What Makes You An Adult?

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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