Adults nowadays are the generation of kids who refused to grow up

It was when I was going up in the lift that it struck me. The elevator stopped, the doors opened and a giant 'ding dong' filled the air to announce that we had arrived, the kind of thing that would amuse a five year old because it was nothing like the more usual 'ping' that you would expect. But this one was not filled with toddlers, it was filled with senior copywriters, wearing their onesies and clutching their giant over-sweetened coffees flavoured with vanilla and cinnamon and other babyish condiments. And it was then that I realised. No matter how old you get, we are living in a generation of children who will never grow up.

No one grows up any more, or at least precious few do. There are now ball pools for adults, for goodness sakes – you know the kind of thing, an arena filled with brightly coloured objects designed for someone aged three. There are adult colouring books, with grown women of my acquaintance informing me it helps them to calm down. What’s wrong with a quick G&T? And then, in a particular nadir, in October last year, Ladybird books announced it would be publishing tomes for adults which include, Heaven help us, the Ladybird Book of the Hipster and the Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis. Past generations favoured Trollope. Not us. Elsewhere on the bookshelf you will find a tome entitled Poems That Make Grown Men Cry (there’s also a female version) – for pity’s sake, why? Great art has always had the power to move. But it doesn’t need to be labelled under babyish names.

Where is the pride in accomplishment, the fact that we enjoy different things now that we’ve matured? People have been using Estuary English for so long to prove that they’re down wiv de kidz, that they’ve turned into toddlers themselves. The way they dress is utterly infantile: if not onesies, jeans and trainers with everything, of course, it not occurring to anyone that in a professional environment they might want to smarten up.

More ghastly still is the recent trend for adults to go out in public in their pajamas. Chris Evans, the biggest child of the lot, managed it when out filming Top Gear – remember the days when television presenters used to wear black tie? – but it’s not just him. In January the head teacher of Skerne Park Academy in Darlington had to ask parents to stop doing the school run in their nightwear. What hope for their own children to grow up?

People also won’t leave home, such is their desire to remain a child forever. Yes, we all know house prices have rocketed and the stock is in short supply, but not so long ago the desire to forge an independent life had people sharing bedsits, taking rooms in houses, anything to strike out for themselves. Not any more. In November last year, the Office For National Statistics reported that 27 per cent of men aged 25-29 were living with their parents (interestingly, only 15 per cent of women of the same age lived at home), and you can’t help but suspect that the idea of mummy doing all the cooking and cleaning is what’s keeping them there. No surprise that this is also the age of the “commitment-phobe”. Men used to take pride in being a breadwinner and providing for a family. It is a sign of utter immaturity that so many now want to duck out of that.

No one listens to classical music anymore – tune in to Desert Island Discs and it’s quite shocking the choices some of the most successful people in our midst will choose. People talk happily about 'boys’ toys' as if it’s somehow admirable to be fixated on what children call vroom vrooms. It’s no surprise that one of the most childish creatures in literature, Mr Toad, was fascinated by fast cars. Art now comes in the form of neon signs or graffiti. Some of the most successful artists in the stratosphere have made their very considerable fortunes by churning out pieces based on Disney cartoons.

Where is the profundity in our society? Where are the signs that we have actually grown up? We are unique in that in Western Europe at least we have lived for several generations without warfare and perhaps life has become so easy for us that we have lost the ability to mature. We have adults playing in ball pens, colouring in their colouring books, never able to settle down with each other because that’s something adults do. 'When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child,' wrote St Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians, 'but when I became a man I put away childish things.' These days – some hope.