"An adolescent is somebody who is in between things. A teenager is somebody who's kind of permanently there. And so living with them through the various teenage hopes and sorrows and joys was curiously enough a maturing experience for me"
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Greeley slips a wry taxonomy into what sounds, at first, like pastoral reflection: “adolescent” as transitional, “teenager” as a semi-permanent weather system. It’s a joke with teeth. By treating “teenager” less as an age than as a state of being, he punctures the adult fantasy that adolescence is a short bridge you cross and forget. Some people move through it; others seem to set up camp. The line lands because it smuggles empathy into mild exasperation.
The subtext is clerical and domestic at once. As a priest and public commentator, Greeley spent years listening to people narrate their private chaos. Here, “living with them” suggests not just parenthood but the long haul of accompaniment: staying present while someone cycles through grand hopes, petty sorrows, sudden joys. He refuses the sentimental framing of youth as pure promise; the emotional register is “various,” repetitive, and exhausting - and that honesty gives the affection credibility.
The kicker is the reversal of authority. Teenagers are supposed to be the ones “in formation,” while adults model stability. Greeley flips it: proximity to adolescent volatility matures the adult. That’s a cleric’s angle on grace without saying the word - growth as something you don’t control, that arrives through endurance and attention. In the late-20th-century cultural backdrop of “teenagers” as a market category and a moral panic, Greeley’s move is quietly countercultural: he frames them less as a problem to manage than as a reality that can deepen you, if you stop expecting them to hurry up and become convenient.
The subtext is clerical and domestic at once. As a priest and public commentator, Greeley spent years listening to people narrate their private chaos. Here, “living with them” suggests not just parenthood but the long haul of accompaniment: staying present while someone cycles through grand hopes, petty sorrows, sudden joys. He refuses the sentimental framing of youth as pure promise; the emotional register is “various,” repetitive, and exhausting - and that honesty gives the affection credibility.
The kicker is the reversal of authority. Teenagers are supposed to be the ones “in formation,” while adults model stability. Greeley flips it: proximity to adolescent volatility matures the adult. That’s a cleric’s angle on grace without saying the word - growth as something you don’t control, that arrives through endurance and attention. In the late-20th-century cultural backdrop of “teenagers” as a market category and a moral panic, Greeley’s move is quietly countercultural: he frames them less as a problem to manage than as a reality that can deepen you, if you stop expecting them to hurry up and become convenient.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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