c. April 2010
The age of adulthood has long been contested. Biologically, the onset of puberty–which is coming earlier and earlier–is the indicator.
Legally, you’re no longer a minor in the United States when you turn eighteen (you can also vote, join the military and legally purchase cigarettes, lotto and porn – woohoo!).
You’re able to purchase and consume alcohol when you’re twenty-one. And now, as if those first three weren’t confusing enough, you can stay on your parent’s health care policy until you’re twenty-six.
It’s no wonder the Millennial Generation doesn’t know if it’s coming or going.
Admittedly, I say all this as a pretty non-millennial Millennial. I recently took the Pew Center’s ‘How Millennial Are You?’ quiz and got a 33. That score ranked me just below the ‘Gen X’ marker. I’m not quite sure what to make of it – am I a curmudgeon before my time?
I digress. Regardless of where I fall on the generational spectrum, more and more anecdotal and statistical evidence shows that members of this generation suffer from either a ‘failure to launch’ or ‘boomerang’ syndrome. Scores of ‘kids’ in their early twenties (and plenty older than that) are either moving back in with mom and dad or never leaving in the first place. I’m not surprised, given the contradictory definitions and milestones for adulthood that we face in our society.
Are you an adult when you get your high school diploma? Join the Navy? Get married? Graduate college? Get your first job? Have a child of your own? Handle your first auto emergency without calling dad?
There’s no easy answer.
College campuses, summer camps, and even employers are coping with an influx of students who have ‘helicopter parents’ reluctant to cede control of their children’s lives to other capable adults or, *gasp!* to the grown children themselves.
No doubt, the desire to protect and ease the life of your child is well-intentioned, but I thank my lucky stars my parents resist that urge on a daily basis (after I hit a certain age, of course - about sixteen) and let me succeed or fail on my own merit. It’s difficult to figure out who benefits from a parent calling a new employer to insist you be given a day off, or ask why you didn’t get a raise.
Instances like that are especially tough to hear when you learn the stories of those who come of age with virtually no support system to see them through the transition to adulthood. NPR recently did a story on children aging out of foster care that brought an often-overlooked aspect of the age of independence into sharp focus. Evidence seems to indicate that we are, as a society, failing to prepare our children for adulthood.
The economy certainly plays a factor. It’s well near impossible to get on your feet and start your own household if you don’t have any income.
Circumstance and fate play a large role, as well. If I hadn’t happened to fall madly in love and get married to a military man at 22 who knows where I’d be right now – quite possibly in my mom or dad’s spare room. And even though I’ve graduated college, married, moved across the country and back, bought a home and then some, I still rarely FEEL like an adult.
A friend from high school recently posted a video from our senior musical on Facebook. It seems like it could have been yesterday, though it was more like 11 years ago.
I’ve changed and grown in some very significant ways since then, yet I still like to think that, in some fundamental ways, I’m much the same person I was then. I have a lot of the same close friends, have retained many of the same core values, and have some of the same aspirations.
I don’t know when I’ll ever feel like an adult, though.
A little bit of me hopes it’s never.
How did you know you were a grownup? Leave a comment below, and let me know what you think.
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