Once, there was a world without teenagers. Literally, "teenager," the word itself, doesn't pop into the lexicon much before 1941. That means that for all but this most recent period of history, there were children and there were adults. Children in their teen years aspired to adulthood; significantly, they didn't aspire to adolescence. Certainly, men and women didn't aspire to remain teenagers.

Today, turning thirteen, instead of bringing children closer to an adult world, launches them into a teen universe. And due to the hold our culture has placed on the maturation process, that's where they're likely to find the adults.

Most of us have grown up--or, at least, grown--into this new kind of adulthood, this perpetual adolescence so much the norm that it's difficult to recognize it as the profound civilizational shift that it is. Here to help is this blog, which will monitor the news of the day to keep tabs on the "Grown-Up" and the "Not Grown-Up" among us.