Could I have been called a Man at 18? How about you?

In My Humble Opinion
1
  • in the context of this thread I’d like to use the word man and woman synonymously.

The law in the United states tells that at the ripe old age of 18 you are legally an adult. See here. I have been working with a group of teens who are getting into the study of Environmental Policy Making. I have been workig with them on knowing your rights, knowing your civil liberties and what it means to become a member of society today.

I’ve been thinking: Was I mentally prepared to be an adult at the ripe ol age of 18? I was already in College, and had been for almost a year. I was living at home, and working a full time job. But I still enjoyed partying with friends and indulging my primative adventurous side. The word Man did not carry much weight with me at the time. I still referred to my friends as Kid, and I certainly didn’t want the responsibility of caring for a child or paying a mortgage at the age of 18. I wanted to be free and for the most part I was.

Now the word Man carries a special meaning for different people. As does the word Woman.

For me I had an aversion towards the term for many years in my young adulthood. From the age of roughly 18-23 I was still very much ingrained in what others thought of me. I was aware of my looks and my appearance in a “prowling” sort of way. I liked to look and behave in such a way so as to make myself look attractive to the opposite sex. Through college and into Graduate school I was very concerned with my outward appearance. As grad school winded down I became less and less enamoured with the way I appeared to others and more concerned with how I fit into society as a whole. What I am trying to say is that becoming a man for me was a deeply personal experience, one not taken as seriously as say a Massai tribesman.
This being said I wonder how others see coming of age in their respective cultures.

I found theat when people - usually waiters and waitresses - called me sir, was when I began to realize that I no longer looked the kid part and looked like a man. But that was a physical discription of the event. I know in my heart I will always be a kid - ask my wife - but it was my job, degrees I chose to persue and people I surrounded myself with that truly defined me as a man.

The knowledge I gained from schooling did not prepare me for the emotional nuances I’d learn from my first job or my marriage or life in general. It was time and willingness to learn new things that prepared me.

How about you?

2

There are lots of things that separate the women from the girls. Being self-sufficient, having children, understanding how you fit into the big picture, being an asset rather than a drain on society, being responsible for someone or something beside yourself, etc. I don’t think there’s any particular threshhold that is crossed. Some aspects of myself will never “mature” to the degree that they might in someone else. And vice-versa. I think it’s different for each individual. What I might feel is an adequate progression into adulthood might not be agreed upon by others, and that’s as it should be. We’re all different.

3

I’m 48, male. I haven’t taken the idea of “being a man” seriously since I was about 15. It’s all a composite of what other people think you ought to be, other folks’ expectations. A mixture of notions about adulthood (most of which you begin to see as illusory as you approach the age that they expect that of you) + notions about maleness (which were ridiculous at age 5 and didn’t get any less ludicrous).

And given one of the core attributions — the whole business about being your own person, not caring so much what others think of you — it’s an identity in paradoxical space. If you are one, you don’t care about being one, in which case you’re not likely to correspond with the rest of what’s attributed to it.

Of being a woman, I can’t directly speak, but the females who have spoken eloquently on the subuject have quite often held that, while males tend to embrace and believe in the notion of being a Man, females have more often considered Woman to be someone else’s construct (usually the construct of our sex, not theirs), a prescriptive and restrictive thing, and that they’ve usually hooted at the idea that Woman existed at all, anywhere, and that any female would seriously aspire to it. Well, OK, so I tend to read a lot of feminist authors. Female dopers may wish to offer corrections.

4

Kalhoun’s comments work pretty well for men too.

I’d say the most important aspect of “being a Man” from my POV is acceptance of responsibility, and gradually comming to terms with selfishness - seeing that you live not only for yourself, but for the comfort, nurture, protection and support of your family, friends and society at large; and the development of a personal notion of honour (meaning keeping to your code of morality).

Disagree in part with AHunter3. I think that whole “not caring what others think of you” thing is a symptom, not a core aspect, of being “a Man” (or I presume “a Woman”). Someone who has a sense of personal responsibility for others and a sense of personal honour doesn’t deviate from these because of what others think or say. It isn’t about impressing someone with how cool or “manly” you are.

Whether or not a sense of responsibility and honour is a “construct” of society or not isn’t really all that important - no doubt some aspects are and others are not, since everyone weighs these elements differently. For example, I’m more willing to spend my energies in support of my child than any stranger, but I can esteem those who would rather remaiun childless and devote themselves to charity work - that just isn’t my choice.

5

I became a man at age 13, right after my Bar Mitzvah ritual of punching a live gorilla in the face. BOOYA!!

6

There’s an interesting emphasis in my religious culture on the stages of life as archteype. Even our dieties are often grouped by life stage: Maiden, Mother, Crone and Youth, Father, Elder. We talk about and perform rites of passage marking the changes we go through from one to another, and I’m often the person called on to write and facilitate these things. So I spend a lot of time thinking about this subject.

And I still don’t know a thing about it.

Robert Fulgham (the “Everything I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten” guy) wrote an interesting, unorthodox book on ritual, in which he posits that there are Public rites of passage and Secret rites of passage. The first time he stole out of the house and drove his mother’s car was a Secret rite of passage for him. Driving lessons, therefore, while a rite of passage for the family, was not THE MOMENT which marked his own threshold experience - he had taught himself to drive years before, secretly.

So there are those public moments - weddings, birth of a child, grad school graduation, enlistment into the army, voting, signing a mortgage or lease - which mark to *other *people that we’re Adults, but it’s the Secret ones - buying your own toilet paper, doing the dishes when you’d rather go out, having ice cream for dinner 'cause you can, having healthy food for dinner 'cause you should - that mark the *internal *shift into Adulthood.

And that doesn’t happen all at once, and it’s not a one-way journey. There are times we take a few steps back into Adolescence, ask Dad for a loan, beg our best friend to help us come clean 'cause the house has gotten out of control, spend the weekend playing XBOX instead of finishing that report that’s due Monday…but Adulthood, I think, is marked as that general time of your life when MOST of the time you’re self-sufficient and MOST of the time you’re responsible and MOST of the time you make long-term decisions and actions, not short-term ones. Having children or a house is often a catalyst for this process, but it’s not a requirement - just speeds things up a little sometimes.

A really great Public rite of passage is the celebration of an internal, Secret, rite of passage which has already happened. The purpose of Public ritual (by which I include secular events like getting your driver’s license and graduation) is to shift OTHER people’s awareness of your status, so they start treating you accordingly. You know this has happened when Dad flips you the car keys so you can drive home, or the clerk calls you “Sir” instead of “Son.”

The Masai boy goes out and has an experience (often involving solitude, survival or pain) that causes that internal shift. Then he’s brought back into the tribe for the public celebration. The party doesn’t make the man, the boy makes the man. We do the same thing here.

Solitude, survival and pain. Deal with that, get past that, don’t let the fear of it stop you from acting, and you’re a Man. Might happen at 10, or at 20 or at 50. Might never happen.

7

Your question reminds me of when I was in college. I don’t know if this is still true, but back then in the dark ages, the feminists on campus made a point of always referring to any female over 18 as a “woman.” For instance, they would say, “I met a woman the other day who…” I would think they were talking about one of the teachers, and then realize they were referring to some other 18-year-old freshman. It seemed very weird to me, as the typical vernacular was to use “girl” or “gal,” or even just to say “I met someone…” and then make it clear it was a female by using the feminine pronouns after that.

Anyway, the reason I think it sounded weird was because the state of womanhood just didn’t seem to have been earned at that time of life. There were none (or very few) of the trappings of adulthood involved, such as the ones mentioned by Kalhoun…especially being self-sufficient and being responsible for something outside of yourself. Living on a college campus and and getting a degree paid for by your parents doesn’t strike me as being a “womanly” level of maturity.

8

I always thought of that was a somewhat earlier stage, that of breaking from your parents’ protection and being self-sufficient (at least for a bit).

These days commonly achieved through travel - the backpacking trip or wilderness trip offers some solitude, survival and pain, usually right before, during or after some sort of college or university education, for those who can afford it.

To my mind, becimming a full adult means more, though.

9

Could be. I like your ideas of honor and morality having something to do with it. I know lots of responsible, moral (very rigidly so!) kids who aren’t self-sufficient or mature in the slightest, though. I was one of them for a very long time (longer chronologically than most, and with a child to boot) without feeling myself an Adult. I know I learned and I try to teach ethics, not just morals, at a younger age than most people might, though.

It’s hard to define, really. There are lots of pieces which go into making an Adult. I like reading the different viewpoints.

For me, personally, it took losing my mentor and teacher (honestly, “losing” meaning I came to the realization that she was more immature and unethical than I was) and then nearly losing my life while giving birth before I internalized “Mother” and “Woman” as labels that apply to me. The bare fact that I’d been a mother to my son for 12 years already didn’t change that.

I still struggle with “Adult”, though.

10

I’ve posted this before, but the first time I felt like a woman was when my grandfather was dying. I was in my early 20s. He was in the nursing home, and my parents and I would take it in shifts to sit with him. I was sitting next to him, stroking his hair, and I had the clear thought–“This is what it means to be a woman.”

Because at that moment, it wasn’t about me. Yes, I was sad; yes, I was losing my grandfather; yes, being around dying people can be scary. But his needs were more important than mine. He needed someone to be there with him. And I could find it in me to overcome my sadness and freaked-outness to be that someone. That’s what adults do.

11

There are different sorts of morality, though.

Not getting into the validity or lack thereof of any particular code, most people go through a stage as they grow up where their sense of morality is very rigid - based on strict adherence to some sort of external code (often followed by a stage where all morals are seen as relative).

The process I’m thinking of follows after that, where people come to terms with their moral sense, and rely more on their concience, intuition, and their personal adaptation and interpretation of externally devised moral codes - regecting both absolute regidity and absolute relativism for some personally-workable system.

That said, I agree with the notion that dealing with dissapointment, loss and life-threatening experiences is part of it, too. Maybe when the thread is longer we’ll have an interesting list.

12

I had the same feelings about adulthood with regard to motherhood. I was a mom but I was still making stupid, immature financial decisions. I felt the pain and struggle, all right…but most of it was because of my lousy decision-making skills. I think when I finally got it through my head that most everything in my life that was out of control was actually within my control, and that when I applied that knowledge and saw positive results, I finally felt like an adult.

I’m still hopelessly immature, though. You just can’t take me anywhere! :wink:

13

Oh, absolutely. The first time I took a Kohlberg test administered by a psychologist was when I was 12, and I scored at Stage 5-6. I was retested several times, and the only argument from several independent testers was over the 5 or 6 issue. (Kohlberg himself has stopped scoring 6’s, at least at that point, because he couldn’t figure out how to make the test consistent for the differentiation between a 5 and a 6.) My son is a solid stage 4 at only 14 years old. Just like there are math prodigies and musical prodigies, some of us are moral prodigies. Doesn’t mean I’m better or smarter than anyone, just that my moral development happened faster than most. Didn’t make me an Adult any sooner than a 9 year old chess whiz, of course. But I agree it’s a part of it.

:smiley: I think the idea that “mature” = stodgy and fun-hating is a seriously outmoded concept. I present, once again, my favorite xkcd comic strip, which perfectly captures my thoughts on the matter.

When I label my former mentor “immature” I guess I mean that she made selfish decisions that would be to the detriment of the people she claimed to be in support of - her clients, her students, her children - and she lied a lot when called on it, and refused to accept accountability or even to talk to people who felt she had wronged them. I decided that didn’t work for me and she wasn’t a very good role model for me at that point in my life. I learned a hell of a lot from her over the years, but once I caught myself literally learning more from watching her mistakes than her intentional teachings, it was time to get out of Dodge.

One of the things about living in a free, democratic mutlicultural society is that there is no watershed moment where you’re an Adult. If you’re a farmer in a society of farmers, you become an Adult when you have your own farm. If you’re a hunter in a society of hunters, you become an Adult when you kill your first large animal and feed people with it. Because we all have such different experiences now, we have different moments when we privately feel Adult, no matter who the government says can drink or vote.

The thing I resist, though, is saying that you’re not an Adult until you have children, or have your own home. I don’t intend to ever buy a home, and I know lots of people who never intend to have children. That doesn’t mean they’re not Adults, though.

14

Interesting question. Last month my son turned 18, my oldest daughter is nearly 20.

My son’s age has had an impact on the way I respond to some of his decisions/actions as of late. When he has done things that I consider irresponsible or immature, I feel it appropriate to remind him that he is legally considered an adult for many purposes, and part of being an adult is acting more independently and making more responsible choices. He’s not a little kid anymore. He registered to vote and with Selective Services, and next year he will be going away to college. But it is interesting how uneven the maturing process is.

Just the other day my daughter, a college sophomore, asked if she could go on a weekend trip. We told her that we really appreciated that she would ask our counsel on such things, but that she didn’t really need to ask our permission.

Like I said, interesting.

Me, when I was 18, I was an immature goofball. And for many years thereafter - maybe still am.

15

Yeah, but how is she with armpit farts at the dinner table? :smiley:

16

Terrible! She can only hit one note, and it’s flat! :smiley:

17

I remember the same thing from college. That pretentious way they would refer to students as “men” and “women”. I think that many prep (high) schools do the same thing. Oh, you mean the same “men” who were shotgunning beers until they puked and the same “women” who were dancing on my fraternity bar after too many tequilla shots? I think it’s basically a ploy to get them to start thinking like they are actually men and women and to stop acting like retarded monkeys.

In reality, our adult ritual consists of a long period starting from high school graduation up until you land your first professional job and have moved out of your parents house (hopefully with a few months of college graduation). College students are still in a transitional state - they aren’t quite children but they are still learning how to be independent adults.

Yeah, but what about selfish adults? They’re still adults, they’re just jerks.

Adult means no one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to. It also means you will suffer the consequences of those actions. You can not go to work, but you’ll need to figure out how to pay your rent. You can not visit your sick relatives, but eventually they will ignore you too. Children have to do what they’re told and if they screw up, there’s generally someone around to set things straight.

18

I turned 18 in 1967, before the government said 18 was fully adult. It wouldn’t have mattered much. I was foolish, immature, and nearly dangerous in some ways. I didn’t believe it at the time, of course. Every teenager believes he/she is very mature for his age. Most of us were damn fools at 18, and none of us knew it. :smack:

19

This is a tough question for me.

At 17 I was legally an adult, finishing my senior year of high school while working full-time as a waitress, paying for my own gas, groceries, utility bills, etc. On the last day of school, while the other seniors ran around madly taking photographs of one another and handing out senior pics, I was sitting at my desk balancing my checkbook, mentally a world away.

I wasn’t really thinking, ‘‘Am I an adult or not?’’ I was just doing what I had to in order to move onto college and with the rest of my life. The day I graduated Salutatorian of my high school class, I had to give a speech. You’d think I’d have been bursting with pride, but I felt nothing. It was not the time to feel.

But really, there has to be more to adulthood than that. I used to think I became a ‘‘woman’’ at 17, but looking back on myself, it is clear I was still a child–just a motivated and responsible one. I feel like some part of me just knew I had to do that one thing for myself. I allowed myself plenty of irresponsibility once I got to college. :wink:

Because of how much I had to teach myself, I didn’t truly feel like I was a woman until I got married at 23. Sometimes I still don’t quite feel as mature as I should be. It seems like there are always bits and pieces of me that will be behind… but I’ve come around tremendously in the past two years. I try not to mentally punish myself for the things I did not know and still don’t know.

People call me ‘‘ma’am’’ on the phone now, it weirds me out. That kind of stuff just sneaks up on you I guess. At 24, though I’m not as emotionally mature as I’d like to be, I must concede that I am, in fact, a woman. The thing that makes me feel the most grown-up is anything to do with my marriage. I am incredibly proud of my marriage, and I think I am most responsible concerning that. Something about starting a family really makes you grow up fast.

20

I think that as far as everyone else was concerned, it was when I got out of school and got my own job and place.

For me, it was a little later on, when my uncle, dad and cousins started asking my advice on things unrelated to my profession; to me, it signified that I’d “arrived”, and was now fully part of the adult family, and not looked at as just my parents’ kid.