When is a person considered grown up?

[Convert3]

Hey, You’re younger than me and I don’t call myself old yet.
I know you’re still hurting and no, I don’t know how you feel. What I do know is, old or not, you’re a strong woman and you have a loving God on you’re side. Your friends here are praying for you and will continue to do so.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I doubt we’re ever going to come up with one suitable definition.

We’re coming up here with general criteria that apply to the average person in life, based largely on our own personal experiences, and sharing it here.

Sure, there are going to be cases of people who for health reasons cannot go out and be financially independent or physically independent. We’re also aware that not everybody has a child or even cares for an elderly parent. However, certain experiences are shared by a large number of people in the US population and usually serve as markers for adulthood or progress in life, including moving out of the family home, bringing home a living wage, paying one’s own bills, having a child, caring for an elderly parent, having one’s parents pass away. It’s not somehow judgmental or bad to talk about them or generally apply them to people, including ourselves, who don’t have some special circumstance.

We can try to keep an open mind. But we shouldn’t have to adapt every discussion we have to cover every special case when it’s just a discussion, not some legislation we’re writing to confer special benefits on “adults” by our critera.