I Don't Want to Grow Up is the second studio album by the American punk rock band the Descendents, released on May 15, 1985 through New Alliance Records.

It marked the end of a two-year hiatus for the band, during which singer Milo Aukerman had attended college and drummer Bill Stevenson had joined Black Flag.

[3][4][5] In his absence, the band—guitarist Frank Navetta, drummer Bill Stevenson, and bassist Tony Lombardo—recruited Ray Cooper as singer and continued performing locally for a time during 1982 and 1983.

[3][6] Cooper preferred playing guitar to singing, however, and the band would occasionally perform with Aukerman as a quintet during his return visits to Los Angeles.

"[13] With the Descendents effectively on hiatus, Navetta, Lombardo, and Cooper tried to start a new band, the Ascendants, but only played one show.

[11] Navetta ultimately quit the band by setting all of his musical equipment on fire and moving to Oregon, where he became a full-time fisherman.

"[10]By April 1985 Stevenson had left Black Flag and he, Aukerman, Lombardo, and Cooper reconvened as the Descendents to record the band's second album.

[20] Cooper's sole writing credit is on lyrics to the lead track, "Descendents", which are attributed to the entire band.

[10] In addition to the time constraint, they had lost the rehearsal space they had shared with Black Flag, and until the first day of recording were unable to practice with all of their equipment plugged in.

[20][23][24][25] "He was really fond of those 1980s production trappings, and the record is polluted and corrupted with them", Stevenson later reflected, complaining that "[It] sounds like all weird, reverby, crazy '80s shit.

"[26] In 1985, when Bill came to me and said he had lined up a U.S. tour, I had just bought a house, I had been working at the post office for three years, and I was engaged to a woman who I never did marry.

[20] Stevenson prepared a tour to support the album, but Lombardo declined due to his personal and professional commitments, thus quitting the band.

So we practiced getting me brought up to speed and then, right as school was ready to stop, Milo jumped in the van and we started doing shows.

"[27] The Descendents undertook three tours of the United States between April 1985 and March 1986 to support I Don't Want to Grow Up.

[28] In 1987 New Alliance was sold to SST Records, who re-released I Don't Want to Grow Up on LP, cassette, and compact disc.

"[30][31] Rock critic Robert Christgau gave the album a B+ rating, saying "They 'don't even know how to sing', they excoriate themselves as perverts for wanting sex, and when they fall in love they try to write Beatles songs.

'Good Good Things', 'In Love This Way', and 'Can't Go Back' were positively sunny by Descendents standards; the Beach Boys-gone-punk vibe was an obvious precursor to Weezer.

The real advance was their ability to give strong melodies to thrash songs: 'My World' and 'Silly Girl' border on heavy metal but leave out the goofy excess and include way more self-pity.

"[33] According to Finn McKenty, the band and the album was a major influence on what would be known as pop punk in the 1990s and 2000s, mainly due to the band's "fairly normal" image and upbeat songs with lyrics about growing up, going to school/college, falling in love, breaking up, rather than something political, aggressive, violent or anti-social—themes that were prevalent in the punk rock and hardcore music at the time.