When did the age-gap discourse begin?

[slashersun]

Following on the earlier discussions we've had related to age gap discourse, and the anxieties/hysteria related to it. I have a question, especially for the older members: When did this all begin? Was there a turning point (maybe related to the other social shifts in the 2010s)? Its to a point where, forget romantic relationships between even 18-19 year olds and minors, but even friendships between minors and adults are looked at as creepy!

I ask this because I of an odd conversation I had with someone recently. So I've been in online friend groups (gaming communitys) for years, that have older people in their 30s and 40s. No one in the communities thought that was weird, and these were never romantic or creepy or anything whatsoever, just gaming + fandom friends. But someone commented to me that it was 'strange', and 'what could someone that age have in common with younger people'. i find this really over the top, but it seems like this view and sentiment is shared among other young people.....

This wasn't always the case, Im assuming. Where everyone has so much anxiety and hysteria about any interactions, even normal non-romantic ones. So I wonder, when was it different? Do any of you remember it being any different, or was there always a kind of anxiety around minor-adult interactions, and age-gap relationships, in the 2000s, 90s, 80s..?

[InfinityChild]

I'm not sure when it started to get hysterical, but agree that zoomers seem to be quite uncomfortable with age gaps overall

[Bookshelf]

It's always a strange discourse, especially when it's done on the lines of 'what do they have in common with younger people?'.
The answer to that is always found when you ask — where did they meet? That's probably what they have in common. If they met in a video game community, that's what they have in common. If they met at work, that's what they have in common.

It's all seemingly a part of a trend in trying to solidify arbitrary meanings on what it means to be certain ages. Reinforcing the ageist idea that if you're X years old, you should be doing A, B, and C; you're now too old to be doing D, E and F. That a 20 year old and 40 year old are so far apart that they may as well as be different species — they couldn't possibly have anything in common. Especially if you ignore the list of things that they probably do have in common.

Edit: If you're fine with me going into baseless theory territory, this is my opinion.
I think it's likely that the concept is perpetuated primarily by people who are scared of growing older, and a coping mechanism for the inevitably of ageing for some people is to create as many barriers — some physical — between themselves and the impending doom of old age as possible.

It's entirely possible that a 21 year old can have lots in common with a 36 year old. That 21 year old probably doesn't want to realize that, though, because it groups them together with someone older. They're more comfortable pretending they can't possibly have anything in common; because it helps reinforce the illusion that being 36 is so far in the future that it'll never matter.

On top of that, kids today aren't usually allowed to develop at their own pace. It's common for parents to be oppressive and hold them back, prolonging their childhood. This means we have quite a lot of 18+ year olds that are practically still mentally teenagers. It's often this group that don't want to associate with older people, because they'd rather live in their bubble where they can still sort of pretend they're not growing older.

[OnionPetal]

[...] When did this all begin? Was there a turning point (maybe related to the other social shifts in the 2010s)? Its to a point where, forget romantic relationships between even 18-19 year olds and minors, but even friendships between minors and adults are looked at as creepy! [...]

Earlier. I'd say the 'modern' paedo-hysteria really kicked off in the early 2000s, with the infamous Michael Jackson interview (designed to make him look like a creep), and the pseudo-news show 'To Catch a Predator,' which entrapped MAPs for the entertainment of national TV audiences. The latter particularly stigmatized any kind of interactions between adults and minors: 'What would an adult man be doing trying to meet up with a 16 year old girl? She's 16! You're 21. You don't see anything wrong with that at all?' It did not help that the presenter Chris Hansen really hated MAPs. In fact, after one of his targets committed suicide during the filming of one episode, Hansen told journalists that he felt no remorse over the death, and said, 'I sleep well at night.' So he clearly had an agenda when making that show, motivated by his personal hatred towards MAPs. Maybe we can credit this show for the widespread introduction of the term 'paedophile' into common parlance.

'To Catch a Predator' first aired in 2004, at the intersection of television and internet media, highlighting the dangers of the 'online world,' which harboured dangerous perverts, as they were portrayed. So around this era, there was also a lot of attention about online activities that could be perceived as 'predatory' or exploitative to children. There were a number of high profile 'busts' to child modeling studios which operated online businesses. TV news agencies often coordinated with police stations, so that a full production crew could record the raid, and broadcast the target's door being broken in by police. All of this created a cultural vibe that anything involving minors was one of the most serious crimes. Even being associated with teens or children was now very easily associated with deviancy, inappropriateness, perversion, etc. And the whole culture seemed to become very paranoid about avoiding any hint that they could be one of those dangerous paedophiles secretly living next door.

So when I was a young child in school, I remember conversations where other kids would talk about age gaps between their parents. It was not uncommon to hear of adult couples who had an age gap of 10 years. This did not come across as creepy at all back then. In fact, even as a kid, I thought it sounded quite cool. I also noticed that, usually the man in the relationship was the older one. It just seemed obvious to me that the men liked to marry younger. There was no 'pervy' connotation about it back then. But this was before all of the paedo-hysteria largely induced by the mainstream media, as described above.

These days, I think people would be more reluctant to date someone with a 10-year age gap because of the stigma surrounding age gaps, and the fear that it would look improper or even 'predatory,' despite both parties being fully consenting adults. And that's really tragic, because these sort of hysterical social mores can keep many would-be perfect mates from ever pursuing that first date. So it doesn't just affect MAPs. And I can't help but wonder if the prominent decline in marriage rates over the past 20 years is in any way the result of these hysterical social changes. Coming up with strict social rules about who adults may fall in love with, based on stupid calculations meant to minimize age differences, have probably not helped anybody's courtship woes these days, and it's likely that we'll see much broader social ramifications from that hysteria.

[RoosterDance]

I read an interesting article about this recently.