The Child For Life Syndrome - by Dave Gorman

Awareness of the phenomenon that I'll call “the child for life syndrome” hit me fully one day in December of 2005, although once it did I realized that the concept had actually been sinking into my subconscious for years.

While watching a TV show on the band “Linkin Park” I was confused about the ages of the band members. Not one single member of the band was a grown man - clearly they were all still children, each looking about 17 years old. But if they were 17 now, that would put them at 12 when the band released its first album 5 years earlier, and that definitely wasn’t the case. They looked about 17 then, too.

A couple of minutes later an online search gave me the band members’ ages as ranging between 26 and 29, answering the problem in the only way that made any sense - that every member of the band was of an adult age, but in a physical sense was stuck in a weird sort of perpetual adolescence. For a second I wondered whether the guys might have all grown up (in a manner of speaking) in the same neighborhood right beside a nuclear power plant, before I started to see the bigger picture. The guys from “Linkin Park” were no different from just about every musician, male or female, that was their age or younger. Mentally going through the list of the famous musicians who I figured were under 30, I could only think up a couple of examples of people who had actually grown into adulthood. From the males - “Sum 41”, “Good Charlotte”, “Simple Plan”, Usher, Chingy, Pharrell, Omarion, Justin Timberlake, John Mayer; to the females - Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Mandy Moore, Avril Lavigne, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson, Michelle Branch; it was one adult-aged child after another.

The lack of physical maturity in the young musicians was confirmed by a comparison with the musicians who are now in their 30’s or 40’s back when they were in their 20’s and in some cases even their teens. A look at the musicians who I estimated were born before 1975 showed a huge difference from the musicians born later. From the males - “Nickleback”, “Korn”, “Nirvana”, “The Red Hot Chili Peppers”, Dr. Dre, Snoop, Kid Rock, etc; to the females - Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Alanis Morissette, Mariah Carey, “The Spice Girls”, etc; examples showing an enormous difference in the level of physical maturity between the two age groups just kept on coming. Another online search for some birth dates and the years that certain music videos were made showed that just about every single male musician that I had thought of from the older age group had physically matured into adulthood by the time they made their first music video, which in every case was by their mid-20’s, and often significantly earlier. The females had also physically matured into adulthood by the time of their first music videos, and on average they made the videos at an even younger age. In fact, Alanis Morissette made her first music video when she was just 17, and having seen the video as recently as a few months earlier I knew that at the time she was without question physically mature enough to be considered a grown woman. A very young woman, but a woman none the less.

Something weird, to say the least, was going on in the world of music, but the idea that the phenomenon could somehow be restricted so that only musicians were affected obviously didn’t make any sense, so I decided to look over another big group of people in the public eye - actors and actresses. It was in thinking about the world famous movie and TV stars that I started to realize the size of the problem, as the syndrome didn’t appear to be affecting them less frequently than the musicians, but more. Tracking down the needed statistics online showed that actors and actresses were failing to physically mature into adulthood with even fewer exceptions than there were with the musicians (it took me more than an hour before I found even one). Online searching also showed that there are more famous actors and actresses than there are famous musicians - so many more that I won’t name even a few at this point. Since a huge number of actors and actresses, and musicians will be listed with their relevant data a bit later on, giving a partial list now would be too redundant.

Establishing that nearly every single famous young musician, actor and actress was a victim of the syndrome, regardless of whether they were from the U.S., Canada, Europe or Australia, and apparently regardless of where within those countries they were from, meant that the syndrome was affecting a huge area of the planet, and possibly even the whole thing. Being from Toronto, a city which not only is located in the area known to be affected but which is also the birthplace and in some cases the home of some of the affected celebrities, and being that I was born in 1976, making me younger than many of the affected celebrities, I didn’t really have much choice but to make the next group scrutinized myself and the people of the right age that I knew personally. This group’s results were the most interesting. For one thing, despite the literally hundreds of people that I was able to think of there wasn’t even one single exception to the child for life rule. Myself included. The handful of affected entertainers from Toronto were no fluke - none of the city's young people, or at least none of the young people that I knew, had physically matured into adulthood. But just as interesting was the clear relationship between the year of a person’s birth and to what degree they’re affected. In Toronto, the syndrome doesn't make its first appearance at full strength, but instead begins by only mildly affecting those born sometime in the early 1970's, then progressively it gets worse. On average, those born in 1975 are slightly more physically mature than those born in 1976, and so on, until about 1980, at which point it seems to level off.

I’d now taken a look at musicians, actors and actresses, and the people that I know personally from Toronto, and almost every single young person had failed to physically mature into adulthood. The situation was getting weirder by the minute. It was weird, interesting, a little disturbing, and even kind of funny in a sick sort of way, but for some reason it wasn’t surprising. It seemed the more I learned about the syndrome the more I realized that on some level I had already known it all along. The full child for life concept was just now being realized, but living in a world surrounded by adult-age children for so many years hadn’t gone totally unnoticed. I guess a person can only see so many 27 year old dental hygienists who look like they’re in grade 11 before at least a part of their brain realizes that something isn’t quite right. Especially when they themselves are not an exception to the strange new norm. Why it took the rest of my brain as long as it did to figure it out it’s hard to say, but whatever the reason, better late than never.

It was around this point that I got the idea of putting out a website on the phenomenon. Keeping quiet about something like this would have to be a mistake. The urge to write about the situation was being fueled by the strangeness and the gravity of the syndrome, but it was being fueled almost as much by the strangeness of the fact that I had never once heard even one person mention the problem. No one on TV, no one in a newspaper or a magazine, no one in real life. Very often people would say things which indicated that they were aware of the problem existing in an individual, a person I know making a comment about a girl looking exactly the same at the age of 22 as she did when she was 14, or a film critic remarking that a 26 year old actor didn’t have the “heft” to play a cop, but no one had seemed to put the entire puzzle together. No one had noticed that these physically immature individuals were no different from just about everyone else their age. People were seeing underdeveloped individuals, but not seeing the pattern of underdevelopment. Since it took me years to finally clue in to the syndrome I can relate to those who are unaware of the problem, or at least think they’re unaware, and since I eventually made the jump from seeing underdeveloped individuals to seeing the pattern I have to assume that others have as well. The problem is so blatantly obvious to me now that it seems extremely unlikely that there aren’t many others who have also figured the whole thing out. For some reason, however, none of these clued in people have decided to put out a website on the subject. At least not that I’m aware of, anyway, and I have looked - on the day the concept hit me and since. Maybe none of these people see the situation as horrible enough, weird enough, or even funny enough to warrant the effort that a website takes. They just can’t be bothered. On the other hand I do see the situation as horrible, weird, and funny enough to warrant the effort, so putting out a website seemed like a good move.

This essay will leave no doubt whatsoever that the child for life syndrome is for real. The syndrome, essentially a failure to complete the process of physical maturation and reach adulthood, first began to affect those born sometime in the late 1960’s, and progressed to the point where almost everyone is affected who was born past 1975 in an area of the world which includes, but is not necessarily limited to, the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia. This will be proven by analysing the physical maturity of 294 of the world’s most well known actors and actresses, and musicians, in what I‘m calling “the celebrity comparison”. The celebrities included in the comparison were born from 1946 - 1986, allowing younger celebrities to be compared to older ones. In a vacuum it's difficult to say whether or not Orlando Bloom is physically immature for a 28 year old, but comparing him to older male celebrities back when they were 28 years old or younger gives us perspective. People born in areas of the world other than the ones mentioned may also be suffering from the syndrome, but finding celebrities from these areas that would be known to more than a very small percentage of the people who might read this essay would probably be impossible. Various issues involving the child for life syndrome will also be discussed, including the aging process, and the syndrome’s possible causes.

Whether this website will have an impact on the child for life syndrome is hard to say. It isn’t totally impossible that it will ignite a world wide uproar of people outraged and panicked by the thought of a nearly adult-free world, forcing a full scale effort on the part of the global scientific community, who are able to detect and then completely eliminate the cause of the syndrome. It also isn’t totally impossible that this essay won’t be read by more than a handful of people, everyone else scared off by the word “syndrome” in the title. Either way, a kid’s got to take a shot.

1. The cranium expands.
2. The face shape becomes more oval and less round.
3. The face shape broadens and lengthens, especially the lower half.
4. The jaw becomes larger and more squared/angled.
5. The amount of “baby fat” throughout the face reduces, resulting in more distinctive
   features.
6. The cheekbones take on more prominence.
7. The chin becomes more clearly defined.
8. The eyes narrow.
9. The eyes appear less “wide open”.
10. The nose lengthens.
11. The bridge of the nose rises.
12. The mouth widens.
13. (In males) More prominent brow ridges develop, resulting in deep set appearing eyes.

These many structural changes cause the face to take on a very different appearance from that of early childhood. That’s why a person who is shown randomly mixed headshots of 8 year old boys and clean shaven 38 year old men would have no trouble telling apart one from the other, even if the photos were done so that all of the faces were the exact same size. The human eye is very good at instinctively, unconsciously recognizing these differences, and separating the men from the boys and the women from the girls.

At least, it is when it doesn’t have to contend with distractions, which is another subject that needs going over before the celebrity comparison. When factors other than the simple appearance of the face are brought into the equation, factors such as clothes, hair, whether the person is sitting behind the reception desk in a doctor’s office, etc, some people seem to get confused. A huge part of the reason that the child for life syndrome has done such a good job of avoiding detection undoubtedly is that people can find telling the difference between a child and an adult more difficult when the child has taken on adult roles and traits. Physically immature or not, when people get to be a certain age they usually begin to live adult-type lives, which, to some, automatically makes them seem like adults. Adult-type superficialities drawing attention away from child-like faces. A common reaction for those watching 28 year old child actress Reese Witherspoon in the movie “Walk the Line” probably went something like - “she’s dating Johnny Cash and she’s a mother of three. Therefore, she has to be a woman.” The underdevelopment of her face going undetected as the instinctive ability to separate the women from the girls is rendered inactive by irrelevant and often deceptive characteristics. Those without a sharp enough eye will see a sheep wearing a saddle and call it a horse. This kind of thing probably happens to many people several times a day, tricked by this smoke and mirrors type illusion at work, at the doctor’s office, and while flipping through the channels on TV. Underneath these grown-up roles, however, often are faces that would look much more appropriate in the halls of a high school. The 27 year old behind the counter at the DMV is in all likelihood just a child, with the facial structure to prove it.

Though deceptive grown-up roles isn’t the only factor distracting people from noticing the syndrome. Also confusing the ability of many to separate the adult from the child is the fact that a lot of today’s young people seem to have grown-up bodies. But having an adult body alone by no means qualifies a person as an adult.

The most obvious way to judge the physical maturity of the body is by measuring height, and a person’s height has very little, if anything at all, to do with whether or not they should be considered an adult. Many 13 year old boys in grade 8 are 6 feet tall, and they very clearly don’t look like adults - they just look like really tall kids. If a 13 year old boy who’s 6 feet tall walks into a bar, guess what happens to him? He gets asked for his ID. Included in the celebrity comparison is the height of every actor and actress and almost all of the musicians. The data shows that the males born before 1975 are taller than the ones born in 1975 or later, but only by an extremely small and insignificant amount, while the females from the older group are significantly taller than their younger counterparts. The height data also proves the complete lack of a connection between a person’s height and whether or not they are physically mature enough to qualify as an adult. Two perfect examples of this - one male, one female - are found comparing 6’3” Ashton Kutcher with 5’7” Tom Cruise, and 5’8” Katie Holmes with 5’1” Patricia Arquette. As of Oct 1, 2006 Ashton Kutcher was 28 and Katie Holmes was 27, and at that time both still looked like they were in their late teens - neither one had reached an adult level of physical maturity. On the other hand, Tom Cruise was just 26 in “Born on the Fourth of July” and Patricia Arquette was just 24 in “True Romance”, and in those movies both were without question fully grown adults. The 8” and 7” height differences don’t seem to have had even the slightest affect on the appearance of physical maturity.

The other obvious way of judging the physical maturity of the body is by looking at the body’s shape. Certain physical characteristics either begin to develop or increase their level of development in the latter part of the body’s maturation process, and some of these changes cause the body to take on a different shape from that of early childhood. In males the most blatantly visible quality which defines maturity of the body is the width of the shoulders, and in females it’s the curves - the hips and the breasts. And just like in the case of height these qualities, even when extremely well developed, have almost nothing to do with whether or not a person looks like an adult. It’s not uncommon for 14 year old boys to have very broad shoulders, and although this makes them look more well developed physically than many of their peers, it doesn’t cause them to be mistaken for 36 year old men. That they are children is still very apparent. The same thing is true of young girls with curves. Many 14 year old girls have full hips and big breasts, more well developed in these areas than 90% of adult women, and although this causes them to look a little older than they really are, maybe as old as 16 or 17, it’s still clear with just a glance that they’re not yet adults. The reverse is also true. Adult men with extremely narrow shoulders and adult women with narrow hips and small breasts don’t look 13 years old, they instead look like fully grown adult men and women with poorly developed bodies.

Other changes also take place in the latter part of the body’s maturation process, but these less obvious qualities have just as little relevance in terms of the appearance of full adulthood.

A person whose body is fully matured, but whose face isn’t, looks like a child. A person whose face is fully matured, but whose body isn’t, looks like an adult. The body, regardless of how tall or how well developed, does not play a role in the appearance of full adulthood. This therefore means that the sole indicator of full adulthood has to be the face.

A tall and well developed body can, however, especially under the right set of circumstances, work well to distract some people from noticing the syndrome. Everyone easily recognizes that the 14 year olds with the grown up bodies are still just kids, but when the faces look slightly older the job becomes a bit more difficult. Add to the equation the “grown-up roles” factor and the job becomes more difficult still. When a 28 year old male is 6 feet tall, works a “grown-up job”, and is married, the fact that he has the face of a 17 year old boy may go unnoticed by the less observant.

A grown-up looking body can make noticing the underdevelopment of an individual more difficult, but where the grown-up bodies factor really has an affect is in hiding the pattern of underdevelopment - hiding the child for life syndrome. If 95% of 28 year old males were 4’10” or shorter everyone would realize that something very weird was going on, but 95% of 28 year old males with 17 year old faces is a problem somewhat more subtle and less demanding of attention. Even for those that have no difficulty at all recognizing a juvenile face, regardless of whether or not it’s sitting on top of a fully grown body, it still might take some time to recognize the pattern of underdevelopment when the bodies of quite a few young people are a well developed size and shape.

I think that probably played a role in keeping the pattern so well hidden from me for so long. I saw the problem in the individuals, but the pattern, or at least the scope of the pattern, took a while to click. The syndrome obscured by the occasional 6’3” male and the occasional curvy female. Qualities which, in reality, are almost as irrelevant as clothes and jobs when it comes to signifying full adulthood.

At first glance relying on a celebrity comparison to prove the existence of a phenomenon as important and as serious as this might seem like an odd and maybe even superficial choice. But after looking at the situation a little longer it should be clear that, short of lab work, what other choice is there? Celebrities are the only people known to a large percentage of the population, or more accurately put they’re the only people known to more than a miniscule percentage of the population, so if the case is going to be made to a wide spread audience that the syndrome has dramatically affected people in a clearly visible way, centering the argument around celebrities is the only option. Using non-famous people, the people that I know personally, as examples might be helpful in a supporting role, but they of course couldn’t really prove the syndrome to those who have never seen them. Fascinating results from the lab would obviously be nice, but strange as it might seem, hard scientific data supporting the existence of the syndrome might actually be less convincing than the celebrity comparison to most people. If you couldn’t see the syndrome for yourself you might just think that the scientific data was flawed. And conversely, if you could see the syndrome for yourself it wouldn’t matter if all the scientific data in the world claimed the syndrome didn’t exist. You would know with complete certainty that the scientists had just missed something.

Although the value of a celebrity comparison is dependent upon how many celebrities are included. Not much can be proven with a study of 2 people, or 4, or even 10, but a study of 300 people is a different story. Think of it this way - imagine the celebrity comparison showed that 145 of the most famous 150 actors who were born from 1970-1980 grew to be no taller than 4’10”, while not even 1 of the most famous 150 actors who were born from 1946-1965 was shorter than 5’2”. Because of the huge number of people involved in the comparison the chances of it not indicating a problem in the greater population would be next to nothing.

The celebrity comparison does, however, have one drawback. It requires that the reader has the ability to distinguish between adult and child, physically mature and physically immature. If a person can’t recognize that a 26 year old Matthew McConaughey looks like a grown man while a 28 year old Tobey Maguire isn’t even close, then to them the celebrity comparison will fall flat. I can see the physical maturity difference between the two as easily as I can see that they’re both over 4 years old - there’s no effort, it’s just the most obvious thing in the world staring me right in the face. This almost has to mean that many others will be able to see the difference just as easily, and that most others, if not everyone else, will be able to see at least some clear difference. But there’s also the real possibility that some people won’t be able to notice any difference at all. For them scientific data would be the only evidence to have an impact, and since this website will contain none which proves the syndrome's existence it will no doubt leave these visionless people unconvinced. Happy to continue thinking of Natalie Portman as a stunning example of womanhood.

To help people evaluate the celebrities for themselves the point needs to be made that watching a person on videotape is a much better way of judging their level of physical maturity than looking at them in a photograph. For this reason the celebrity comparison uses only video evidence to judge a celebrity’s level of physical maturity. Before watching any of the TV show “Lost” I saw a picture of Evangeline Lilly in a magazine that made her look just like a fully grown woman. It wasn’t a tiny, out of focus shot of her profile while she was wearing sunglasses, but a clear, medium-sized shot of her staring right into the camera. Never having seen her before I just assumed that the picture was telling me the truth, so when a child who looked a lot like the woman from the picture walked on to the screen in the show’s first episode I was given a perfect example of exactly how deceptive a photo can be. Lighting, the angle of the shot, and even a facial expression can work to conceal and distort the subject of a photograph’s real appearance. Photos certainly provide enough information to distinguish between an 8 year old boy and a clean shaven 38 year old man, but it’s possible that a photo done in just the right way might make it difficult to distinguish between a 16 year old boy and a 38 year old man. If photos were used exclusively to analyse the celebrities the syndrome’s existence would still be proven beyond any doubt, but it wouldn’t seem as dramatic. In a couple of cases a child might even wind up being classified as a marginal adult. But video shows people in such clarity that it can accurately convey a person’s level of physical maturity. It provides enough information to make the magnitude of the syndrome perfectly visible, and prevent even a single celebrity from being mistakenly placed in the wrong category.

It needs to be made perfectly clear that the celebrities chosen to be used in the comparison weren’t handpicked to support the child for life syndrome. Manipulating the comparison would have been completely transparent and totally unnecessary. A fair and honest evaluation produces such an overwhelming amount of evidence that there’s no need for a con game. The system that was used to select which celebrities would be included in the comparison was very simple - everyone was included. At least, every young person who is famous enough to be reasonably well known. Listing every older person who was reasonably well known at a young enough age to be used would turn this website into primarily an almanac of data on old celebrities. So for the older celebrities the fame requirement had to be a little higher. Although it should be pointed out that the older celebrities who aren’t as famous prove the syndrome’s existence just as well.

The celebrity comparison is divided into two categories: actors and actresses, and musicians. The two categories are both divided into four smaller groups - male adults, male children, female adults, and female children. The adult/child distinction is made based on my assessment of the celebrity’s level of physical maturity.

The celebrities listed are accompanied by their birthdate, in almost every case their height, and occasionally by a comment. Each celebrity is also accompanied by the name of at least one key piece of video evidence in which they appear - movie, TV show, or music video. All of the pieces of video evidence named are at least reasonably well known, as video evidence that very few people have seen isn’t of much value.

Which pieces of video evidence were selected for the celebrities depended on whether they are deemed to be an adult or a child. For adults the game is to try and find the earliest evidence of their being an adult, and for children the game is to try and find the most recent evidence of their being a child. Showing that Julia Roberts was an adult by age 28, and that Rachel McAdams was still a child at age 22, doesn’t do much to prove the syndrome’s existence, as it leaves open the possibility that Julia didn’t become an adult until sometime after she was 22, and that Rachel may well have become an adult since she was 22. Maybe there was no difference whatsoever in the maturity rates for the two, and maybe Rachel actually reached adulthood first. But showing that Julia was an adult by age 22 when she made “Pretty Woman” and that Rachel was still a child at age 28 when she made “The Wedding Crashers” shows a huge difference between the way the two physically matured. A.K.A. - there’s something very wrong with Rachel. Prove that this isn’t an isolated case but a wide spread pattern with very few exceptions, and you prove the syndrome.

At least, you prove that some sort of syndrome is affecting young people, but you don’t actually prove the “child for life” syndrome, since the “for life” part would technically still be in question. To eliminate the far-fetched possibility that the syndrome is only drastically slowing down the rate at which young people are physically maturing, and that they may yet grow into adulthood at some freakishly late age, it’s essential to establish that those affected have completely stopped physically maturing. Doing this requires an additional piece of video evidence for the victims of the syndrome, the earliest example of the celebrity looking exactly the same in terms of physical maturity as they did in their most recent video evidence. The maturity completion confirming piece of video evidence has to have been made a minimum of three years before the most recent video evidence. This video evidence is given for most of the child actors and actresses, whenever possible, but not for any of the child musicians. Unlike movies and TV shows, music videos don’t always make for great video evidence, as proper shots of the musicians lasting longer than a couple of seconds aren’t always easy to come by. So establishing the age at which the people affected by the syndrome stop physically maturing is best done with actors and actresses, where the video evidence chosen is always perfect.

That music videos often make for inadequate video evidence also meant that with some bands certain members had to be left out of the comparison. Finding video evidence of solo artists and the lead singers of bands that’s at least good enough to be usable is almost always possible, but when it comes to non-front man band members sometimes there’s just nothing conclusive.

Inclusion as an adult in the celebrity comparison requires video evidence showing that the celebrity was an adult before they were 30 years old. Showing that a celebrity had physically matured into adulthood by the age of 50 does nothing to prove the existence of the syndrome, as none of the children have yet reached 50, making the 50 year old adult useless as a comparison. Of course, there is no maximum age allowed for the children in the comparison, as the older the child the more it demonstrates that something is wrong, but there is a minimum age requirement. The children have to be at least 20 years old in their most recent video evidence. Many of those classified as adults have video evidence of their being an adult by the age of 20, so including children as young as 20 is fair. Especially considering that many of the children in the celebrity comparison are confirmed to have stopped physically maturing before they were 20.

The celebrities chosen for the comparison were all born after 1945, the oldest being Diane Keaton, born in 1946. Older celebrities weren’t included for many reasons. One being the quality of the video evidence. Most old movies made after 1935 have good picture clarity, but even the ones made in colour don’t have quite the same look as the more modern movies. “A Time to Kill” made in 1996 has exactly the same picture quality as “Spiderman 2” made in 2004, so the blatant physical maturity difference between Matthew McConaughey and Tobey Maguire can’t be explained away with an argument about how picture quality is to blame for any perceived difference between the two actors.

Another reason is that most, if not all of the older celebrities would be completely unrecognizable to the majority of young people. Since they typically don’t watch old movies, most young people probably wouldn’t know more than a few old-time film stars, if that many.

Excluding the older celebrities also allows for a greater focus to be placed on the period of time when the syndrome begins to show itself, without increasing the overall number of celebrities in the comparison. This emphasizes the syndrome’s starting point and helps to show exactly how it progressed.

It should also be noted that in the celebrity comparison movies are considered to have been made in the year before they were released in theaters, and TV shows and music videos in the same year that they first aired. The celebrity comparison can only use these types of video evidence, though in most cases the most recent video evidence of a celebrity will actually be an appearance on some kind of TV talk show or entertainment show. But because these types of TV appearances are never seen by a large enough amount of viewers, and just as importantly, because they can’t easily be viewed after they first air, they can’t be included in the comparison.

All that said and out of the way, here it is: The Celebrity Comparison