Book Review

Title: Big Babies (Or: Why Can’t We Just Grow Up?)

Author: Michael Bywater

Publisher: Granta Books/Raincoast Books

Released: August 15^th 2007

Pages: 241

ISBN: 978-1-86207-952-6

$19.95 

5 Stars (and then some) 

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey 

On the rarest of occasions a book is published with sound logic. Every century or so. We might be lucky enough to have found ours so early on in the 21^st Century. A book that helps us acknowledge where we are as a culture. On the back cover of Big Babies, Euan Ferguson of The Observer is quoted as saying ‘I suspect this book might change our world.’ I don’t know if I could be that optimistic, as we’d probably need a strong leader to show us the way (and we know we wouldn’t allow that now), but what I do believe is that Michael Bywater, journalist, author and educator, might have acknowledged and confirmed for many that we have become a raving society of Big Babies in diabolical proportions (not to over exaggerate of course).  

The first challenge of Bywater’s book is to recognize that we have allowed ourselves to become big babies, or more so, as his subtitle confirms Why Can’t We Just Grow Up? Media is feeding off that weakness we have accumulated and we are allowing this to coddle our infant behaviours. Certain everyday terminology would be laughable to our predecessors. Such ego stroking in media and then reverberated in the trendy coffee shops and offices uttering ‘you deserve it,’ ‘express just isn’t quick enough anymore,’ ‘you lead such a busy life,’ are all sayings that we now acknowledge as creed. We deserve what Bywater asks? Why do we lead a busy life and is that entirely true? 

Our actions have become reactions to our desires, needs and wants that are information being funnelled into our psyche by societal pressure. Taglines like ‘What do you want?’ and ‘What do you need?’ We have become bottomless pits of spoiled tantrums postulating to anyone that will stand long enough that ‘I am a person who wants all the time, I’m never satisfied.’ Why is that Bywater questions? Why is the ‘first entertained generation in history,’ as Bywater calls us, so desirous to be in perpetual want? Can’t we just say we enjoy challenges? Or that we have a thirst for discovering anything new? Why is it that we have to make it sound like we are victims to our emotions and desires like a pack of wild animals? 

Bywater talks about so many aspects of our society behaving as Big Babies that supports his theory, it would be too difficult to outline all of them or sum them up tidily. However one example is how we have now managed to become advertisements of ourselves. We dress and pose a certain way, we pierce and tattoo to identify how we are individuals, what our hobbies are draped on our backpacks, etc. What we actually forget to advertise, is what our substance is, something that can’t really be worn on the outside or walked through a mall, posing, as if we were at a Valentino fashion show.   

Now, you could take offence at this searingly perceptive book on culture and society, but that wouldn’t be very reflective and objective and most certainly not mature. Taking a look at yourself, flaws and all, allows an individual (and its greater community) an opportunity for improvement. Bywater doesn’t omit himself from his perceptions, he fully includes himself in big baby behaviour. In fact, one of the most brave things I’ve read in any book, is where Bywater maturely acknowledges a selfish decision he made as a young man that affected his daughter and the consequences of those actions on the family unit. Accountability seems to be such a foreign concept now; why is it that people won’t admit to doing wrong, apologizing and accepting the consequences? Are we all so perfect now?   

By the end of Big Babies Bywater is challenging us; acknowledge what we are doing, accept the consequences of those previous actions, take a step back and look at yourself through a different lens and work towards a more mature outlook. It’s incredibly easy to go with the grain instead of against it; after all public pressure for you to remain a baby will be brutal at times. However, as Kipling urges his son to become responsible and mature in the poem IF, he expresses that if his son does so then…‘Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!’ (of course ‘man’ is a general term, we expect that same from the women as well in this endeavour). 

Moreover, the book is wrought with witticisms so conducive of laughter that I was in stitches most of the time reading it. As a teaser, I’ll let you know that the story about Bywater and the priest dressing up and worshipping false Gods was just about the funniest anecdote I’ve read in years! Bywater, a Cambridge professor currently, makes the story of our conduct a forum for hilarious reflection and makes you thoughtful, enlightened, and compelled to read just one more page. I stuck more book tags in Big Babies then any other book I’ve read for future reference. Bywater has these great lengthy passages that are rants about our behaviour, which are always easily spotted in society and incredibly gratifying to read knowing that someone else in the world spots the same ridiculous behaviour around them. He also writes 50 ways to stop being a big baby, whereby he ends up giving only 31 and telling the reader to suck it up, because that’s what mature people do. Brilliant!

 At no point is Bywater self-righteous or looks down his nose at what we have all become, but he is willing to hold no punches and stand his ground. Big Babies is truthfully one of the most important books of this century and well worth anyone’s time to read.