Structural Infantilism as a Systemic Effect of the Breakdown of the Extended Family

Contemporary societies exhibit a paradox: unprecedented access to education, information, and cognitive tools coexists with widespread difficulties in long-term life planning, relational stability, and autonomous decision-making. This article introduces the concept of structural infantilism to explain this mismatch, arguing that the core deficit lies not in knowledge or skills, but in the loss of non-formalizable, scenario-based experience historically transmitted through intergenerational co-residence in extended families. Drawing on social psychology, anthropology, and learning theory, the extended family is conceptualized as an anthropological mechanism for transmitting lived knowledge: a non-instructional archive of observed consequences, life trajectories, and adaptive strategies acquired through prolonged participation in adult life. The dismantling of extended families, driven by industrialization, urbanization, and family atomization, disrupted this mechanism without producing functional institutional substitutes. Consequently, contemporary societies reproduce a systemic deficit of scenario-based competence across generations. Structural infantilism is framed as a structural, rather than individual, outcome, with implications for social dependence, instability, and reduced strategic autonomy. The article advances social behaviour theory by clarifying the limits of institutional compensation for lived social experience.