Young adults are uncertain about the value of commitment to adult responsibilities like marriage and career, as they seem more difficult to achieve, and less permanent, than they’ve been for previous generations.
Right, so here I am, turning 30 and thinking to myself “Should I be called an adult now?”
My adult definition: An adult is a person who’s no longer dependent on their parents on one hand, and has people depending on them on the other.
The reason for describing it that way is that, the way I see it, before the 1960s there was no such thing as being a young man. You were either a child or an adult, which meant by the time you reached your thirties you were either an adult or a failure.
As education progressed and life became more complicated than just going ahead, getting a job, a wife and children; people needed study to get ready for adulthood, so younghood was invented: this amazing time of life just before turning adult when you’re a student and can enjoy, experiment, have fun with a new sense of independence, but without the responsibilities of having your own family to take care of.
Some loved that lifestyle with such fervour that they simply remained in that state forever. Society called them immature and losers. Women didn’t want them, their parents wondered what they did wrong and no respectful careers could be accomplished by such an unorthodox and childish lifestyle.
Balancing time for your romantic life got even more complicated and the term “quality time” was invented to justify the small but intense amount of time that people spent with their children after the divorce.
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Life then begun to get a little more complicated, jobs more difficult to master (or more underpaid), women got equality rights and, all of a sudden, being an adult meant that both you and your prospective spouse had to get a job, in order to afford children by the time you were thirty. Balancing time for your romantic life got even more complicated and the term “quality time” was invented to justify the small but intense amount of time that people spent with their children after the divorce.
Now careers (those things adults had one or two of in their entire lifetimes) don’t really exist anymore. Every person is a brand, a business, an entrepreneur. You just never stop being a student. Women can have children later in life and you don’t really want to buy a house because mortgages at this day and age just seem like a stupid idea. We’re all children of divorced parents, so we choose to start slowly, move in together instead of getting married, and adopting a cat to see if we both can handle the responsibilities of becoming an adult.
But now you turn thirty and you’re suddenly not a “youngster” anymore. And you can’t really be called an adult either if the greatest responsibility you ever took was moving in with your girlfriend to an East London council flat with her cat. So what are you?
Who cares about labels anyway? you may ask. Well I don’t, but as you get older and refuse to become an adult (especially when you’re not even keen on that girlfriend / cat / flatshare idea) you’ll always have to explain yourself in social situations, and that bothers the hell out of me.
So instead, while no one comes up with a better term (“stubborn-manchild”?) and I don’t have the patience to read this back to anyone, I’ll simply reply: I’m 29!
Problem solved.
Image of happy weekend the unrecognizable casual modern young couple with pets courtesy of Shutterstock
Marriage, kids, house… none of that is relevant to adulthood or manhood any more. Do you pay your own way? You’re an adult.
I am actually agreeing with you, but I think most people would reply to that statement calling you a selfish, egotistical and immature man (that’s what they’ve been calling me at least!).
Some will. It’s a handy way of spotting people whose opinions don’t and shouldn’t matter.
I have a hard time with this as well. When I was 24 my wife and I bought a house in MN. We were smart about it, and got a 30-year fixed mortgage with a low interest rate. We bought for less than the buyer’s asking price, and made a couple improvements. I went back to school and got a BS in computer science, and couldn’t find a job anywhere. We got stretched thinner and thinner, and of course, the housing bubble burst. So suddenly our same house was worth half of what it had been on the market for… Read more »
I feel for you, Adam. It can’t be easy to be living with your in-laws, especially when you have experienced being out in the free. That’s what I meant by the job market becoming tougher than ever before but society’s expectations on men remaining the same. It’s an impossible task nowadays to sustain a family at the age of 24. Good on you on that Computer Science degree, though! That’s was a smart move.
Hey Ramon, I appreciate your perspective around the modern confusion around the transition to adulthood, especially for young men. (I’m 31, turning 32 in a few weeks.) However, I don’t agree with your definition of adulthood. The way I read it, you’re defining adulthood from a perspective of powerlessness: that transition from no longer depending on your parents to having people depend on you seems phrased in a way that emphasizes being out of control. To me, what you’re saying in both cases is “I have to do something in order to meet other people’s expectations.” In fact, that belief… Read more »
Hi Jordan, That’s a really interesting perspective. I guess I was only focusing on the ‘responsibilities’ part of the Spiderman’s phrase, forgetting that having more money and becoming smarter usually comes with more power too. However, I still know many men (and I know that’s anecdotal but so is this discussion) who understand ‘becoming an adult’ in that sense of the word not to be a question of choice. Especially if you come from a strong-tied family, but society in general (and especially some women who watch way too much rom-coms) will force you into that path of getting married,… Read more »
Hi Ramon, I agree with you that there are many men who understand becoming an adult to have something to do with responsibility. Maybe most men (like Copyleft below). What I’m arguing is that adulthood is more nuanced then simply accepting the path you’re forced into as your burden. And, actually, you can be financially independent and still stuck in immaturity. There are plenty of ways to make money that don’t correspond with the higher values of adulthood like responsibility, integrity, etc. In fact, I’m arguing that most people who are old enough to be adults don’t actually act like… Read more »
PS I feel totally compassionate to your perspective. There is not enough guidance for young men to know what manhood/adulthood is actually like, and I can relate deeply to the way that you sound like you’re portraying adulthood (wife, kids, mortgage) as limiting and disempowering. I was there also when I was 29. I think the need is to take coming of age far more seriously than we currently are. Just before my 30th birthday, I began walking solo from Canada to Mexico and spent 316 days on the road thinking through some of these issues. I’m writing a book… Read more »
Jordan, your website looks awesome. I’ll certainly follow up with it. As for your comments, the article was meant to be a funny way of dealing with the issue, not the most recommended. Of course ‘refusing to grow up’ isn’t really a good way of dealing with adulthood. My argument underneath is that, really, having kids, getting married and having mortgages are just one choice of life (a rather strange choice to me personally but nevertheless). But it has somehow become the norm, and a lot of men don’t even realise they have other options. But I don’t include myself… Read more »