Emerging maturity
Most of today's young people, approximately 18–25 years old, find it unusually difficult to answer the question of whether they consider themselves adults. Psychology professor Jensen Arnett of Clark University calls this unsettling transition from adolescence to adulthood “emerging adulthood.” It can last up to 25 or 29 years. Adolescence obviously ends at about 18 years old, when children graduate from school, are recognized as adults and often leave their parents' home.
But the period of emerging maturity can last as long as desired. This open end date has given rise to quite a bit of disagreement about whether this emerging adulthood should be considered a separate life stage.
Steinberg, for example, tends not to classify this period as a separate stage of life, but prefers to think of it as an ongoing adolescence. For Steinberg, youth begins with puberty and ends after taking on an adult role. He notes that in the 19th century, approximately 5 years passed from the first menstruation to marriage. In 2010, this period was already 15 years (due to the fact that on average girls get their first menstruation earlier, and marriage happens later).
In general, many critics of the theory of emerging adulthood do not consider it necessary to distinguish this transition period into a separate age period, considering more important the fact that the process of transition to adulthood itself has begun to take longer. Today, most people have some period when they are already independent from their parents and studies, but are not yet married and have not had children.
Perhaps this is because marriage and children are no longer considered necessary attributes of adulthood.
Who are these scammers?
This term has become popular in the last ten years. Kidalt is a child in the body of an adult. He maintains social decorum: goes to work, starts relationships. But the range of his hobbies comes from childhood.
Another name for this condition is “Peter Pan syndrome.” Kidults love computer games, comics, cartoons, books from the Young Adult series, useless expensive toys and devices.
Everyone can manage their money and time as they please. You will also prove that Marvel films are worse than fishing. The problem with scammers is not their hobbies.
Many of them do not want to start families, children, or take on adult responsibilities. A collision with real life makes them quickly run home to relax in a colorful virtuality, where they don’t have to decide anything.
This is what causes a lot of problems for their loved ones. Or leaves 30-year-old Peter Pans alone.
There is no 100% method of prevention. But let's think logically: everything has its time. Maybe we should let the child run wild at 16? Buy him these stupid books, funny T-shirts and a console.
It's hard to watch, but let it be enjoyed to the fullest. 24 hours on the Internet, chips on the table and all that. Perhaps by the age of 30 he will still get tired of it.
You cannot go through this stage instead of a child. Be close: at a distance of a question, a call, an outstretched arm. Love your teenager and his freedom. Then, wandering around the Big World, he will always remember the way home.
Understanding what growing up is is not difficult. But living through this process is difficult. Growing up goes through a crisis. Remember how it is? Everything is annoying, everything is wrong, and in my head there are questions about the meaning of life.
Growing up as a cultural practice
Well, the development of the body does not help us much in determining the boundaries of growing up. Maybe culture can help us? A confirmation, bar mitzvah, or fifteenth birthday party are events that celebrate the transition to another age. In theory. But in practice, in modern society, a thirteen-year-old girl is dependent on her parents even after her bar mitzvah. She might have a little more responsibilities at the synagogue, but she still has a long way to go before she grows up.
And the very idea of some kind of ceremony of transition from one state to another suggests that we have some kind of switch inside us that will allow us to quickly move to another status.
Other events associated with the switch idea are school or college graduations. They are distinguished from bar mitzvahs by only one thing: several hundred, or even thousands of people make the transition at the same time. However, it is extremely rare for any of us to immediately begin adult life after graduation, and in general, secondary and higher education significantly extends the period of childhood and adolescence.
Educational reform carried out during the 19th century in the United States left behind the heterogeneous private schools and homeschooling and consolidated the primacy of public educational institutions in which children were divided strictly by age. By 1918, every state in the country required children to attend school. These reforms were intended to create a ladder of maturation at the institutional level, to offer a step-by-step path to maturity.
Surviving alongside a growing child
When a family has a teenager (or better yet, several), life is a little like sitting on a volcano. Are you ready to listen to the weather forecast, call all the shamans, pray... Anything, as long as the lava doesn’t burn your butt.
come to terms with;
Your daughter/son has grown up - relate to this thought. We remember them as sweet baby dolls, peacefully lying in diapers. And they are already individual individuals with their own extraordinary outlook on life.
Give them a new place in the family - not on an equal basis with their parents, but with the right to make decisions. Choosing a jacket, a university, a section, a tutor, obtaining a certificate and filling out documents - they can already handle all this.
discuss safety;
Mother Talking To Teenage Daughter About Contraception
At 15, it’s too late to start your first conversation about sex. At this age, children no longer want to talk with their ancestors about sensitive topics. If contact has not been established, it is better to pay for a lecture by a sex educator or organize it at the school (together with the administration).
The task of parents is to teach the child to protect their own boundaries, say “no” and prevent violence. “If you bring it in the hem, I’ll kill you!” - a bad start to a confidential conversation.
Sex education is not everything. Create a family password that you can easily say over the phone in front of everyone. It means only one thing: “Come urgently and pick me up, things are bad.” The code phrase can be anything, but ask your child to memorize it.
Teenagers often look for adventure. Discuss how to protect yourself in the alley, where to run, who to call and what to yell. Instill in your child the thought: “Perhaps I will be freaked out by your tricks, I will probably be angry. But I am ALWAYS on your side. You can come at any time with any problem.”
deal with your cockroaches;
But burdening a person with your ambitions is unnecessary. Get on with your life. A midlife crisis is just around the corner.
Do you really want your son to become a doctor? What went wrong in your life, why did you carefully place your desires on your child’s shoulders? If you're drawn to medicine, go for it yourself. Honey. College will quickly open the doors to the world of injections, IVs and childbirth.
talk a lot;
Does your teenager agree to discuss pressing issues with you? Rejoice, half the country is the envy of you. Take advantage of this and talk, talk, talk.
No notes, please. Share your experience, reason together. Remember how you discuss exciting topics with friends? You need to do the same thing: honestly, but as correctly as possible.
look for common interests.
Mother and son (13-15) playing with game controls, smiling
Growing people need communication with their adults, although they carefully hide this fact. Offer them leisure time together: watch a movie, go to your work, go to a concert.
Be prepared to hear rejection and accept it calmly. And after a while, offer something else. You are still the head of the family pack and the responsibility for the relationship is still yours. Therefore, taking the initiative is your routine task.
Growing up at a crazy pace starts with moving. Instead of the fifth eyeshadow palette, did your daughter buy buckwheat on sale? Be proud that you have raised a self-sufficient person. But if a child spends his whole life under his mother’s wing, you will never know about it.
You don’t have to move out forever, but getting a taste of independent life is an important step. Otherwise, the place where the child spends the day will simply change.
First a garden, then a school, a university, then an office. And dinner will continue to appear on its own, just like the food in the refrigerator. In such conditions, you can grow up until retirement.
Where does childhood go?
Professor Griffin suggests looking at the problem of childhood and growing up from the other side and asking a completely different question: not “When can I be considered an adult?”, but “When can I be considered a child?”
Everyone is so worried about young people growing up too late. Why don't we worry about those who become parents at 15? Or for those who have to care for dying parents as children? Sometimes it happens that a person has to play the role of an adult when he is not yet ready for this. I wonder if such people are going through a period of emerging adulthood?
Choosing when to grow up is a privilege. It's less about affording expensive tuition and more about having the luxury of deciding when to take on an adult role and having time to think about it.
This privilege can work in different ways: some will travel the world in pursuit of their dream job, while others will live quietly in their parents' house for a little reflection.
Growing up is not always what you want. Independence can turn into loneliness. Responsibility can lead to stress and anxiety.
Mintz writes that in some ways growing up has become somewhat devalued in the culture:
“We often hear that adult life is a life of anxiety and quiet despair. Post-war literature is a tale of shattered dreams, unfulfilled ambitions, shaky marriages, family alienation.”
In comparison with the novels of the 19th century, full of agonizing anticipation of growing up, the novels of the second half of the 20th century are full of disappointment. The question runs through them: do we want to become adults?
Easy growing up as a historical anomaly
Education researcher Robert Havighurst argued that there are some very specific “developmental tasks” that need to be solved: finding a partner, learning to live with him/her, starting a family, raising children, getting a profession, getting a home. These are the traditional adult roles that can be seen in any family sitcom and which today's youth are not thought to share or appreciate.
Havighurst developed his theory of development in the 40s and 50s, so it was expectedly a product of its time. The post-war economic boom brought growing up closer and made it accessible: young men had enough work, and many positions did not require education, and with this money it was quite possible to feed a family. And the social views of that time gave priority to the necessary signs of well-being: work, wife, home, children.
However, this period was only a historical anomaly. Mintz writes:
“With the exception of a brief period after World War II, it was extremely rare that young people managed to achieve all the markers of adulthood before their 25th or 30th birthday.”
Contrary to our perception, our ancestors were not super-responsible mature people, looking at life with composure and dignity, until this entire idyll was destroyed by modern lazy youth. Just like now, in those days young people tried their luck wherever they could, made mistakes, returned home and continued to wander.
And to get married, many young men had to wait until their father died to receive an inheritance. At least today a wedding does not require the death of one of the relatives.
The golden age of simply growing up didn't last long. Already in the 1960s, the age of marriage began to increase, and completed secondary education became a necessity. Society still values the old markers, but you have to try a lot harder to achieve them.
Jensen Arnett notices something surprising:
“When people 50–70 years old look at today’s adults, they compare them with their youth and believe that they are crazy. But on the part of the older generation, this is nothing more than narcissism: it’s ironic that they blame today’s youth for precisely this quality.”
In his opinion, modern young people want the same things as their parents: to build a career, start a family, have children (maybe not everything from this list, but at least some). They simply don't consider these criteria to be what defines maturity.
Unfortunately, society does not understand this, and older generations do not perceive young people as adults until they meet all these criteria. But a huge role in growing up is whether other people perceive you as an adult and whether you can play a role that will convince others (and yourself) that you are capable of being responsible.
Growing Up as Brain Maturity
The situation when young people study until they are 21–22 years old is quite consistent with modern scientific ideas about brain development.
By age 22 or 23, our brains are almost fully formed, according to Steinberg, a researcher of brain development and adolescence. This does not mean that after reaching this age we can no longer learn. How can we! Neuroplasticity stays with us throughout our lives. However, the neuroplasticity of an adult differs from that of a teenager, who undergoes powerful processes of forming new connections and dying off old connections. In adulthood, some changes are still possible, but the neural structure no longer changes.
“The difference is about the same as between major and cosmetic repairs. However, the basic functions of the brain mature before the age of 16—logical thinking, planning, and the ability to engage in high-level abstraction,” says Steinberg.
A 16-year-old young man will perform no worse on intelligence tests than an adult. But elements of the higher nervous system, such as the prefrontal cortex (responsible for the thinking process) and the limbic system (responsible for the emotional sphere, motivation and behavioral reactions), mature much longer.
Until these systems fully mature, we are less able to control our impulses. It is for this reason that sentences for minors differ from sentences for adults for the same acts.
However, as we can see, the brain can be quite mature for some tasks and immature for others. For example, according to Steinberg, there is no reason not to allow 16-year-olds to vote, given the maturity of the logical functions of their brains.
Transformative experience
In adulthood, people often begin to focus on what they lack. Williams Brown, author of Adulting, was focused on her career at 20. Despite this, she found herself looking with regret at her peers who started families and children:
“It was hard to look at what you wanted and still want, and other people have it. At the same time, I was well aware that my life is the consequences of my own decisions.”
Williams Brown is now 31 years old and recently married. I asked her if she felt more mature now, having achieved her goals.
“My husband and I dated for almost four years before the wedding and lived together for a long time, so I didn’t think that the wedding would change anything. Emotionally, I feel stronger and more secure.
The other day my husband said that he feels both old and young at the same time. Young people - because a new chapter in life has opened. Old - because the answer to the question of who you want to spend your life with has been found, and this is a big milestone.
But... My sink is still full of dirty dishes."
Perhaps the most transformative experience for the transition to adulthood is parenthood. This does not mean that childless people cannot be considered adults. But for those people who have children, it’s as if that same switch is triggered. Jensen Arnett said in a 1998 interview:
“People most often cite the birth of their child as their own marker of the transition from adolescence to adulthood.”
If growing up is considered (according to Burrow) a combination of an internal sense of responsibility with the conviction of those around you that you have this responsibility, having children is an ideal situation. It is in this case that you feel like an adult, and other people are confident in this.
The most important currency today is a sense of identity and purpose, and children provide both.
In addition to having children, the opposite situation is often mentioned—caring for elderly parents. These two situations, with a successful combination of circumstances, make it possible to achieve adulthood in a short period. But growing up doesn't have to be fast; the process can be slow and gradual. Growing up is not something you can post about on Facebook and expect congratulations. Growing up happens quietly.
Features of age
The main features of the period of adulthood include:
- change in motives, strengthening the influence of universal human values, growth of general motivation;
- growth in the ability to plan and implement actions in accordance with these values;
- increased ability to mobilize one’s own resources during life’s difficulties;
- an objective assessment of one’s strengths and weaknesses, readiness for new and more complex actions, overcoming difficulties, and achieving new heights.
The named features are neoplasms of adulthood. They do not necessarily occur simultaneously; more often, some serve as a trigger for other changes or cause a higher level of development in other elements. If in previous periods development proceeds evenly across all spheres and directions of the personality at once, then the flourishing of maturity has a very chaotic or hierarchical character.
Growing up as a social construct
Growing up is a social construct, just like childhood, with its real-life consequences. It is social constructs that determine the level of responsibility for one’s actions, the roles accepted in society, and the way people look at each other and at themselves. However, growing up is difficult to define even in the most seemingly straightforward aspects, such as physical development or obligations before the law.
In the United States, you can’t drink alcohol until you’re 21, and you can vote and serve in the military at 18. You can watch adult films at 17, and get a job at 14.
Lawrence Steinberg, a leading professor of psychology at Temple University, argues that chronological age is not always a good indicator of maturity, but it is necessary for practical purposes. “We all know quite mature and wise people 21–22 years old, and helpless and immature people of the same age. But you can’t force people to take maturity tests to decide whether they can buy alcohol or not.”
