"There's a dearth of people who will do what's necessary without complaining."
To me it's all about realising that there's work which needs to be done regularly, that no one else will do for you and also no one will thank you for doing.
I've been happier since I realised this myself.
I’d add that I myself had a brief period during which I went from thinking “this is hard because I’m dumb” to “this is hard because it is indeed hard”. I felt like I grew up a little in those years as well (~35-ish?). I realized that grown ups and management are all just doing “something”. There is no grander scheme, no deeper understanding behind it. Like the veil was lifted and what was behind it was a bit disappointing, but I also felt that it could not have been any other way.
Somehow this realization also made me happier. It’s all something that you could have told me before but I would have never really felt it. All these lessons need to land in fertile soil. It takes some time and experiences for the soil to be ready.
But I got kicked out of my home at 18 and it was made abundantly clear from the age of 16 onward that this would be the case. Remaining a child is a luxury that I wish everyone can experience for as long as possible
Every five years, my life and context have changed profoundly in ways I could never have predicted.
I feel like I have lived many lifetimes.
I am not sure how I would measure growing up. I could never stay at one level long enough to get effortlessly good at it. My head is too far into the clouds. The stars are so inviting.
So I experience a lot of in-too-deep pressure, trying not to screw things up while working to achieve more than anyone might think is reasonable. With a regular remedial/recovery interval, after I screw things up.
If I do grow up in any way, it is the accumulation of resilience and loss of fear that repeatedly digging myself out of my own craters provides. I have internalized that nothing can stop me. Nothing at all. Not even me, and that is saying a lot.
What makes an adult? I think accepting responsibility for your (and often someone else's) condition is a big part of it. I did that at 15. I double downed at 30 when I became our sole provider. But it was my 40s when I started to feel like an adult.
I see many "adult" children and many more adults acting like children. The difference seems to be a combination of self-awareness, social awareness, and responsibility taking.
The things that distinguish the adults from the children in my life tends to be age less and less, and responsibility and accountability more.
Your ability to be of service to people in your family, your circle of friends, and your community is such a great measure of how you've become an adult. It isn't a perfect measure, but the best proxy I've found. It's very difficult to spoof it.
People who have aged but failed to mature tend to struggle on all or several of these metrics. Their attention, actions, and overall lives are very inwardly oriented in many ways.
It isn't to say they're bad people. My rough framework is that as social animals, we need to figure things out before we can fully integrate into our social systems as a fully functioning member. A big step in this process is figuring ourselves out. That's why kids are doing legitimate work when they play, make mistakes, struggle, and so on. They're doing those difficult steps of self discovery. Then, we need to figure out how we fit into the social layers and meshes around us. It's all very complex. It's understandable that we never fully figure it out or optimize, and that some people get hung up on early steps without the right help to be guided through. If the foundations are poor, you're going to struggle.
In effect being an adult is just being a well adjusted, integrated member of a community who functions as a generative, supportive, all around positive contributor.
That's an over simplification of course. It's a proxy I use to help guide myself, really. What can I do right now that would land me in that rough category? It's helpful to not have to overthink it.
At 40 I'd say I've begun becoming an adult but have a lot of work left to do. I think the efforts need to be ongoing because we never stop teaching the young ones, too. Complacency in some contexts can be totally fine, but in a social context I think it can be quite corrosive. We always need to care and strive for something better for each other. It's what we're here for.
Also, nice work, genuinely. Parenting at 23 was a shock to me. People thought I was handling it gracefully but it was totally ad-hoc and incredibly difficult at times. And that's with a disproportionately advantageous tech career supporting us. I can't imagine what would have happened at 15. That's admirable. I didn't even make it through school without a kid. I'm regularly amazed by what people can accomplish, including this.
It used to be that traumatised kids got slapped with a ADHD, autism and/or borderline diagnosis and it got called a day. These are "that's just how you are" style diagnoses. Since 2018 there is CPTSD which finally connects the symptoms to how you got treated as a child. The denial phase is over.
Lawmakers are a bit behind, as usual, but at this point the scale of the problems can't be denied anymore. Its too late for you and me, but I'm optimistic for future generations.
This is vaguely among experts (for autism and emotional instability): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11724683
This is not ruling out a causal link in the opposite direction, that autism increases vulnerability to traumata.
And while researching case reports on child abuse, i couldn't help to notice that many cases do - indeed - start with an autism diagnosis and only escalate later, example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11886450/
While its true that parents don't cause autism... they can surely cause the diagnosis. Extra bad because it delays appropriate treatment.
At some point I realized “adults” aren’t people who figured things out, they’re just people who got used to not knowing — which is both kind of freeing and a little unsettling.
Adult means grown up. Grown up does not mean perfect or without issues.
- A basic level of emotional stability and self-control
- Some ability to model consequences accurately
- Some ability to negotiate and handle imperfections and challenges in social situations, including relationships and work
- Some ability to accurately locate the line between internal and external responsibility, and to act accordingly
On that basis it's not at all about age or life stages, but about social and emotional competence.
This culture has a superficial understanding of social competence - more or less defined by "socially competent people get what they want."
I don't think there's much understanding of emotional competence. The default framing seems to be "You're probably damaged and so is your partner (which is why you're not getting what you want)" and not so much "This is what a functional adult looks like."
Work is even worse, with emotional competence being defined almost entirely by its relationship to profit and shareholder value, and not by any intrinsic human standard.
I feel that so much. I'm a first generation vietnamese american (born and raised in america) and it's very disappointing to see my own family lash out (at each other or even strangers) when there is some issue where the answer is unknown.
It's also very frustrating when there's such a strong emphasis on the idea that elders always know best and anybody younger cannot question them.
Discipline, wisdom, and maturity are probably the main aspects that I think define how "adult" somebody is.
I like that. And because humans are (sometimes poor) pattern matchers, we are confusing that for the proxy of age.
I'd probably measure maturity in terms of how one navigates relationships.
When it comes to my partner, being vulnerable, knowing when it's ok to share that I don't feel like an adult, that i'm scared or lack confidence, and when to put on a strong front and say it's all going to be ok, to make her feel safe, is the essence of what I consider to be a "grown ass man".
But we're also planning a trip to the Lego House, Denmark together and we don't have kids. So there's that.
Personally, the older I get the more `adult` just means you have an empathetic understanding of causality.
What is an adult? Like most words, "adult" encodes a cluster of related behaviors and it's a probabilistic judgment as to whether any individual counts. And it's also shaped by the circumstances of the day. The roles and responsibilities of adulthood change over time, with different social expectations, and those roles may become achievable or less expected to be achievable, depending.
It's unsurprising that the article doesn't really come to any conclusion. The question doesn't admit a hard answer. A better question might be, what is the good life of today, and what transitions and when might make sense in our time.
Our lives are less structured by tradition than times past. But some biological truths can't be denied. A good life, today, might require one to be countercultural, if our ad-ridden culture over-venerates individualism and youth.
I suspect most people only realize these things in retrospect. You don't really know what doors have closed until you find yourself ignored, knocking outside.
I use a rough threshold of how much responsibilities they can, or, have to endure, and manage to take care of in a good enough way.
People eager to define other people as insufficiently adult adults, should be viewed with the same skepticism as people who want to put their political opponents in an asylum.
If you think it's a problem that young adults today play too much video games or whatever, take the ball and not the man. The problem then is in the behavior, not in people's essence. The youth are as bad as every generation complains that they are, no more, no less.
Some never make it.
It has nothing to do with age.
You could argue that a 10-year-old who is pulling hens weight in the family is an adult by my definition since they are not imposing on others in the family.
* corporate billionaires don't think to themselves "am I really an adult?" * religious zealots do not ask these questions * Putin does not wake up and wonder that * Donald trump does not wake up and wonder that * netanyahu does not wake up and wonder that
You have power in this world, whether you realize it or not. You can vote and talk to people and ask them to vote. You have money. You are big and strong and can move things in the physical world.
With that power also comes responsibility. I'm not asking you to shoulder the entire world on just your own - but do your part.
Like the article, I think much of what makes you an adult is taking responsibility. For some, the first time that happens may be when their parents die I suppose.
There are two periods where there are sharp declines: 19, and sometimes after 26, all the way to 35.
https://www.hallandalelaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/IIH...
If we assume, this is a indicator 'maturity', then the answer should be around 26-35, depending on the individual. It seems that the founding fathers were into something when the made the minimal age for a president at 35.
There is a reversal at 75+, but this is due to age related issues. And my experience from the older folks in my life, it seems people start reverting to a 'teenage' like state at 75+.
I dont think most people are very far apart from around that age anyway. Depending ofc on how one gets raised you might get to that maturity more or less quickly in life.
(it has nothing to do with skills, eloquance or such things. More to do with how well a person can adapt and respond to stimuli of the nervous system (consciousness), and in my further opinion, how well someone can take and understand the perspective of others. (understanding without judgement).
Answering the question posed in title - I have no idea.
When I was a kid, I thought that person becomes adult in the day of their 18 birthdays.
But being 18 years old, I didn't feel so mature. "Maybe when I finish university", I thought. But nope, it didn't feel like being adult.
Maybe when I have a stable, "real" job? Nope.
Maybe after I leave my parents home? Still not.
Maybe after marriage? It's still not that.
I suppose I still consider being adult with being serious, busy, and in total control of their lives. And I don't feel that yet, probably I will never will.
I feel that this view of adulthood is a bit childish. And most likely I never will feel adult in this specific way. We never are in a total control of our lives.
But - do I feel more mature than in my 20'? Of course I do. I have much more responsibilities. My decisions and my actions are much more deliberate than they used to be.
But I just feel that I still have a long way to go...
Also not quite what the article is about.
Why is that so clear in other animals but not in humans? Every other social construct is just mental gymnastics. We believe we are special and need to do these gymnastics to keep the importance up.
We _know_ the human brain is finishing its development in our early to mid twenties, maybe 10 years post puberty. This extra brain development likely needed for our advanced social and tool needs, and is a unique niche for humans. Our hidden brain development does make a difference. Other primates don't display this.
So i would say that you become adult when you have kids. Due to reasons this is postponed (or missing) to older and older age.
This may be an unpopular opinion but everyone needs to face a critical mass of unfortunate events at some part of their life. The earlier it happens the easier it is down the road.
Are card games also childish?
Sports games?
Perhaps we should stop playing games altogather and tell everyone at the Olympic Games to stop being children!
Bloody chess players, don't they know how much they look like kids!
We understand where your line is.
Maybe consider that whatever has made you so “salty” is really just trauma that has made you callous, inconsiderate, and closed off.
You accuse people of not being as much of a man as presumably you are, but regardless of the negatives of video games, could it just be that those you have disdain for are just victims of a different type of abuse you were subjected to that made you such a man?
Are you a man because you killed people in foreign countries for a ruling class that hated you and has destroyed and plundered your country and community to enrich themselves maybe?
Or maybe you just support those who have done that due to the ruling class TV/Hollywood propaganda about how “manly” it is to kill people and die for the ruling class and how virtuous it is to support them?
Your generation may have just been abused with propaganda about being a man, going to kill and die for the ruling class aristocrats; this generation may have just been propagandized that “video games and drugs” are the best way to manage the peasantry, as Yuval Noah Harari said about what the ruling class would do with all the people who become obsolete due to AI and robotics.
I ask you may consider redirecting your ire towards the abusers, not other abused in your international disdain. You do after all also forget, if you’re the old man, then as the elder you are in one way or another responsible for the world you created and left behind. The parent is always responsible for the child, especially when the parent has caused, brought about all the damage the child must deal with.
I don't see any consistent argument to single out video games.
And there are many adults who play video games to unwind after work.
And it's not just men who play video games. There are a lot of women who play video games including Minecraft and other games, including a huge range of more casual games.
When someone else is paying your way, you are not an adult. Or at least not acting like one.
As for subsidies, a colleague of mine years ago bought some farmland. He had no intention of farming it, he made money off of the federal subsidy paying him to not farm.
A friend of mine grew up on a farm. He said the usual pattern was 4 years of losses and 1 year of a bumper crop that paid for it.
Nobody is entitled to be a farmer. If you cannot make money farming, it's not the responsibility of others to pay for it.
There is a rationale for maintaining an agricultural base that can feed the country as a national security thing. Make of that what you want.
Paying for your own health insurance is insane. I would move out of any country that would force me to do that.
Your "free" health care is paid for by you and others. It's so expensive because of that. Healthcare wasn't particularly expensive before the government got involved in it.
Modern governments do indeed treat the citizens like children.
I've paid for my own health insurance ever since I became an adult.
If you don't have an HSA (Health Savings Account), consider setting one up. It's a very good deal.
I remember the day I phoned my dad and told him I didn't need any more support (I was in college at the time). It felt good to do that, it sure felt like I'd gone through a door. Interestingly, at that moment my dad switched from telling me what to do to advising me, and became my most trusted advisor.
A free market society is a society of adults.
