When is a person considered grown up?

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Except that in retirement, he might finally have the financial freedom to buy what he wants when he wants it. He may have put off the toys when younger because he had kids to put through school, etc. At that point, he may as well spend it while he can on things he will enjoy.

Go old guy with the corvette!

I’m a girl, and my dream car is a Red Ford mustang convertible…so don’t be surprised if I come back here in 5 years when I retire and show pics of me in said car!
 
Retsel said:
Being financially independent enough to manage the all aspects of your life, but it’s no guarantee you’ll be a grown-up.
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I should point out, by this definition I wasn’t a “grown-up” until very late 20’s because I happened to have major health problems very young. Those are expensive and they can sometimes impede your ability to work. But it seems like a rather silly conclusion that the fact that I couldn’t will myself better meant I wasn’t a grown-up. Or that whether or not I was a grown-up depended on whether I happened to have access to health insurance at a particular time or not.
 
Retsel said:
So you won’t have insult me again, I’ll try to remember everything is about you when I type.
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Seriously? I used a personal example to point out that there are reasons outside of an individual’s control why someone might not be able to achieve financial independence as an adult. And I’m not exactly some sort of unique specimen in that regard either; there are a lot of various legitimate reasons why someone might not achieve financial independence that can’t be chalked up to immaturity.

It’s a reductio ad absurdum argument, not a personal insult against you.
 
I asked my about-to-turn 90 year old mother if she felt grown up. She said she still had growing to do but most days she felt more ‘worn out’ than 'grown up".
 
I do have a philosophy education - I don’t say that to brag here, but simply to point out that is the proper technical term, and one you’d probably run into in an introductory philosophy or logic class in college. So I don’t mean to insult you by it. It isn’t so ubiquitous that I’m surprised by someone not being familiar, so I do apologize if I was confusing. I intend to criticize the point that you’re putting forth, not you as a person.

A reductio ad absurdum argument is just an argument that points out that, if a certain premise is taken to its logical conclusion, the end result is something that’s clearly not true. In this case, I’m saying that using financial independence as the primary marker for maturity results in the conclusion that people with disabilities that delay or prevent them from reaching that state are less mature than people without. Since that’s clearly not the case, financial independence isn’t a good marker for adulthood.

I suspect the actual case is, as I mentioned above, that we use financial independence as a rough proxy measure for personal responsibility. But this is a very modern western way of thinking of things.
 
I’ve read the the human brain doesn’t fully form until the mid twenties. Sure, we are capable of being independent earlier, it makes sense to me that is when most reach a certain maturity level.
 
TotusTuusForever said:
but is there any time when a person finally feels like they’ve got it together?
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I’m starting to think the answer is “no”.

I have a house and a spouse and a career and kids, and I’m still trying to get to the place where I stop building and start tending.
 
Convert3 said:
I’ve read the the human brain doesn’t fully form until the mid twenties. Sure, we are capable of being independent earlier, it makes sense to me that is when most reach a certain maturity level.
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I’ve read that too, but I’m not a fan of using the fact that your brain along with most if not all of the rest of your body is still growing up to mid-20s as some excuse for people to postpone their maturity later. From a legal standpoint, some people would use this argument to label everybody under 25 who commits a serious crime a “juvenile offender.”

Back in the days when lifespans were shorter, you had young people starting their adult lives in their teens or their very early 20s. It wasn’t uncommon for a 16-year-old boy to have to be “the man of the family” if his father died, and I actually know some guys my age who were in that position in the 1970s and went out and got jobs to help pay the bills for younger siblings. In the 1880s, Laura Ingalls Wilder was the sole teacher in remote one-room schools at age 15 and was married and running her own household by age 18. It seems like it was a normal thing to do and the world didn’t implode from the collective force of people whose brains were “still growing” trying to act like adults.
 
Oh, I agree with you totally that many are responsible and act more mature than some my age. I wasn’t giving that as an excuse for anyone. I was just saying they aren’t necessarily fully mature, but they are mature enough for many responsibilities. An 18 year old can fight in a war, but he’s not ready to lead an army.
 
I think we grow up when both of our parents die. :cry:

Or perhaps, we grow up when we find ourselves taking care of our parents.
 
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This is obviously oversimplified and tongue in cheek but in general it is when if you are a man, you can either intellectually or physically best your old man. And if you are a woman, when you become a better parent of your kids than your mom was of you and have no problem enforcing that.
 
That’s so true.

My dad was in his early 60’s when died.

My mom has Alzheimer’s. She lives in a nursing home, so I’m not doing much of the physical caring for her. But I don’t have any grownups. I’m at the head of the line. 😦
 
Also, I think you are a grownup when your parents consider you a grownup.

My husband and I were very fortunate that our parents recognized us as “grown-up” from the time we were married (at the ages of 21 and 22!).

Now perhaps when we weren’t around, our parents bemoaned their “silly kids getting married so young and poor!”

But when we were with them, they treated us as fellow adults.

I also think that when you are fully on your own, supporting yourself entirely with no financial help from your parents, you are grown up.
 
I doubt we’re ever going to come up with one suitable definition.

Not everyone marries, and some who do marry much later in life. And not all married couples are able to have children.

Factors outside a person’s control can easily render a person of any age dependent on others. Could be illness or injury or other disabling conditions. Could simply job loss or inability to find one that’s sufficient.

Some parents will never respect their children as adults, or may place unreasonable or even immoral standards before they’ll do so.

I think we have to be careful here not to judge what we do not know.
 
I can tell you, my feelings of being young went away with my husband’s death. I now feel like a very old woman.
 
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