Are men childish?

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We’ve all been called childish by partners or parents a few times over the years, and long after we’d reached the age of (physical) adulthood.

(In my case I have the perfect riposte. I throw something at the wall and then go sit in my room for an hour. That shows them!)

But according to new research both men and women agree that most blokes fail to become truly adult until well into their fifth decade.

So what’s the deal here? Are men the childish gender? We hold back a tantrum just long enough to investigate.

Men are immature

According to the study - for Nickelodeon - both genders reckon men don’t mature fully until the age of 43, which is 11 years later than women.

One in four male respondents admitted they were immature, while only half the number of women labelled themselves in the same way.

And to top it all, eight out of 10 women believed many men never truly grow up, and are happy to break wind, eat dodgy fast food and play video games into the early hours at just about any age.

In what ways are men immature?

Those three were some of the top bugbears identified by the survey. Others included driving too fast, playing loud music, sniggering at rude words, playing practical jokes, not being able to cook even simple meals and staying silent during an argument.

This childish behaviour has consequences for our relationships. The survey found that three in 10 women have ended a relationship because they lost patience with their partner’s immaturity. Nearly half of women said they’d had relationships where they’d had to mother their men a bit too much.

On average, the women reported that they had to tell their men to “act their age” around 14 times a year. Immaturity can cause problems in relationships

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Peter Pan syndrome

Laughing at your own belching may be childish, but it’s hardly a serious personality fault (unless you do it, like, all the time).

But some psychologists do recognise a condition called Peter Pan syndrome, in which immaturity stops anyone - but men in particular - from living what many would consider a normal adult life.

Professor Humbelina Robles Ortega, an expert on Peter Pan syndrome at the University of Granada in Spain, believes Peter Pans, “see the adult world as very problematic and glorify adolescence, which is why they want to stay in that state of privilege.”

In this reading, Peter Pans avoid responsibility and commitment, fail to keep promises and hate to be criticised. According to Professor Ortega, “sometimes they can have serious adaptation problems at work or in personal relationships.”

In fact, male Peter Pans are liable to have lots of short, sweet relationships and often look for younger women so they can avoid commitment and responsibility, while questions about cohabitation, marriage and kids can be shelved indefinitely.

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Being childish can be a problem, but being playful can be liberating

Childish or childlike?

But while Peter Pan syndrome may have serious consequences for adult life and some men’s chances of forming lasting and fulfilling relationships, it’s not common. Not every man who is a bit immature has a psychological condition.

And then there’s the question of what counts as immature, and whether immaturity is always a bad thing.

Even in the Nickelodeon survey four in 10 people said immaturity is important in a relationship because it ensures the partnership stays fun and fresh. One in three respondents said that a healthy dose of immaturity could help men bond with their children.

So perhaps immaturity is sometimes confused with playfulness. Perhaps when we talk about childish men we sometimes mean childlike men.

And if you hadn’t heard, living in a childlike way is one of the keys to happiness, according to the positive psychology movement. Being childlike means being “spontaneous, unselfconscious and joyful”. It means living for the moment. It means putting adult worries aside - and particularly our learned and often negative desire for success, prestige, fame, money and power - and enjoying life for the sake of it.

Play expert Morgan Leichter-Saxby believes adults need to play almost as much as children. “For many adults, fretting and striving and working all hours but feeling they’re getting nowhere, it is never ever enough – which means it is never time to relax, never time to play,” he writes. “And so we gently cease to feel part of the living joyful world. We stop celebrating our place in it, stop exploring new corners of it.”

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Childlike men might bond better with their children

Immature and happy?

So if we take a look at the Nickelodeon survey again, we can see that other bugbears listed as proof of male immaturity include doing crazy dance moves, owning a skateboard or BMX, retelling silly jokes and getting excited about stag dos. But a different interpretation would hold those things up as proof that many men take a childlike joy in the world

Oh, and remember, nobody laughs at a stray fart as much as a small child.

So maybe it’s not immaturity at all, or at least not the bad kind. Maybe men are just more childlike than women, and maybe those childlike men are the happiest of all.