Berlin Nightclubs and Rites of Passage

We have radically rethink our thinking about age and life stages

So this winter my older son (23) and I are embarking on a trip to Europe. It started with just he and I and was based on WWII—he is a huuuuuge history buff and wanted to experience everything from Ypres to Bastogne to Nuremberg to the concentration camps. He identifies with his Jewish father and really wanted to know more about, to feel as much as he could this part of world history. Then I invited my sister and she suggested we see if there were any Christmas markets in the towns we were visiting and low and behold…the answer was yes, even in Bratislava, Slovakia. So now it turned into a combination WWII/Christmas market trip and we invited a few other people. So now 7 of us in a huge 9-person van are off on an adventure in November.

But here is the thing. We are starting and ending in Berlin—a great fucking city and I was excited to introduce my son to the must-have experience that is the all-night dance fest in a fantastic Berlin nightclub where you stumble out at 7 am and find a big breakfast. Epic. I did it when I was 18 and it still remains one of my favorite memories. Untz Untz Untz.

The son? Yeah, not so much. There is not one fiber in his body that wants to experience this, even without his 50-fucking-7 year-old mother along. So it got me thinking about rites of passage and how they have changed and who they are really for. And boy did I stumble into a warren of rabbit holes—that between competing traditions, research, developmental psychology, the American Dream, the pandemic, the diaspora of cultures, political nerve-ends, the shrinking attention span, a glut of information and the pandemic (worth mentioning twice)—this whole area has shifted radically over the past 20 years.

One of the rabbit holes I went down was a series of articles in a special issue of American Psychologist, around the theme of “Rethinking Adult Development: New Ideas for New Times.” Published last year, they go a long way toward reconceptualizing what adult development is now and what it will be like in the future. Any brand—and research company—would be well served by revisiting how they group people and especially what stage of life they assign as it isn’t as clear cut as it used to be—they have the entire decade between 19-29 are neither fully adult nor are they in an “extended adolescence” and that this time is full of erratic and sometimes insensible decision making. Another finding, backed up by an article in the NYT last year about older generations and how they are find new occasions to celebrate, starting new traditions and more, should give everyone all of the data they need to convince almost anyone that the 60+ is a busy, curious, viable market they should be talking to.

The son just sat down next to me, looked over my shoulder and reminded me that he’s still not going dancing in Berlin. And this post should remind us all that we cannot rest on the thinking around human development from even just 20 years ago and we’d be well served to identify new age cohorts with new steps, scales, rites, wants and needs.

Happy Monday!