When Are You Really an Adult?

I hold that there is one very specific moment that signifies the transition from childhood into adulthood that is universal for all people – the moment you first realize that when it comes down to it, you are the only person who is responsible for you. That eventually, the charity of others will run out and all that will be left is your own reflection staring back at you, at which point you will need to decide whether or not to improve your life or check out early.

Some people reach this point early on in their lives, and others very late. Some people only reach it after undergoing a difficult period and still others reach it with very little drama or pain. I didn't personally come to this realization until I hit my "rock bottom". People never stop feeling sorry for you, but eventually, everyone stops trying to help. When it clicked, though, it changed my life. I've never been the same since, and I believe that's because I made the transition from being a child to becoming an adult.

I've frequently thought this over the past few years, and I feel like the conclusion I have is different than others in this thread.

I don't becoming an adult is really about you, exactly. It's not about your independence, or your actions.

It's about when other people become dependent on you.

I think this is the way that it has long been thought of in cultures outside of the post-Enlightenment West. This was my strong opinion after reading Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, (Russia isn't western like the rest of Europe) and Aquinas, Augustine, and Aristotle. I think that this is in part what the Apostle Paul is saying in 1 Corinithians 13:11 ( http://www.esvbible.org/1+Corinthians+13%3A11/ ), where you'll note that he doesn't say the equivalent of stopping to be like a child meant I had become a man, but rather I became a man, so I stopped being like a child.

I think about soldiers I have met and know. They change when they get to NCO status. I think of the boys I have met from North Omaha, which is arguably one of the worst places in America for young African American males, and that there is a difference between the ones who are the oldest in their families and the ones who are the youngest, even if they are the same age. And I think of my friends, and how we've changed when we've had kids, or when someone started a business and got ( real, not just one of his buddies-while-still-in-high-school ) employees.

Adulthood isn't about you, it's about your relationship to others.

I'm approaching 40. I've never been "aimless", and while I can definitely increase how often I take responsibility, I'm doing well. I own a house, am married, taking care of my mother, employed, socking money away in a 401k (probably not fast enough, but it's happening).

...and I've never felt like an adult. I can have the weird dichotomy of having friends young enough to have missed everything I relate to my childhood, friends that I consider "adult", and yet I still feel like I did when I graduated college.

I have talked with CEOs and VPs or just other coders that are younger than I, yet I "feel" like they are older, more experienced.

I have no idea when I'm really an adult, but I don't expect it will be soon.

Boom... Like being a parent or taking care of parents.

For me it was when I got married. At first it was like cool and then it dawned on me that as head of household, I was responsible for more than just ME!

Once my kids were born, a different type of adulthood settled in. The decisions that I had made earlier in my life about things like moving, finances, and doing stupid things on the weekends with my wife weren't as easy to make or not even possible.

And now as time has passed, I've had to deal with aging parents. I now talk with my mom and dad as an adult and not a child. Our discussions when dealing with serious topics related to health or family now weigh heavier on me. I now carry a sense of responsibility with me that I just can't shake.

For me the moment I entered adulthood was the moment I couldn't shake my responsibilities anymore. I also want to point out that I choose to be responsible. Could I decide tomorrow to be irresponsible? Hell yes, but I choose not to because I have people that depend on me.

One last thing, being an adult does not stop me from doing kid like things. I still play plenty of video games like my favorite Black OPS 3 (many hours have been thrown into that black hole of time) and watch cartoons like Bleach (soap opera for nerds).

My two cents worth.

I never really liked this question. The article even states verbatim why I have this feeling. "Adulthood is a social construct."

So when we're saying "are you an adult?" I'd like to ask what are we REALLY getting at. An ability to handle X class of situations? An ability to make X levels of abstract reasoning about social processes? There are so many and so variable a set of objective and subjective markers that any sort of broad statement seems useless, at best, deceptive and detracting from the actual markers at worst.

I had a conversation with my father once, something along the lines of, "We really all just get better at pretending, don't we?"

I'm not sure what my "Central point" of this post is, (and it's far from my more rigorously argued ones) so take it as a collection of thoughts on how I've found the most "personal enlightenment" regarding adulthood, as a rather transparent contrived construct; realizing this was (perhaps ironically given my thesis on this) my internal moment of "I have reached adulthood".

"There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers and looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With all his heart he wants to come close to some other human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the hand of another. If he prefers that the other be a woman, that is because he believes that a woman will be gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of all, understanding."

There is a mode of adulthood that is dangerous and worth mentioning, which is a kind of hard-hearted acceptance that the world isn't fair, life is full of suffering, and there's nothing you (or anyone) can do about except suck it up and keep going. There's a kind of grim determination to continue despite not wanting to. Maybe it's because you have people depending on you, or maybe it's because you're just very stubborn. To some extent, I associate this mode with the opening scene of "There Will Be Blood" when Daniel Day Lewis' character is injured and spares not a single moment on despair, or self-pity, and gets himself out of a miserable situation, against the odds.

In this mode, there is little time or urge for compassion, or play, or joy. You are a cog in a large machine that values you only and precisely according to your economic function, who's body participates in multiple overlapping patterns of decay, and that's it. Maybe, if you're religious, you can look forward to a happy afterlife (and indeed one can imagine the role of religion in such a person's life is to offer a reason to not act out on the rage that inevitably underlies such an existence).

Almost everyone on HN is lucky to not have to endure this (or at least, for any length of time). And indeed, startups cannot succeed with that grimness. You must maintain your sense of play and joy, I think, to be successful in this space, because this is the most playful and joyful part of the economy! We make stuff that makes people go "ooh" and "ahh", and how can you really do that if you're an adult?

You are an adult when people stop caring for you and you start caring for other.

There is a transition when people stop caring for you and you care for yourself but for no one else yet. We call this teens.

Call it what you want, it's not really age dependant. We have simply put words on psychological changes and tied them with age.

Some people become adults at 12 years old. Other at 40. I've met "adults" that are only tall children and children that are short adults.

I'm barely an adult. Partly because of my bad childhood where I wasn't accepted by my parents and peers as trans. And partly my fault for not getting my proverbial head out of my own ass (therapy, transitioning, finishing my grad degree). Now at 35 I'm just growing up. And I don't mean the basic stuff like keeping a budget and showing up for work doing a good job. I'm talking about making my own circle of friends, actually being me (gender transition), and not being so craven to get outside of my comfort zone. It just seems to me adulthood is that one thing you can't ever be prepared for either. >_> /rant

Good grief that was a really long-winded way of saying "it depends on the person".

Kipling gave it some thought: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772

When you own a tarp.

Bah. I think the question itself is silly.

The whole topic is centered around Adulthood is a social construct. For that matter, so is childhood. And, at some level, you should realize the classification is, well, hogwash.

I first drove a truck when I was 11. My dad drove tractor all summer starting when he was 9. The 3 year old in Dune killed dying enemy soldiers when 3. These are all presumably adult activities. I substantially took care of a farm at the age of 12.

If you are lucky enough to figure out who you are at a young age, the rest is semi-interesting narrative.

Forget the classifications that others would impose on you. Do what you love, and the rest will sort itself out.

I once had the following conversation with my daughter, i think when she was 15. I said, a bit tongue in cheek, "Be patient with your parents, as they are only now catching up to the notion of who you are, or were, and know they will know no more about you or your life than you did when you were six." She gave a silent smile.

Lots of parents here claiming they are more adult than non-parents...

I'm 30, married, have 4 kids (with one on the way), own a house, and have a good job. But I cannot grow a mustache or beard, except for a small patch under my chin; the best I can do is literally a neck beard. I'll never feel like an adult. Ever.

Adulthood, maturity, is fundamentally about responsibility. Are you a person who is always seeking the help of others or are you a person who is substantially self-reliant and who others go to for help? That's the dividing line for adulthood.

Notice that this has nothing to do with style, fashion, or entertainment choices. You can drink scotch, smoke cigars, wear suits every day, and drive a luxury automobile, that doesn't make you more mature. And you can chew bubblegum, watch cartoons, play videogames, wear jeans and hoodies, that doesn't make you less mature.

The moment my dad said his only worry for me was making sure I was able to learn and handle being responsible for myself and responsibilities I'd have for my life including others.. to realize I had already been doing it for a bit.

Beyond that, I think as an adult it's a critical moment to realize it's not about what you get from the world, but what you are able to give, and your ability to think about others as much as you think for your self is critical when you have to work and function with any combination of working in the world, relationships, family and kids.

As someone who considers himself very recently an adult, the quick and dirty and only-half-joking rule of thumb among my peers is whether someone is paying for their own cell phone plan.

I think you're probably an adult when you transition from the role of being "protected", by some one, or some entity, to the role of "protector"...

That is, you've managed your own affairs so that you're now in a position to help others who need help managing theirs...

That's the cornerstone of a healthy and productive society--accomplished elders mentoring the young on a consistent basis...

Adulthood is defined by extreme personal responsibility.

I didn't consider making a baby adulthood, or getting a $100k/year job to be adulthood. If anything, I was _less_ responsible for my own actions (ballooning to 360lbs), because I started focusing on the things I _had_ to do, and let my personal development stop due to not having time.

Oddly, I realized and _grasped_ the concept that I had to take responsibility for my actions at around 19. But thinking that I had to check these checkboxes off my "Steps to Adulthood" list, I put off everything else in order to achieve it. I didn't actually achieve adulthood from that path, I just had the trappings and appearance of adulthood. But I was still about 13 years old inside.

I didn't consider myself an adult until the second time I made a judge run out of the courtroom (I declared a de jure court mid-sentencing after serving him notice of that right). The actual reason is less than relevant, but it was the taking control of my potential, and using it responsibly to help someone else, that brought me to adulthood.

I'm not sure Thoreau is such a great example of an adult. As [1] argues

  The real Thoreau was, in the fullest sense of the word, 
  self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about 
  self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond 
  himself to understand and thrive in the world.
  [..]
  “Walden” is less a cornerstone work of environmental 
  literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about 
  rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the 
  woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the 
  entanglements and responsibilities of living among other 
  people.

Much of which, as many here argue, is essential to 'being an adult'.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum

> “Chronological age is not a particularly good indicator [of maturity], but it’s something we need to do for practical purposes,”

This may be anecdotal, but I've found a very strong association between age and maturity in my life, especially under 25. If you were to do a blind chat with a 10, 15, 20 and 25 year old do you really believe you wouldn't be able to place them accordingly?

But maybe this is just my own biases deluding me. I'd like to think I'm a better man than I was 5 years ago, and will continue to be a better one 5 years in the future. Then again, is maturity really defined as being "a better (wo)man", because according to dictionary.com it's defined by age.

Either way I'd be curious for that professor's full quote. Maybe if we could replace "[maturity]" with what she actually said it would shed some insight on what exactly we're talking about.

How about financial independence?

EDIT; key sentence below:

> Over the course of his research on this, Jensen Arnett has zeroed in on what he calls “the Big Three” criteria for becoming an adult, the things people rank as what they most need to be a grown-up: taking responsibility for yourself, making independent decisions, and becoming financially independent.

Being an adult is when you realize that nobody else knows what the hell they're doing either.

One definition I was fond of and struck by hearing was that you're not an adult when you can take care of yourself but when you can take care of others. We could qualify that all sorts of ways but its short and pithy form makes it stick in the mind well.

The day I got excited about ordering a new vacuum cleaner.

I can't say I definitively crossed the threshold of adulthood that day, but the kid in me grieved. He was no longer in control... of everything ;) There was now a "grown-up" in charge.

I believe it's the moment when other people come to you for help, be it money, advice, work, etc. When you're a spigot instead of a bucket. I think that's about the simplest definition possible.

"At about age 22 or 23, the brain is pretty much done developing, according to Steinberg, who studies adolescence and brain development."

"Adult plasticity still allows for modifications to the brain, but at that point, the neural structures aren’t going to change."

The above changes to neuroplasticity really hit me hard when I restarted college in my 30s.

Despite "passing" for a 20some student, I realized I learned differently than my younger colleagues.

I had to rely on association with my previous knowledge quite a bit more.

Learning something completely new became near impossible hill to climb.

You become an adult at the point you have a significant (meaning, major life impact) responsibility to at least one other person.

That can come from (examples):

1. Becoming a parent (most people) 2. Becoming an employer (who's employees depend on you and the business for their livelyhood) 3. Other examples that you can come up with

At the point that your actions, decisions, the way you present yourself, how you spend money, etc have consequences for more than just you is the point where you really grow up.

When it's all about you, you don't really have responsibilities you just have stuff to do.

Hasn't 'twenty-something', in the popular vernacular usage, already taken on the meaning of a distinct life phase (not quite adult, not still adolescent)?

One possible marker of adulthood is achieving a goal after suffering a major setback. For instance, flunking out of college, then transferring elsewhere and obtaining a degree. Or along the same vein, seeing a difficult project through to the end, when everyone has bailed. Lest I sound too self-congratulatory, one could say I am too dumb to know when to quit.

For me, feeling like an adult means feeling more like myself. It's like there's a core being of who I am, independent of all other factors, which becomes more prominent over time. I suppose it's tangential to the current top post - "when it comes down to it, you are the only person who is responsible for you".

Notions of adulthood vary from culture to culture.

In many cultures, after an arbitrary rite of passage, children are considered "adults".

I think, personally, the point at which one becomes an adult is acknowledging the bitter and harsh truth of reality. In some sense, it may be better to remain a child forever, ignorantly blissful.

I didn't start feeling like an adult until around age 21, and it took multiple failings and heavy introspection to get to that point. However, I'm glad I had the experiences I did, even though it was pretty rough at times, because they made me a better person and shaped me for the future.

The problem with the Atlantic is that it takes them so long "to land the plane." Always terribly long articles. What I got from it is that 18-year olds, or not really adults, should not be going to war since their full brain development is about 5-years away.

You're an adult when you no longer give a shit about doing or saying things that others may think are childish. At some point you come to realize that nobody else can dictate what should or shouldn't make you happy.

I couldnt wait to get out and go to college. On my 18th birthday I left, was totally financially for myself. I lived on my own, could legally drink, vote and sign contracts. It was no big deal and I never looked back.

I remember 26 yo as a turning point for me and most friends around. Not a total change in personality, but we stopped acting like crazy hooligans. OTOH, almost doubling that age, I still feel a little less naive each year.

"When are you really an adult?"

When you become your own mother and father in the sense that you supply for yourself the sense of judgment, responsibility, and diligence you first got from your parents.

You are an adult when every single day consists of doing things you do not want to do. You just do them. Either because you must, or because you have responsibilty or guilt.