When Did You Become an Adult?
At some point, I became an adult. But I have zero clue of when this happened. I did not feel like an adult in my first job after grad school. I clearly was an adult in the eyes of my students, but I didn’t feel like an adult. But during the first year of my marriage, I felt like an adult. So I assume the transformation happened some time between Year A and Year B.
It’s such an odd question because it happens separate from any collective trigger, individualized to every person. For instance, someone may feel like an adult at 18, while another feels like an adult at 30. And unlike other life events (graduation, marriage, etc), nothing triggers the moment. You either feel it or you don’t, and that feeling could be tied to any number of reasons from big, life changing events to the fact that you successfully navigated a raise at work. It’s different for each person.
The Atlantic tried to pinpoint “what is it that makes people grown up?” It’s a fascinating article that will make you trace the paths in your own life, trying to decide the first time you thought to yourself, “Oh, I’m the grownup.”
So? When did it happen? When did you become an adult?
7 comments
Still not there, most days.
I’m an adult?? (lol)
I suppose I thought I was an adult when I turned 18 and was able to go to a bar and to an R-rated movie without an adult. (The first one was “Animal House” — I took my younger sister with me.) Spoiler alert: I was not. I had NO idea, lol. I think it’s a gradual process with lots of milestones along the way and (as I alluded above) some might say it’s an ongoing lifelong process. There’s all the traditional life milestone (heading off to university, getting our first job, getting married, buying a home…) but there are lots of other milestones along the way too (losing people we love, illnesses, achieving a longtime goal…).
I suppose some might say that you become an adult when you have a baby and take on the responsibility of raising a child. It’s certainly an issue that those of us who don’t have kids wrestle with. Our pronatalist society prompts some of us to question whether we’re “real” adults (or a “real” family) if we don’t have kids; some of us feel that others (parents) think that way about us. (Sometimes we certainly get treated that way — I’ve heard many stories about the single childless aunt who winds up at the kids’ table on family holidays or gets relegated to the couch while the grandkids get their old room to sleep in when everyone is together at Mom & Dad’s house…!) I may not have a (living) child, but I daresay I was as much an adult the day I held my stillborn daughter in my arms — and then handed her back to the nurse to be taken to the morgue — as any mother who took her baby home from the hospital. Or the day I made the decision to stop infertility treatments because they had taken such a toll on my mental health and general wellbeing.
I think I feel a post coming on.
P.S. I didn’t read the Atlantic article before I responded, but I will now!
Interesting article. I’ve always associated being an adult with being financially independent, but that isn’t accurate because financial independence depends on good health and a whole lot of other circumstances… I thought I’d feel like an adult when I had kids, but since I never had any, my life has had different markers for adulthood.
I first felt like an adult when I was 22 and paying all of my bills on my own. But then I had a bad accident and was unable to work for a year. (Thankfully, my parents offered financial support.)
I felt like an adult again when I was working full-time and going to graduate school part-time (age 24-26), and my boyfriend at the time would complain because I was too tired to go to parties on the weekends.
I also felt like an adult after I got married and cooked the entire Thanksgiving meal by myself that year (age 31).
I definitely felt like an adult when I decided to leave my marriage and didn’t consult any family or friends before making such a huge decision (age 38).
Interesting question! Thank you for posting and inspiring the thought process!
Hmmm. This is a tricky one. I was financially independent from the time I was 19 (thanks to low university fees and study grants). I made my own decisions from the time I began university (or before, because I’d spent a year overseas sans parents), so I guess I was an adult. That’s when I would say I was an adult, and felt like one.
I think it is more related to making decisions and being responsible for them, than financial independence. It doesn’t mean the decisions are good ones, or that anyone is a “successful” adults at that age. (I look at my 19-year-old great nephew, and he is making his own decisions. They are not great ones. But he is living as an adult, therefore he is one.) That might come with maturity and experience and responsibility, and it might not.
I think I became and adult after I had been out of college for 6 months, was stable in a job, and made my own decision to live by myself in an apartment. I was probably about 23. My parents were still involved in my life, but I signed the lease and bought the furniture. I think buying a couch was a big defining adult moment for me. I didn’t meet my husband and have kids for 8 more years. There are other moments that made me feel like even more of an adult, but it all builds.
(I couldn’t click through and read the article because I’ve used up my free articles for the month.)
Interesting question. I would say that I felt like an adult in different ways at different ages: in college when I had to become self-supporting (around age 18); when I graduated college (age 23); when I became a registered nurse and started caring for patients (age 23); and after I had my sons (age 40!).
Honestly, there have been several times over the past ten plus years since my sons were born that I have been struck afresh by the thought that *I’m* the adult in certain situations. Ha!