Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood

Have you noticed that in more and more areas of everyday life, rather than being addressed like a mature adult, you’re increasingly treated like an irresponsible child in constant need of instruction and protection? Perhaps you’ve experienced this feeling when passing by unnecessary health and safety signage telling you how to walk up a flight of stairs or use a handrail, or when instructed by patronising tannoy announcers to carry a bottle of water with you in hot weather? Or maybe you’ve spotted it on television, in the countless commercials that use babyish jingles and cutesy cartoon animals in campaigns for adult goods and services? Or it could be you’ve sensed your diminishing adult autonomy when being talked down to by barely educated politicians or even worse told what to think by entirely uneducated celebrities? But whenever and wherever it happens, you’re left with a sinking feeling that something’s not quite right; that instead of inhabiting a mature, grown-up world of foresight and experience, you’ve been enrolled, without your consent, into something resembling universalised adult day-care.
Noticing society’s creeping descent into infantilisation is one thing but understanding the roots and causes of the phenomenon is not quite so easy. In fact, one of the strange things about our infantilised world is that, while it’s evident everywhere from education to the evening news, hardly anyone stops to consider how this situation came about and what it will ultimately mean for society.
In this topical and vitally important new work, cultural theorist and academic Dr K J Hayward exposes the deep social, psychological, and political dangers of a world characterised by denuded adult autonomy. But importantly Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood is no one-dimensional, unsympathetic critique. Brimming with anecdotes and examples that span everything from the normalisation of infantilism on ’reality TV’ to the rise of a new class of political ’infantocrat’, this comprehensive book also offers an insightful and at times humorous account of infantilism’s seductive appeal. Hayward even ends on an upbeat note, with a short manifesto-style conclusion that includes ten suggestions for avoiding some of the pitfalls associated with our increasingly infantilised world.

Keith Hayward is Professor of Criminology at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen. He has published widely in the areas of criminological theory, spatial and social theory, visual and popular culture, and terrorism and fanaticism. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 12 books, the most recent being, Cultural Criminology (2018), a four-volume edited collection for Routledge’s Major Works series.,