What Makes You An Adult?

These are all events that tend to force a person in the direction of becoming more adult, but what makes you an adult is accepting responsibility for your life, your actions, and their consequences, and knowing something of your own limits because they have been tested against real difficulties. There are some thirteen year olds who are more adult than some sixty year olds.

But, of the choices offered, I'd identify having a child as the most powerful of the listed events at forcing you to accept adult responsibility and learning your limits.

I'm not so sure about that

Like, there are so many people with kids who act like they're 18

I also fully admit to resenting/finding personally offensive the idea that making a bad decision leads one to being more of an adult.

I think losing a parent. Lucky enough to have both mine and both in good health, but earlier this year my sister told me they made a will and it was sobering as fuck.

Supporting yourself financially

Doing your own taxes

Renewing your car registration (if applicable)

Doing your own laundry

Living apart from your parents

Paying your own utility bills

Your phone is in your name

You don't call your parents about a leaking water heater

You don't call your parents about a car that needs an oil change

You don't call your parents about how to cook and/or carve a turkey

You don't call your parents about an overflowing toilet

I had a housemate once who had moved from the other side of the world, he lived with his girlfriend and when she left him we discovered that at the age of 30 he had never cooked, cleaned or done his own laundry before, his first go on the washing machine was like something from a sitcom, he was a confident man but just unable to take care of himself.

Surprised at the number of people saying "losing a parent". I know I can't really use my own experience as my parent death was a horrible estranged parent and so didn't affect my life much aside from a bit of "ha, you deserved it you fucker" bitterness, but lots of kids lose a parent and they're still very much kids. I do recognise what people are saying a bit as my mum and step-dad age (particularly the latter, who is over a decade older than my mum and increasingly fragile), there is a sense of having to grow up and face an inevitable future, but I still don't see it as a universally "adult-making" experience.

I have known two guys who have lost both parents as teenagers and come into a bit too much money too early, and neither of them handled it in a particularly responsible way, one of them got into heroin and I'm surprised he's still around tbh

75% of my parents are alive but they don't fold my underwear. And if I get into a financial or logistical problem I don't ask them to bail me out. That, to me, is a definitional part of adulting.

My brother-in-law was a slacker who totally failed to launch - like, three or four half-started attempts at higher education and about the same number of abandoned potential careers. At age 30something he still lived in his parents' basement and his mom still folded his underpants. That's not adulting.

I hasten to note that I pretty much suck at being an adult, but I am firmly committed to making my own mistakes and owning the consequences.

(FWIW I am 49 with a mortgage and children and a good marriage and a good job. There are still lots of days when I want to hide under the blankets and Not Deal. Yet I persevere.)

wearing a fucking mask

xp my own mother lost her mother at a young age and never got over it, so this was a very formative belief all my life, I have done a lot of things on the poll and, like you, still don’t feel ‘old’ (although I am!)

I've a mortgage, a bout with cancer, and a husband. I also am wearing a sleeveless shirt that says 'Jet Fuel Can't Melt These Steel Beams' with arrows pointing to my not too impressive biceps.

As in, while I agree with Aimless in many ways, I also continue to be a stoned dreamer who hates working and would rather sit around taking bong-rips, reading, and listening to free jazz all day

about two years ago, i had my next door neighbor knock on my door at two in the morning because the fire alarm in his apartment wouldn't shut off. not because he needed a ladder to reach it. because he genuinely didn't know how to handle the situation. i went into his apartment, climbed his ladder and removed the battery. then he asked if it was okay to leave it down with no battery in it. This was an elementary school teacher! and he came to me about this! because i guess i'm an adult or i play one on tv.

I hear stories like this sometimes and I just have no comprehension of what that must be like.

a stoned dreamer who hates working and would rather sit around taking bong-rips, reading, and listening to free jazz all day

And you think most adults love to work? Or that they find paying bills, getting dental cleanings and going to bed early enough to get some sleep before the alarm goes off to be preferable to bong-rips, reading, and listening to free jazz?

those things aren't either/or. you can do bong rips, read and listen to free jazz, hate work, and still pay bills, get dental cleanings and go to bed early enough to get some sleep before the alarm goes off.

Diagnosed with a chronic illness
Undergoing major surgery

these happened to me when I was a minor

Getting married
Getting divorced
Having a kid
Taking on a mortgage
Death of a parent

still haven't happened yet. (i was once engaged but it was called off)

my answer is "Other"

you can do bong rips, read and listen to free jazz, hate work, and still pay bills, get dental cleanings and go to bed early enough to get some sleep before the alarm goes off.

wow thank u for affirming me

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I didn't say that Aimless, and tbh, I've worked a lot of different jobs to survive. Don't know where the hostility is coming from.

Also map otm. Like I don't make much money, would stand to make more and am moving in that direction, but I definitely am a responsible adult who has spreadsheets of household spending that are meticulous for the past five years.

Like being a crazed weirdo and taking care of one's responsibilities are definitely not mutually exclusive, never meant it to be read as binaristic

I will happily admit that gallons of gin and bushels of weed and loads of jazz-listening are involved in my coping strategies for adulthood.

Personally I don't love working but I accept it as the price of my freedom to do bong hits while my children live in a stable home and enjoy plentiful food and clothing

knowing that none of these options is necessarily the answer

i'll go with that Mike Myers gag "understanding escrow"

I'm a baseline adult, I guess, based on the criteria being bandied about itt. I just don't generally feel like much of an adult when in the presence of other, more adulty adults. I'm just adult enough to get by (ie I pay bills and rent and manage to keep us stocked in essentials but I am otherwise completely shit with money, eg no savings or investments but piles of dumb + worthless crap that tauntingly surround me on all sides).

Middle-Aged Man!

i knew i was an adult when i got excited about budgeting and saving money :((((

Having to care for a dependent to the extent that they matter more than you seems like an option. Could be a child, could be a sibling, could be a parent

Or a pet ocelot

Just sayin

don't drink, don't smoke -- what do i do

Anyone who has taken on thousands in debt for their cat’s cancer treatment is an adult IMO

Many of these answers are depressing, and about loss or constriction, I don't find adulthood especially depressing, losing, or constricting.

I had some very adult thoughts, and very adult understandings, and even a few very adult experiences when I was a child. But they didn't make me an adult, because they were fleeting. From adolescence on, I'd have glancing moments of adulthood... and then I spent college and my early twenties gadding about trying to find meaning in the universe and it was all very silly and depressing. And achingly earnest.

To my mind, adulthood is a series of recognitions that anybody, even a little squirt, can have. But until the recognitions are truly felt (not just thought) and lived and integrated into the essence of an outlook, I don't think they become 'adult.' I guess every-kid comes pre-loaded with some pieces of adult-brain, and has to learn others, and the exact make-up is different for each person.

Some of the things I had to learn 'the hard way' were:

As long as I am me, I will always have to live with myself so I better get square with my choices.
I can't lie, cheat, steal, use meanness to hurt other people... I am through-and-through a moral being.
I don't want to die, but, like, I'm going to and it's actually not a big deal to anybody but a very small number of people.
Healthy humans don't vacillate between 'happy' and 'sad' ... they're content with neutral.
It's hard to cause harm with individual acts of compassion.

Some things I am still learning are

If you speak the truth it will anger people who embrace bogusness, and you should always speak the truth
There is a kind of anger that is compassionate
People who believe themselves to be 'gifted' can be dangerous, and often need a lot of compassion
It never pays to take shortcuts; I am not a 'shortcut person,' even if that means I can't have the comforts other people can have.

i like the last two posts a lot

Going and buying carpeting for the house. That felt like a pretty adult thing to do.

excellent post by remy

That's a great post, remy bean.

I've got a lot of the trappings of adulthood (a mortgage, two teenaged kids, various - mild - chronic ailments; I drive, cook, garden, fix shit) but I don't think any of those things particularly carry an essence of adulthood or maturity in and of themselves. Which is to say, adulthood is a style, really, or a mode of being. I've had what in retrospect looks like a pretty comfortable run at things, and I was still pretty childish until the last five years or so - almost like I was bitterly clinging to the gasps and vestiges of my adolescence: I got drunk a lot (and was a shitty drunk), I didn't face into a future that very much needed my attention, I was stuck in a job that was slowly killing me (with boredom). I wasn't an awful husband or dad, but I very much wasn't a great one. The thing that changed me (and to which I was nudged, then shoved, then dragged) was becoming a teacher - a process that, it's not too dramatic to say, broke me and out of which I'm still putting myself back together. Very much for the better.

The greatest thing is that it forced (and forces) me to be present, and out of that attention comes a sense of agency and causality: I'm in charge of this thing; my actions have repercussions in ways I'm still making sense of; I have to make sense of the mess and find a way to live. This all sounds blindingly obvious now it's written down (and needlessly portentous, probably) but it took me until my late 30s to realise it. To paraphrase Charles Olson, we have to learn the simplest things last.

I am firmly committed to making my own mistakes and owning the consequences.

my emphasis -- for me, YMP hit the nail on the head here. I guess that is "Other".

Diagnosed with a chronic illness
Undergoing major surgery
Getting married
Getting divorced
Having a kid
Taking on a mortgage
Death of a parent
Other

Depending on how major my multiple surgeries are considered, I only need a divorce for the full set.

For me it wasn't quite having children, it was realising I put their welfare at the top of the list in decisions.

Other - posting on the internet

yeah I voted having children but mainly because "realising I put their welfare at the top of the list in decisions" is what I think of here, where you could replace "their welfare" with "the welfare of a few particular humans", because it could be that you take welfare responsibility for e.g. a parent in a way that your own personal welfare is no longer your chief priority. I say "a few particular humans" because I don't think being involved in charitable work is necessarily enough, unless that work involves a close personal relationship with some of the people you're working with & you subvert your own ends for their ends.

I would add losing one's religion to the list, even if that's not an option I would vote for.

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cmd-f "sex"
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wtf

It might be a stupid answer, but my first thought was "first key sexual experience." If it's a good one, it's an introduction to one's adult body; if it's a bad one, especially a coerced or nonconsensual one, it's an introduction to the miseries and cruelty of adulthood.

I've been paying my own way since I was roughly 20, have stuck it out almost 16 years at my current company, have good savings, am fairly independent, and have been helping take care of my parents. most days I still feel like a 12 year old inside - not in a good way, but mostly in a 'timidity' sort of way.

i don't mean to put down other people's experiences of sacrifice of self in raising children but i think that's a really limited and frankly sad vision of adulthood especially when so many admirable adults choose not to have children and also when the world is on track to warm 3c by 2050. tests of sacrifice for and devotion to others is an important part of being a well-rounded and not-miserable adult imo but i wish it wasn't so often in the name of blood family or like nation/the patriarchy or whatever.

hell people do the same thing for their cats / dogs as milo mentioned. i wish people were a little more abstract / general about what these experiences mean when they talk about them especially when traditional modes of access to these experiences are frankly becoming toxic and also leave a lot of people out of the discussion.

as many people have pointed out, having children, like having sex, doesn't necessarily make one an adult. the same applies to working a job, getting married/divorced, or losing a parent. one can still be very childish in the wake of any of the events listed in the poll. it has more to do with evolving an emotional maturity, as opposed to mere grimness or resignation. adulthood has its joys, too.

Nothing. There is no such thing as adulthood.

I’m half-trolling of course but really getting (rather than merely reading) Derrida also makes you an adult.

tryin to catch you riding derrida

We already call manchildren "adults" because they have attained the legal age of majority. I haven't noticed this nomenclature having any effect when it comes to their self-excusing their own childish or irresponsible behavior.

nb: in my view, the act of making excuses for oneself should be viewed as grounds for immediate exclusion from adulthood. We can explain our motives, but only those you let down can excuse us. Grasping this distinction is a key adult concept.

in my view, the act of making excuses for oneself should be viewed as grounds for immediate exclusion from adulthood

Indeed. As should use of the verbal abomination that is 'adulting'.

When I was a young man, age of sixteen or thereabouts, I had a very memorable conversation with my father, who was a very tough and strong man, a Vietnam veteran, a small business owner, a devout Republican and Christian, loyal father and husband, a man of many responsibilities. He took me out hunting one weekend, showed me how to use his Guns, how to clean them, how to care for them and store them safely. He had me drink my first beer and smoke my first cigarette, under his watchful fatherly supervision, the way God intended. He shared these adult pleasures with me, as we gazed upon the landscape and bonded over a mostly unspoken ritual, as using as few words as possible was known intrinsically among our bloodline to be a manly, adult trait, and it was hammered into the minds of our clan's foolish, childlike children as early as possible.

After shooting the wildlife with our bullet guns and while processing the game meat with our knives, my father took a sip from his Beer and told me something about becoming a man that I will never forget. And that is thus. He said to me, "son, there are many animals to kill in this world, and I wish for you to kill a great many of them. But there are only two true ways to truly become an Adult Man: either to have sexual intercourse with a woman by inserting your penis into her vagina, or kill me, your adult father."

I said to him, "father, I am not yet prepared to kill you, and I am too intimidated by the females among the church youth group to penetrate them with my erect penis. I do not know which to do!" And upon saying this, as he finished removing the innards from the dead animal splayed upon the rock at which we stood, flinging them into a nearby bush, he said to me, "well, is it your wish to become a Man? A true Adult?" I replied, "yes father, I do indeed want very much for this."

and the agent said "what do you call your act?"

"Big Jim Swells and the Socks."

My answer is "other", but this comes from a position of what I observe as happening, rather than an ideal position of "what should happen". I don't advocate what I'm about to say.

I think, in capitalist societies, the passage to adulthood is mostly marked by Taking On Debt.

I think it's an accident that most of the 'markers of adulthood' in this list involve debt of some kind:
-living independently of one's parents means taking on debt in the form of a mortgage or a lease
-having a child in the US involves contracting insurance or taking on medical debt
-ditto US experiences of chronic illness and surgery

I think there's another big marker of the passage to adulthood (at least for people of some economic classes) which is attaining some level of tertiary education - in the US and the UK, going to university usually involves taking on a substantial amount of debt.

People often struggle to document their legal and political existence without a credit record or credit report - major forms of ID and proof of address are... credit cards and bills. To exist as a recognised adult in society means proving your connection to a form of financial obligation.

The more money one has, the longer one can put off adulthood, in the form of taking responsibility for one's actions. That's the mark of adulthood - learning to take responsibility for one's actions, and one's future obligations. The most common way of doing so, in capitalist societies, is taking on financial debt, because money has such primacy and importance.

Again, I'm not saying this is how it *should* be. It actually strikes me as deeply philosophically flawed, and inherently unjust. But as far as I can see, taking on debt is how our societies seem to mark 'this person is an adult now'.

For me adulthood has been characterised by the constant sense that no matter what I'm doing there is always something else I could or should be doing

The Gift of Death is good not bad Derrida. Geoffrey Bennington's sort of biography 'Interrupting Derrida' is good on this, too. Irvin D. Yalom's 'Staring at the Sun' is a beautiful study of mortality and coming to terms with death (others and one's own).

At a less exalted philosophical level, journalist Miranda Sawyer’s “Out of Time: midlife if you’re still young” is quite an interesting read on some of the issues around being an adult.

* “Out of Time: midlife, if you still think you're young”

probably most of the ways I feel I'm failing to achieve adulthood relate to financial stability and security, and maybe I'll never resolve that, so instead my answer is - receding gums.

endless back pain

Hm, who knows. There are plenty of good answers on this thread and I can only speak for myself. Mainstream adulthood in a 2.5 kid/house/car sense, never happened and honestly wasn't likely to be on the cards, I never felt the full motivation that I *must* do that route -- I did almost become a property owner in the early 2000s and that would have been an interesting alternate world, not sure what kind. A continuous learning process is the better way to consider it in my mind, with a little more patience, wisdom, and hopefully kindness as one goes. As it happens I'm six months out from turning 50, my folks are still with me, and there's me and my sis and neither of us have kids so we've almost been this little bubble over half a century, and likely enough when something inevitable happens that'll be a profoundly felt break, but I think of people I know who never really knew one parent or another or have nothing but very hard, awful memories, and will accept simply that I've been very fortunate.

I forgot an option I should have included: having no idea who any of these so-called "celebrities" are.

A continuous learning process is the better way to consider it in my mind, with a little more patience, wisdom, and hopefully kindness as one goes.

my answer : other.

despite the fact i was a dad, a husband, a worker bee with financial responsibilities, the time i really felt like i had to grow the fuck up and become an Adult, was when my wife died.
she was 48, i was 44.
i had to make sure that my lads, 16 and 8 at the time, had a stable loving life and so had no other option but to get on with it and cope, as opposed to just collapsing in a heap.

Yeah, I've been thinking about this thread quite a bit, and think that the idea of 'being an adult' as a process one is going through continuously is something I can get on board with, though like others, I think that each person begins this process at a different age.

For me, I think I started becoming an adult when I was about ten and my mother was diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer. Then, in rapid succession, my father fell ill with Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Dealing with two very ill and nearly-dying parents at such a young age not only forced me to confront mortality much earlier, but also allowed me to differentiate from my parents and the traditional familial unit much earlier than most people. While this had its obvious and not-so-obvious negative aspects, it also made me value and have faith in my own belief systems, kinship structures, and preferences rather early. I'm grateful, to be honest, though it was immensely difficult at the time.

(I should mention that both of my parents are still around).

Suddenly, we heard a rustling from the nearby bush on which the discarded entrails lay snagged. My father pointed his bullet gun at the bush and pulled me near him. We watched in disbelief as a short, portly, filthy old man with a long white beard and dressed in decaying rags emerged from the base of the bush.

"Who are you! What are you doing here!" my father barked at our campsite intruder with stern, Adult-like gravitas.

The man appeared disoriented, blinking in the sunlight. He had with him only a notebook and a pen.

"Identify yourself, or I shall dispatch you with my bullet gun!" my father commanded.

"Don't shoot," the strange man croaked softly. "I am here to help. I have been crouching in this bush observing people since the 1970s. I understand you are having a very intense coming-of-age ritual, but I have concerns regarding your parenting methods, and I wish to share my opinion with you."

"You have WHAT? You wish to WHAT??" my father cocked his bullet gun and aimed it at the strange man. I tensed up, incredibly frightened, knowing something terrible was about to happen.

"Your way is to control with violence and hate," the man calmly explained. "This is not the way to be a True Adult Man. The way to be a True Adult Man, like me, is to control with intelligence and emotion."

Stunned and caught off guard by the mysterious interloper from the bush, my father stomped and stammered, "who in the hell do you think you are? Give me one reason I shouldn't pump you full of buckshot from my bullet gun, much like how I have dispatched the animal whose corpse lies partially processed here on this rock before me, you fool?"

The man chuckled a wise and insightful chuckle. "Because," he said with a wise and insightful grin, "I am God."

At this moment the man reached up to the top of his forehead, grasped a zipper that had been hidden beneath his receding hairline, and peeled away his human face flesh to reveal a glowing mass of ethereal blue light, much like how Brian Dennehey did in the wonderful 1985 feature film Cocoon.

"Guess you've got a lot to learn about being an Adult, fuckface!" said God as he floated away up into heaven where he lived. My father and I were pretty weirded out, gotta admit. We killed a few more animals that weekend and then drove home, but not really talking about the encounter with God as much as you might think, because we heard on the radio that the Dalles Cowboys had just won their second consecutive Super Bowl victory over the Buffalo Bills that weekend. Emmitt Smith was in his prime, I tell you what.

Anyway, a few years later I told my mom about how my dad tried to get me to either kill him or have sex with a woman to become an Adult. She did not like that, and got pretty upset about it. They eventually got divorced.

taking on debt is how our societies seem to mark 'this person is an adult now'.

this is a really interesting idea! ... like, it also relates to how some of the folks in this thread who aren't "traditionalists" approach life, kinda, or maybe just me? ... like, thinking about the different durations of debt vis a vis responsibility. Also R.I.P. David Graeber, just because y'know, "debt."

There is short-term debt: credit cards being the most common, and residential leases
There is medium-term debt (I'm not using technical terms here, just fyi): student loans are theoretically an example, in that theoretically you are supposed to be able to pay them off in 10 years, I think?
There is long-term debt: mortgages (generally 30-year, though I guess some people do 15 year mortgages, probably less common nowadays)
And there is forever-debt: babbies -- though perhaps this could be long-term -- idk

But as someone that only has short-term debt, I definitely sometimes feel like "less of an adult" than people with mortgages and kids -- long-term debtors. On the other hand, I am pretty secure in my "adulthood" though I don't really see it as being all that aspirational tbh.

n.b. I was raised by parents that at least once every two years gave me a birthday card with some excerpt from "If" by Rudyard Kipling ... so, that aspirational quality of "being a man" (being an adult) was really drilled into me.

nb: in my view, the act of making excuses for oneself should be viewed as grounds for immediate exclusion from adulthood.

There is no exclusion from adulthood. One cannot opt out of adult responsibilities. Adult respect perhaps, but if that's what this thread is about, I have no opinion to share.

those creatures jumped the barricade and headed for the sea

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