I’d done all but marriage by the age of 22. I’m surprised they didn’t include home-ownership - not that it matters, but it’s the kind of thing I’d expect to be included on a list that includes getting married and having kids.
It’s getting harder and harder to even move out of the family home. If my daughter were an adult now and wanted to move into a room in a shared house withing twenty miles of where I live in London, that’d be the usual month’s rent in advance plus a month’s rent as deposit, totalling a thousand quid easily.
Sure you’re technically still an adult. I don’t think you can be as much of an adult unless you get married and have kids. It forces you to decide whether you are going to be selfish or put the needs of your wife and children first. A bachelor or bachelorette never has to make those decisions. Their only real obligation and focus is towards themselves.
And yet I know some rather amazing single and/or childless people who do amazing things for their family or community. Perhaps theres more than one way to become unselfish, without force even.
And thanks Scifisam, early days but we’re very happy.
I don’t think it’s so much a matter of being selfish or not selfish. There are certainly selfish parents and unselfish single people. It’s a matter of accepting an obligation (or ignoring it).
It’s like this. Sure you can do great things for your community as a single person. But these are things you decide to do or not do and you are really under no obligation to do or not do them unless you want to. A parent has an obligation to put their energies into their family first and they can’t just decide not to be parents anymore. They have to at least consider how moving, changing jobs, putting extra time into building the community and any other activity will affect their relationship with their spouse and children. And how well they meet those obligations defines who they are as a person.
IOW, not helping to build the community doesn’t make someone a shitty person. Not paying attention to their family does.
Parents might have an obligation to put their energies into their families, but they most certainly can choose not to. People walk out on their families all the time. Or they can do just the bare minimum, like providing the financial resources but not the emotional. How in the world would a person like that be necessarily more of an “adult” than the neighborhood Mother Theresa?
I would say a mature, self-actualized person cares for the world outside of him or herself in some tangible way. That “world” could be his family or the greater community. Some people feel an obligation to their community (like a priest, for instance) in the same way that others feel an obligation to their nuclear family. Putting one group of people on a pedastal, when the others can have more far-reaching impacts on people’s lives, seems rather wrong to me.
Yes to 1-3, essentially 4 but can’t legally as of yet. 5 is a never. Although my Father not-yet-in-law has been strongly hinting that he wants grandchildren. Oddly until his last child graduated high school he always said he thought gay couples shouldn’t have kids. Funny how the empty nest changes people.
I’m 35 and took care of the first 3 by age 20 and the 4th from about age 28. We’d been together over two years at that point so close enough.
Have you completed school?
For the moment. I have a B.A. and an M.Ed. I sometimes think about going for an MFA or perhaps a Ph.D.
Have you left home?
I’ve been an apartment dweller for three years now. I return for visits because I’m close to my parents.
Have you become financially independent?
Mostly? I have my own income and insurance. I still talk to my parents for advice on financial decisions and occasionally they decide to help with things–but I’m not asking for it.
Have you married?
Not yet.
Have you had a child?
Not yet.
FTR, 25/F. I guess I have five years left for the other two. Recently, I’ve started to hear a few comments. Perhaps some relatives are pushing in that direction.
Even “archaic” is giving it too much credit. The majority of males throughout history never had children; by that standard most men have never became adults. Which obviously ruins it as a standard.
And no, I’ve never had children and never want to.
I’ve done all five. As measures of adulthood, numbers 4 and 5 are just silly. For me, the ones that really made a difference in terms of feeling a shift in my maturity level were 2 and 3. I figure 1 is less essential: if you’re supporting yourself in your own home and you decide to go back to college at the same time, I don’t see how that makes you any less of an adult.
I do think, though, that I’d replace 4 and 5 with something like ‘Have you had a relationship that meant you were no longer your own sole focus, your own sole priority, the only person to whom you were emotionally responsible?’ That could cover marriage, serious relationships, kids, possibly friends or in-depth community or carer work depending on the person’s level of commitment. I’m not wording it exactly right, but I know that my first really serious relationship (with my now-husband) made both of us grow immensely, from quite early on in the relationship. I’m not sure it’s possible to be a full adult if you’ve always been the sole centre of your own universe.
I have a degree, though I haven’t (and probably never will) completely ruled out going for another one. I’d like to, I just have no idea what I’d want to study… that would also be worth spending crazy amounts of money on – at least some of the stuff I am learning/want to learn is available through non-accredited adult education through various community orgs around here. Other things I’d really love to study, but they have limited to no practical application in the workplace (there’d be no way to “earn my money back” on it, although it would be extremely useful in day-to-day life – just not in monetary terms), so much as it pains me, I can’t justify the cost. Sigh.
Yes, ages ago.
Depends on the economy. My talents and skills are undervalued by our culture, so I never earn as much as someone with equivalent skill in say, financial services. If the economy tanks, my job is the first on the chopping block. I’m at a point where I no longer expect to have a job that lasts for more than about 12-18 months before it gets cut or “reorganized.” I freelance now, instead of attempting to rely on a single unreliable source of income, but it has the same problems. People want what I got, but they’re rarely willing to pay for it.
I don’t have a lot of choice here, either. I would make a shit-ass financial services person (accountant, lawyer, CEO, whatever), so I doubt I’d ever find a stable job doing that, either.
No. There’s the possibility that I could end up in a LTR with someone I can’t (legally) marry, too, so I don’t really buy this as a criteria for adulthood. I’ve had relationships. I know how to function within one. I know how to function on my own, too, which is more than I can say for a lot of people who are married.
No. By this criteria, I’ll never be an “adult,” since I have absolutely no intention of ever having any. I don’t like them, don’t want them.
I don’t know if “worry” is the right word. There are times when I resent that everyone would love it if I work for them for free, but not many would pony up to get it. But that has nothing to do with whether or not I perceive myself as an “adult.” As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been an adult for quite a while, now.
I also wish I had a LTR, but that again has nothing to do with some arbitrary criteria for “adulthood,” and everything to do with wanting someone to come home to.
My family, thankfully, doesn’t tell me what to do with my life. It probably doesn’t hurt that my siblings have already provided the grandchildren, so there’s no pressure that it’s either me poppin’ 'em out, or nothing.
Have these sociological criteria really not been updated recently? They sound like something straight out of the 50s.
1. Have you completed school? Highschool by the traditional age of 18. Got my masters (“drs”) by 24, which was 2 years late.
2. Have you left home? Soon as I could, by 18.
3. Have you become financially independent? Well…we live in a nanny state here in the Netherlands, so I sometimes feel I still am not financially independent. The state and for the first two yeras my dad subsidized me during college, and at age 24 I got my first job, and have been working ever since. I never got money from my parents after I turned 22.
I have never owned a car of my own. Bought my first house at 39.
4. Have you married? Moved in with my long term so at 21. We stayed together for 15 years. Left him at 38 and married my now husband at age 40, when I was five months pregnant.
Have you had a child? My first and only child was born when I was 40. Which is kinda ancient for a first time mom.
Have you become financially independent? HAHA! What does that mean? I guess when I graduated college about ten or so years ago, got a real job, then became not eligible for food stamps…
Have you married? age 25 and again (the real one this time) at age 40
Have you had a child? Age 24
So, I got three of them done prior to age 30 but the rest… well I was above 30.
I’m 42 and left home and became financially independent at 22.
However no spouse, no kids and I never really finished school, despite racking up 230-odd semester units over 13 years continuous enrollment at a university ( more than half of that part-time and mostly treated as a hobby ).
So I’m still just a child, really :D. And I am pretty comfortable with that notion*.
Probably should have finished one of my degrees, though. It would be nice to have, though it would have it would have very little practical value to me. Actually I haven’t bothered to go back and do so for precisely that reason - it seems like too much trouble and money at this point for something of minimal importance.
I would say those people you described are failures at that stage of adulthood.
Is Mother Theresa more or less of an adult than any other person who stayed single but dedicated their life to a particular career or interest?
Maybe “wife and kids” isn’t necessarily the hallmark of reaching full adulthood. Maybe it is simply dedication to something other than yourself. That could be family, career, military service, church/god, helping others, whatever.
Although, IMHO, it seems to me that many of these pursuits are a way for some people to escape from having to form real partnering and family relationships.
