Keith Hayward delivers a joyless ‘anti-woke’ tirade, with little insight into why adults struggle to progress
Keith Hayward’s pet peeves: From left, Naomi Osaka, Greta Thunberg and Katy Perry
Keith Hayward is pissed off. Specifically, he’s pissed off because we all need to grow up. The criminologist’s new book, Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood, is a screed against modern life’s Peter Pan Syndrome, taking down twee ‘adulting is hard’ memes, car ads telling us to embrace our inner child, Marvel and Mattel in our cinemas and living at home with our parents until our 30s.
We’re living through an era, he says, of “culturally induced infantilisation”; an endless adolescence that has supposedly delivered us dumbed-down universities, barely educated politicians, an overzealous health and safety culture and a society that places undue emphasis on kindness and respect.
