Our laughter reveals a deep anxiety about growing up slower than our forebears

In the animal kingdom we sometimes find a characteristic known as neoteny. Neoteny is the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. The second most famous neotenous animal is the axolotl, a Mexican salamander which, if denied iodine, can live happily in its larval form until it dies. The most famous neotenous animal is, of course, the millennial.

When the famed bomber pilot Guy Gibson led 133 men in the Dambusters raid 75 years ago this month, he was just 24 years old. Whereas when New York resident Michael Rotondo was evicted by a judge from his parents’ house on Wednesday, he was 30.

Understandably, this a sore spot for my generation. We seem to be growing up more slowly than previous generations. We feel continually hectored for not meeting life schedules which were set in different times. So when, this week, we discovered a commandment from an investment firm that by age 35 we should have saved up twice our salary, we had a ball.

Silly suggestions for alternative milestones spread quickly across social media. The investors' advice was self-evidently ludicrous, possibly aimed at generating exactly this kind of dubious buzz. But our mockery had a hard edge to it, revealing a real anxiety about the gap between how we live and how our forebears expect us to live.