“Childish Things” — a quiet reckoning with the cost of growing up, where memory, regret, and moral inheritance refuse to stay buried
When James McMurtry released “Childish Things” in 2005, it did not arrive with the noise or ambition of a hit single chasing radio rotation. In fact, the song did not enter the Billboard Hot 100 or any mainstream singles chart upon release, a detail that matters, because it tells us exactly what kind of work this was meant to be. “Childish Things” was never designed for quick consumption. It was written to linger, to trouble the listener long after the final verse fades, much like an unresolved memory from youth that returns uninvited in later life.
The song is the title track of the album Childish Things, released on Sugar Hill Records, a label known for valuing substance over spectacle. Coming at a mature point in McMurtry’s career, the album marked a moment where his songwriting sharpened into something even more morally attentive. If earlier records documented the landscapes and quiet desolations of American life, “Childish Things” turns inward, examining how private choices echo across generations.
At its core, “Childish Things” is a song about inheritance—not the sentimental kind, but the emotional and ethical residue passed down from parent to child. McMurtry sings from the perspective of an adult son reflecting on his father’s contradictions: a man capable of kindness, but also violence; someone who fought injustice in theory while practicing smaller cruelties at home. The brilliance of the song lies in its refusal to simplify. There is no outright condemnation, no easy absolution. Instead, McMurtry offers something rarer: clear-eyed recognition.
Musically, the arrangement is restrained, almost deliberately plain. The guitars move steadily, without flourish, allowing the lyrics to take precedence. This sparseness mirrors the song’s emotional posture. There is no melodrama here, no swelling chorus designed to instruct the listener how to feel. McMurtry trusts the weight of language. Lines unfold like remembered conversations, half-finished thoughts, moments once dismissed as “childish” but later understood as formative wounds.
The title itself, “Childish Things,” carries a quiet irony. Borrowed from the biblical phrase “when I became a man, I put away childish things,” McMurtry subtly questions whether such a clean break is ever possible. The song suggests that what we label as childish—anger, fear, imitation, even cruelty—often survives into adulthood, simply dressed in more respectable clothes. In this sense, the song is less about childhood than about the unfinished business of growing up.
What makes James McMurtry such a compelling figure in American songwriting is his moral patience. He does not rush toward judgment, nor does he indulge in nostalgia for its own sake. In “Childish Things,” memory is neither warm nor cruel; it is precise. The father in the song is not a villain, but he is not redeemed either. He is human, flawed, shaped by his own time, passing along lessons both intended and accidental.
For listeners who have lived long enough to revisit their past with new eyes, this song resonates deeply. It speaks to that moment when youthful certainty gives way to adult understanding—when we realize that our parents were improvising, just as we are, and that some of what they handed us must be examined before it is carried forward. The ache in “Childish Things” comes from recognition, not accusation.
Although it never climbed the charts, “Childish Things” has endured where many louder songs have not. Its staying power lies in its honesty and restraint, qualities that reward repeated listening. Each return reveals another layer: a line that lands harder with age, an image that feels newly personal.
In the end, “Childish Things” stands as one of James McMurtry’s most thoughtful compositions—a song that understands adulthood not as triumph, but as responsibility. It reminds us that time does not erase the past; it clarifies it. And sometimes, the bravest act is not putting childish things away, but finally naming them for what they were, and deciding, quietly, what we will carry forward.