab grass in the spring
decades later. Today, researchers work to trace this prevalent epidemic back to long-standing
stigmas, familial economic situations, and hindrances in kidults’ development during
adolescence, and attempt to formulate preventive solutions. However, in all their objective
studies they forgot to include one of the major voices of youth experiencing emerging adulthood:
Hip Hop. While critics and reporters like Alternet’s Maria Luisa Tucker argue that the Hip Hop
music perpetuates the emerging adulthood epidemic, in actuality it critiques this problem by
engaging in issues scholarly sources fail to recognize, and finds a rational solution under the
umbrella of the Hip Hop culture/movement. However, to comprehend the magnitude of what Hip
Hop can contribute, we must first lend an ear to the broader scope of the ongoing adultescence
debate that has turned a deaf ear to Hip Hop.
Neverlands for the Less Fortunate
Unlike what misleading stereotypes portray, adolescence isn’t merely a care-free stage in
life void of responsibility, self-sustainability, and arduous labor; on the contrary it is no joking
matter. Dr. Jacquelynne Eccles—professor of Psychology and Education at the University of
Michigan—and her team of researchers share this same sentiment on emerging adulthood in their
2003 adolescence research study published in the Journal of Adolescence Research. There, they
explicate the importance of adolescence while clearly defining what it is. During “emerging
adulthood”—the phrase they coined to describe adolescence:
Individuals make choices related to education, vocational training, entry into the labor
market, transitions within the labor market, moving out of one’s natal family home,
spouse selection, and parenthood. Given the power that these choices and behaviors can
have over future options and opportunities, it is critical that we understand what
influences whether youth stay on a healthy productive pathway as they pass through this
important developmental period. (386)
2 They portray this phase of life as a crucial time when youth interact with motley individuals,
undergo a plethora of experiences, and make a slew of decisions that will be forever chiseled into
the monuments of their lives. Still think adolescence is a transitory period for the weak-hearted?
Dr. Eccles et al. vouch for the strength in will power needed, and Linda Perlstein does as well.
In her anthropological study eloquently entitled not much just chillin’ (2003), Perlstein
ventures into the lives of middle school students ranging from ages eleven to thirteen. Their
secular culture has instilled a drive in them to grow up faster than they should and mirror the
behaviors of high school students. She cites, in her opening chapter, a third grader inquiring to
his mother: “What if I skip middle school and go straight to high school?” (7); this interaction
epitomizes the innate desires of many children his age. Emerging adulthood piques Perlstein’s
interest as she chronicles the daily experiences and interactions of five middle school students.
Though she attempts to be as objective as possible by simply jotting down the stream of events
and thought processes relayed to her void of any commentary, her implicit opinion that children
are maturing too fast, especially for their parents, seeps through her language and into the five
characters she portrays. A good exemplification of this occurs when she voices a mother’s
thoughts that “It seems like yesterday he was graduating from kindergarten,” noting parents’
tendency to “make mental notes to take a photo this weekend, in case their children grow that
fast” (7). She also reveals her interest in why the middle school children are so eager to speed
through childhood into their adolescent years, only to slow to a tortoise-like pace, if not an
abrupt stop, in this race during their latter stages of adolescence.
Likewise, Eccles et al. recognize this stutter-stepping through adolescence and note “the
need to be prepared for the transition into adulthood [which] becomes increasingly salient during
these years” (383). They address the importance of acquiring those essential skills during
3 adolescence needed to thrive as a functioning, productive, meaningful adult in today’s society.
These authors then venture on to not only stress the skills needed but also the “attitudes, values,
and social capitol needed to move from dependence on one’s family to both self-reliance and the
adult form of inter-dependence” necessary for a life of health, happiness and prosperity for the
current and subsequent generations (384). They explain the long-term qualities we should
acquire during adolescence to illustrate the vital traits every adult needs to function properly, and
emphasize how many of these essentials emerging adults are lacking. Eccles et al. then define
adolescence’s parameters to facilitate our comprehension of how immature these young adults’
mindsets and lifestyles are given their respective ages. Because “the median age for marriage and
childbearing has moved up to the late 20’s” (384) the authors define adolescence between the
ages of ten and twenty-five. In addition, they set the average kidult age group as a range from
eighteen to twenty-five-year-olds. By extending adolescence into an older age group generally
viewed as the initial stages of adulthood, Eccles et al. implicitly purport adultescents’ stunted
growth: they have come of age, but not of maturity. The authors play off this concept of stunted
growth to set the stage for their implicit stance of disapproval of modern day Peter Pans, as they
draw open the vulgar crimson curtains on the essential traits of survival, and center the glaring
spotlight on the long-term detrimental effects of this syndrome that can seep into our future
generations.
However, further research not only specifies emerging adulthood to a particular age
group, but pinpoints it to precise ethnicities as well: Blacks and Hispanics. Though Eccles et al.
subtly disapprove of emerging adulthood, they do note circumstances that kidults in many cases
cannot control. They observe the “level of challenge is especially high for noncollege youth and
members of several ethnic minority groups, particularly Blacks and Hispanics” (384). They also
4 claim “between 15% and 30% [of minority adolescents] (depending on ethnic group) drop out of
school before completing high school…and between 7% and 16% (depending on sex and ethnic
group) have had suicidal thoughts or have tried to commit suicide in the last 12 months” (385).
This leads one to question why minorities and those unable to attend college experience
substantially greater amounts of challenges, trials, and tribulations during their transition to
adulthood than the rest of society. A pair of sociology professors at University of Pennsylvania
and Brown University—Frances and Calvin Goldscheider—attempted to answer just this
question in earlier years through their population studies research compiled in their work The
Changing Transition to Adulthood (1999). According to them, people coming from black and
Hispanic backgrounds—Hispanics more than blacks—are more likely to stay at home than nonHispanic whites. However, typical non-Hispanic white families tend to concentrate on familial
foundations at substantially younger ages (74). In this respect, non-Hispanic whites’ past legacy
of affluence and early marriages would be an influential factor to consider. One of Time
Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2005, former reporter, and writer of three award
winning books, Malcolm Gladwell, ascribes this phenomenon to an individual’s “cultural
legacy” (272) in his best-seller Outliers (2008); this cultural legacy attributes our tendencies,
inclinations, and actions to those of our past ancestors which we are bound to by an amorphous
cyclic process.
Apparently, Eccles et al. agree with these hypotheses as they elaborate later on upon the
fact that “most White middle- and upper-class youth, for example go to college right out of high
school. Many of these graduate and then move into prestigious career-ladder jobs” (385). This in
a nutshell chronicles little Bob Smith making a smooth transition from his hard-knock clowning
high school years, to the more studious collegiate environment, and finally on to the hierarchical
5 work force where his charming personality will get him into that six-figure salary position in no
time. Sounds like the ideal adult, right? Well, as Eccles et al. put it, “the story is not so rosy for
many other youth in the United States.” They substantiate this with an account on youth not in
college, outlining “the problems faced by poor youth in this country” and expound upon studies
portraying the difficulty these adolescents encounter when getting a job that utilizes their
occupational training from high school (386).
Finally they get to the crux of their argument, expounding upon the initial advantage
upper-class adolescents—usually White—have over the less fortunate minorities such as Blacks
and Hispanics. As seemingly insignificant as their general differences in affluence may appear to
be, the long-term effects of this monetary gap are painfully conspicuous. How can we as a
society have allowed such an unfair divide to originate? Calvin and Frances Goldscheider take a
statistical approach, employing the economy as their angle to explain this divide. The problems
young adults experience in the job market, with the increase in “lousy jobs,” have contributed to
increases in the “failures” who return home (52). The Goldscheiders characterize leaving home
as a representation of increased independence and a sign of social adulthood that needs to be
attained despite the failures not foreign to daily life. In their opinion, “parents with resources can
subsidize independence and purchase privacy for themselves and their children…[than] those
living in less affluent families” (61).
Like the central theme of Gladwell’s best-seller suggests, despite some exceptions,
people’s success and everything we do “is grounded in a web of advantages and
inheritances…all critical to making them who they are” (285). One of these advantages
prominent today is the monetary advantage high economic status affords. The Goldscheiders
emphasize these advantages by arguing that “Among those past age 25, each additional year of
6 parental education increases the odds of leaving home to get married by 3 percent and of leaving
home for independence by 7 percent” (68). This suggests parents’ economic incapability to
further their education permeates into their children’s ability to transition into adulthood, take the
initiative to get married, or simply branch out for independence. Their children may have
reached adulthood but don’t have the resources to branch out on their own, so they are
inadvertently crippled in this kidult state.
Though the scholarly sources above attempt to address and answer the emerging
adulthood phenomenon by drawing attention to what minorities and underprivileged youth
experience, they merely contribute a largely academic conversation, in many ways out of touch
with emerging adults, and less often immerse themselves in kidults’ culture. While their attention
is often in the right place, the authors tend to favor objective benchmarks such as facts and
statistics and the materials they work with too often leave out important societal voices,
ironically shutting out the very voices they seek to understand. A more subjective, involved
opinion is needed to adequately address and provide solutions to emerging adulthood that aren’t
antiquated to today’s youth. One medium successfully achieves this feat; it is the voice of the
young people that relates to their experiences, their plight, their ideals and justifications for
falling into the cozy trap of emerging adulthood. It also identifies their entrapment in emerging
adulthood as a strategic resistance to the limited possibilities of adult life that society presents.
This medium is Hip Hop.
From the Grassroots Beats That Started It All to the Need for Change
Hip Hop’s origin dates back to the early 1970s in the streets of Bronx, New York. We
can attribute its birth to a conglomeration of events. For one, in 1959 the parks commissioner
Robert Moses passed the building project for an expressway cutting through “the heart of the
7 Bronx” (Hip Hop). Moreover, Moses had a 15,382 unit apartment complex built in1968 near this
expressway which was promptly bought out by slumlords. As a result, many middle class
families, businesses, and factories—mainly owned by Germans, Irish, Italians, and Jews—
vacated this area, and the indigent minorities—blacks and Hispanics for the most part—moved
into these “unkept and vacant buildings” bringing with them a wave of unemployment, drug
addictions, and delinquency (Hip Hop). Noting, in particular, the introduction of crime to this
area, a band of seven delinquents plagued the Bronx neighborhood with their criminal actions
and sparked a slew of gang related activity in the decade to come. This band became known as
The Black Spades, led by Afrika Bambaataa in 1973. However, subsequent to an enlightening
journey to Africa, Bambaataa “led his gang away from crime to musical innovation,” urging for
New York gangs to convert to “crews who would battle with words rather than guns” (Hip Hop).
When 1977 came around the corner, Bambaataa was already arranging block parties and set the
groundwork to establish himself in the years to come as one of the best DJs in the Hip Hop
industry.
With a rather sturdy background on the Hip Hop movement taking root, Afrika
Bambaataa—essentially Hip Hop’s founder—at its conception classified Hip Hop’s four
essentials: DJing, MCing, breaking, and graffiti art (Brown). One question then arises: If that
was Hip Hop then, what is Hip Hop now? Well for one, Hip Hop is not merely a music genre,
dance style, linguistic legend, or fashion trendsetter—these are all merely aspects of this
phenomenon. It certainly cannot be encompassed by Beyoncè shaking her derrière on national
television or the importance rappers like 50 cent put on materialistic possessions such as money,
clothes, and jewelry. It’s a growing cultural movement capable of affecting all these facets and
more through its radical and groundbreaking constituents promoting the ideology of change for
8 the better. This same concept of change was the basis of President Barack Obama’s Campaign;
for philanthropic efforts in third-world countries such as Africa; for improvement in industrial
living conditions for urban slums. At its conception, Hip Hop redirected gang violence to a more
productive medium of musical communication, transitioned to a radical movement against the
man, and now urges involvement in mainstream culture, politics, and economic standings.
The Hip Hop demographic—comprised of angsty teens and twenty-somethings from poor
urban settings with few jobs and fewer opportunities—constitutes a large and overlooked
population within the emerging adulthood debate (Election). Hip Hop influences the way they
think and develop, act and react, to pertinent issues occurring. So far, academics have
commented on the emerging adulthood phenomenon with statistics, observations, educated
hypotheses about its emergence and perpetuation; but they have failed to consult and listen to its
constituents’ plight—a plight most powerfully voiced by Hip Hop artists. Nancy Lesko—a
professor at Columbia University specializing in curriculum, sociology of education, and youth
studies—exemplifies this one-sided discourse in her book Act Your Age! (2001). She attributes
emerging adults’ mindset to longstanding stigmas and notions we inadvertently attach to
adolescents that they consistently use to justify their actions and reluctance to mature.
Concentrating on the three main stigmas of teens involving raging hormones, immaturity issues,
and a detached-race complex, Lesko stresses the need for us as a society to look beyond these
stigmas if we want to change the way adolescents view themselves and their actions. The raginghormones stigma prevents adolescent Joe from concentrating on critical thinking while Mary’s
low-cut shirt reveals what resembles two loaves of bread rising and falling in the oven. The
immaturity and detached-race stigmas consequently lead a group of bored teens to beat to death
an innocent homeless man under the pretense that they were bored. She claims from an early age
9 we clearly define what the characteristics of adulthood that children should strive for are, maybe
their development would not be so hindered in their later years.
Her hypothesis in this regards is purely objective and doesn’t take into account any of the
events transpiring in these kidults’ lives that could impact them for the better or the worse. She
also fails to take into account extenuating environmental factors that might impinge upon an
adolescent’s growth. What if Joe has an extraordinary case of Attention Deficit Disorder
preventing him from concentrating for an extended period of time that coincides with the class
time length? What if some of the teens arrested for the beating in actuality tried to stop a mob of
local gang members from assaulting the homeless man, were caught at the crime scene when the
cops arrived, and refused to reveal the true perpetrators’ identities in fear of retribution against
their family members? These are all crucial factors present in many less affluent adolescents’
lives that scholars simply don’t and sometimes cannot account for in their purely objective
analyses. The academic treatment of young adulthood mirrors society’s broader tendency to keep
them at a stigmatic arm’s length.
Some Hip Hop artists attempt to account for such crucial factors and reverse the stigmatic
treatment academics branded on young adults through their lyrics illustrating destitute
adolescents’ daily lives, but inadvertently perpetuate these adolescents’ kidult affliction. Serani
is a Jamaican reggae artist contracted by JVC Entertainment guilty of this perpetuation in his
community. In his song “Doh” he brags about his new shoes, clothes, and vast array of
possessions, employing these materialistic assets to awaken the ghastly green eyed monsters in
the “haters” wishing to emulate him. He also morphs adulthood into an immature game of who
has the flashiest Nike Air Force Ones or the most attractive female on their arm. Putting his song
into context, Jamaica’s poor economy idolizes high economic standings; once these standings are
10 reached, it is common for individuals to flaunt their worth and material gain. These gains we
were unable to acquire in our high school adolescent years spill over into our twenty-somethings
and in some cases even thirties, extending our adolescent tendency to mask insecurities by
parading our wealth —a representation of the vied after stable, sound, stalwart financial standing.
Serani and his childish concerns epitomize the hopes of economic stability deeply rooted
in emerging adults from childhood, and exemplify Hip Hop artists’ inefficacious manner of
morphing these hopes into insurmountable dreams of affluence. Because Serani does not provide
adequate articulate “solutions to address these complex political and economic problems” this
perpetuates emerging adulthood, according to Connecticut College professor David A. Canton
(246). Other artists such as Puff Daddy and Russell Simmons seemingly attempted to abolish
emerging adults’ disinclination for American political affairs through popularized campaigns
with the goal of urging kidults to vote. However, reporters like Alternet’s Maria Luisa Tucker
dubbed them as “hip hop capitalists, not hip hop activists”—and their efforts backfired (Tucker).
Puff Daddy’s Vote or Die Campaign and Russell Simmons’ Hip Hop Summit Action Network
were examples of hip hop artists failing to provide adequate solutions to emerging adults’
reluctance to partake in politics—a key symbol of adulthood; instead they simply addressed this
inadequacy and utilized popular celebrities such as Paris Hilton and 50 Cent to boost their
movement’s popularity (fig. 2). Serani twisted adulthood into a noxious, protracted high school
experience of who can construct a more ostentatious display of wealth. Russell Simmons and
Puff Daddy started initiatives with a set goal of encouraging youth to vote in mind, but along the
way lost sight of that goal. Because artists like Serani, Puff Daddy, and Russell Simmons
perpetuate emerging adulthood, Hip Hop is often branded as part of the problem rather than part
of the solution to this epidemic. Canton asserts that artists perpetuating emerging adulthood
11 cause “this music and culture [to become] a convenient target to avoid addressing the causes of
the real problems of [low-income] America: racism, sexism, and poverty” (244). These artists
hindered Hip Hop’s growth into a respectable mode of mainstream media, but other Hip Hop
artists work to counter and reverse this hindrance, and facilitate Hip Hop’s growth on a whole.
By relating to and addressing crucial factors present in kidults’ lives, Hip Hop artists such
as Pink, Ludacris, and Eminem—with their audience in mind—provide pertinent solutions to
abolish emerging adulthood. For one, Ludacris—a lucrative, well-respected figure in the rap
industry prominent since the 90s—chronicles all the stresses, failures, responsibilities, and
disappointments of being an emerging adult in his song “Slap.” When he complains “this
morning, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed…I don't really wanna work, I'm tired. I hate my
9 to 5” he voices adultescents’ gripes about the pressures of growing up. Moreover, he chronicles
the everyday tribulations common to poor urban class life when he groans, “I need some money
please. I can barely make it on these streets cause I got a couple mouths to feed. My baby's in
dire need. So I'm thinking bout robbing a bank today.” Unlike academics, he immerses himself
in the kidult culture and recognizes the slew of responsibilities often prematurely thrust on
emerging adults—fresh out of adolescence—such as having a family to care for. Kidults’ parents
slaved to provide for them in poor socioeconomic conditions their whole lives, and for kidults to
assume this arduous role as they take their first unsure steps into adulthood is overwhelming; so
overwhelming that some choose to refrain from adulthood in attempt to refrain from those
responsibilities. Ludacris does not condone, but understands kidults’ despondency and, as a
result, tendency to revert to other avenues such as thievery as an alternative to adulthood through
his lyrics.
12 Subsequent to identifying with adultescents and their deplorable situations, Ludacris then
attributes the bulk of these poor socioeconomic conditions to the shortcomings of the
government, exemplified by his exclamation that “President Bush could give a damn about [us]!”
Likewise, Pink—a popular hip-hop and pop artist in the 21st century—attributes the blame to the
government when she emphasizes the unsuccessful governmental measures affecting youth today
such as the no child left behind act in her song “Dear Mr. President.” She asserts, “How can you
say no child is left behind? We’re not dumb we’re not blind. They’re all sitting in your cells,
while you pave the road to hell.” This governmental measure did not efficaciously ensure that no
student was academically left behind, and she notes its failure’s conspicuousness as the number
of imprisoned students steadily rises. California’s District Attorney Kamala Harris substantiates
Pink’s argument in a 2009 speech at the Black Community Service Center in Stanford University
when she recounts “a survey done of black and Hispanic high school ninth graders reported that
50% of them won’t graduate high school; if you visit a local county or state jail, these numbers
are reflected.” Moreover, Pink demands to tell President Bush “bout hard work [like] minimum
wage with a baby on the way” in an attempt to enlighten him on the struggles emerging adults
face in the recession stricken urban streets of America he tends to turn a blind eye to. On the
whole, through her lyrics, Pink stresses that the government’s insufficient response to problems
occurring in contemporary society such as insufficient school funding for many urban public
schools and the number of destitute teens accumulating in the crammed jail cells foreshadows a
life of “hard work” for adolescents as adults as retribution.
Pink and Ludacris’ profuse warnings about adulthood portrays it in a negative light and
gives youth a bleak future to look forward to; it is no wonder why youth are so scared and
uncertain and unwilling to take that big leap into the distant world of adulthood livelihood and all
13 it entails. Though these artists still somewhat perpetuate kidults’ reasoning and reluctance to
partake in this bleak adulthood, Pink and Ludacris successfully voice and embody the obstacles
adolescents succumb to. This is because young adolescents religiously follow these two Hip Hop
moguls’ lyrics and agree with the situations depicted in their songs. Subsequent to successfully
addressing the emerging adulthood problem and swaying kidults’ ears to their side by relating to
their challenges, these two artists set the stage for kidults to openly welcome solutions to better
their lifestyles.
Building off the foundation artist like Pink and Ludacris eloquently laid, artists such as
Eminem offer subtle, yet impactive solutions for adultescents to positively alter their actions,
perceptions, and lives. For instance, the controversial rapper Eminem—renowned for his
aggressive call for action through lyrics based off his destitute childhood life in the slum—
encourages youth to get politically active as one major solution to their adultescent entrapment.
With all the governmental corruption other artists expound upon, Eminem proposes the only way
to counteract politicians’ corruption is by preventing them from being elected into office. In his
song “Mosh” released prior to elections in October 2004, Eminem calls for a more proactive
approach from youth to first go out and register to vote, and then exercise their constitutional
voting rights “to disarm this Weapon of Mass Destruction that we call our President for the
present and mosh for the future of our next generation.”
The difference between Eminem’s message and the seemingly similar messages of P.
Diddy and Russell Simmons is that Eminem and his advocates didn’t manipulate the publicity
aspect of their campaign for profit. In addition, Eminem took the proactive approach of
registering to vote and actually went out to vote on Election Day. Emerging adults recognized
Eminem’s proactivity and willingness to not only follow, but also act in accordance with his
14 message stressing political involvement, and responded positively as a result. Though his lyrics
are conspicuously aggressive towards the government, his essential message did seep into the
mindset of the group ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-four notorious for not voting,
marinating in their minds for four years, and portraying its positive impact as there was a
successful two percent increase in their voter turnout for the 2008 election—the equivalent of
five million additional voters according to a US Census press release (Edwards).
Overall, though Hip Hop is, in fact, maturing and becoming more sophisticated in its
political activism, its tremendous influence on adolescents coming of age is painstakingly
conspicuous, and its importance should not be overlooked. Though the Hip Hop culture is still
maturing as it subtly engages the debate surrounding emerging adulthood, artists like Kanye
West, Pink, Ludacris, and Eminem stress why Hip Hop—the voice of emerging adults—is so
vital in this debate and its inclusion and infusion with the scholarly arguments is crucial. By
combining the hypotheses of academics and the innovative and representative voice of Hip Hop,
we can finally crack the emerging adulthood enigma once and for all.
15