h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It seems that role models are in short supply. This may be due to the lack of ancestral values (not ancestor worship).
What i mean is that kids seem to spend less time with their grandparents, people with more real life experience than their parents.
Kids keep learning from their peers, sort of like the blind leading the blind.

I think it may be that we have less time available - we are rushed all the time. There is less time for leisure, less time for family, less time for ourselves. TV has a lot ot answer for as well - oh and such things as pubs, which stop us thinking - a kind of mass soma. Our values are for things, not for people, more often than not.

You are my hero for using soma in a non-literature conversation.

Yes, alchohol does a lot of damage, and contributes to this exact sort of thing

Mmm.

well, why not just talk about the coming of age for girls? i mean we always hear about boys "rites of passage" or boys "coming of age" there should be a celebration of strictly women coming of age.

I think you hear more about rituals for boys because there is no clear physical demarcation between boy and man. With females, the difference comes rather clearly in the form of menstruation.

I have heard of "red parties" to celebrate a girl's change into a woman. Everyone dresses in red and brings gifts for the young lady in question. But for my own personal taste, it sounds a bit tacky.

I've helped girls prepare for a girls' coming of age ceremony at a camp before now, and it wasn't tacky.

Hello Fragilis, nice to see you back!

Hey, there, Zarquon. I'm just keeping one toe in the water these days. Things seem a bit better around here, though I still pine for relative freedom the old days.

I think such a ceremony might be fine indeed, just without the red!

I had thought you'd 'left the building', so it's good to have you back.

I think the ceremony I helped with (and I only did a little - I was on the periphery), the girls did do stuff with red. In the main, it was their mums who helped with the majority of the preparation. As I remember it, the girls had a great time. I think there were 20-30 of them in total.