Failure to Launch

 

enable - verb - to give someone the means to do something (Google)

In today's PC society, enable is a verb with a proclivity for frequent usage. It just seems to be on everyone's judgmental tongue, particularly when many adult children (Warning: oxymoron) come to mind. Doesn't it? The word itself dates back to the 15th century, originally meaning "to make fit" (etymonline.com). That works for me because these irresponsible "kids," dwellers in their parents' basements, who range in age from 21 on up tend "to make" their parents "fit" to be tied. But who is kidding whom? Who is enabling whom? The parents are for the most part, of course–parents who just can't seem to let go of their progeny, making excuses for their immature behavior, ergo creating myriad problems for themselves and others. The 2006 romcom "Failure to Launch" starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker introduces the idea of a adult male reluctant to fly the coup, but the parents, who do everything in their power to oust their son, are viewed as being innocent bystanders. I contend that there aren't as many blameless mothers and fathers in real life.

Case in point: I have a group of gal pals half of whom have been my friends since elementary school. The four of us mirror Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte, the protagonists in HBO's former staple Sex and the City. My Miranda and Charlotte are guilty of enabling their adult children because for some odd reason, they can't come to terms with their kids' loss of innocence. For example, Miranda's thirty-four-year-old son is still residing in her basement, and she makes dozens of excuses for why neither he or she can seem to extract his body from the lower level. To make things even worse, Miranda makes excuses for other people's impudent, totally enabled adult children as well. In fact the other day, while we were in the cemetery celebrating the birthday of a recently deceased mutual friend, I complained that it was obvious from the weeds overtaking the tombstone that neither our friend's "devoted" extant husband nor her two sons were tending the grave. After accusing me of being "judgmental," which clearly wasn't enough liquid for her toxic diatribe, she injected, "You can't expect the boys to do anything. They're just kids." Kids? At 25 and 27? Since Miranda was married and supporting herself and her husband in an apartment at 22 herself, I couldn't comprehend her logic. As for Charlotte, I won't even get into her. The question remains: When do our kids cease to be kids? In this era, I'm guessing that the enabling can continue until they are what? Forty? Yikes. 

Forty years is way too long for children to be children. We parents who have failed to launch into independence (the "empty nest") ourselves have got to let go and let God when it comes to enabling and harboring our adult children, AWOLed fugitives guilty of PPS, Peter Pan Syndrome, the inability to slip out of indolent baby booties and slip into responsible army boots. The world needs active, industrious participants–fighters, not computer gamers. We can't afford to have anyone hiding in the trenches indefinitely because there is too much at stake in the war against climate change and other foes. 

Judgmental? You bet your booties, I am. If the shoe fits, you Mirandas and Charlottes of the world, wear it and start walking in the right direction.

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