
Is 25 the new cut-off point for adulthood? - simonbrown
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24173194
======
ChuckMcM
_" "The solution to not having useless 25 [and] 30-year-olds living at home is
not sending them out of the home, it's making them do their own washing, pay
their own way, pay towards the rent, pay towards the bills, to take
responsibility for cleaning up their bedroom and not waiting on them hand and
foot," says Beeny."_

Two great conflicts in parenthood, wanting the best for your child, and being
responsible for their pain. My wife had my kids doing their own laundry by 11.
Its pretty simple to do, there are Sharpie (permanent ink) marks on the washer
and drier for the 'normal' settings, we made sure they only got clothes that
could be washed on normal settings until they were 14. Sure they wear smelly
stuff some days, but nobody likes to smell bad, even kids. They figure it out.

Lots of times explaining what we weren't going to do for them because they
were now old enough to do for themselves. For a while everyone cooked dinner
for the whole family one night a week, we rotated nights. Wife would shop for
the ingredients, they did the cooking. Everyone else would work on cleanup.
Some nights we had sandwiches :-). Lots of "easy" recipes were learned, mac-n-
cheese, pasta and marinara sauce, any vegetable boiled, or cooked in a
skillet. And some not so easy things, like pot pies, rolls, spinach souffle.

I know this won't work for everyone, it was reasonably successful in our peers
but there are always individuals who need direct attention. The challenge is
trying to guess when to flip from letting them suffer the consequences and
jumping in to help.

~~~
chrischen
I never had to do laundry until I moved out at 18. And when I finally did have
to do my laundry, it wasn't exactly a painful struggle. It probably took 5
minutes to learn.

I may even be able to argue that since my parents did my laundry, washed my
dishes, and never gave me chores, I had extra free time to explore on the
computer and teach myself how to program.

~~~
sliverstorm
Laundry is of course easy to learn, but the issue at hand here is the question
of empowering youth to feel capable. I have no fears about tackling the
unknown and learning how to cook and do laundry, and presumably neither do
you. Some young adults however do, and the theory here is that teaching them
these basic life skills will help them get over the fear of striking out
alone.

~~~
chrischen
Yea but I feel that is a lack of pushing or pressure, rather than lack of
long-term development.

------
zacinbusiness
I got married at 21 to a girl I'd been dating for 6 years. We moved off to our
own rented place a year before that when we started college. At that point we
were supposed to be adults but a lot of the time it just felt like we were
playing house. We constantly had bills coming due that we couldn't pay, we
struggled to eat, and I even sold my own vehicle at a $9,000 loss once to pay
half of our over-due rent.

It was a nightmare that lasted about...4 years...but things slowly got better.

We each graduated with our B.A.s (barely) and went on to complete Master's
degrees with high marks (her a 4. 0 and me a 3.9) and each with glowing
recommendations from our professors and colleagues.

Along the way we have made horrible mistakes, learned tons of really hard
lessons, and become better people for it.

I don't know if I can pinpoint any specific time that we "became adults." But
I know that we are each closer now than we were when we first got married. But
from conversations with our families, our story isn't all that different from
my parents or hers, or our grandparents. The main difference is that our
families had the ability to help us through the darkest times, where as their
families did not. And I think that is one reason that it may seem like the
"age of adulthood" has become extended: people usually adapt pretty well to
their situations. So, when my grandfather was married at 19 and he had to feed
his family he didn't have anyone to count on for help. I knew I could always
ask for help if I needed to (although it made me hate myself when I did). So,
it took longer to become independent because I wasn't forced to do so by my
situation.

Not sure if that is normal for most people, but it's how it was for us.

------
ars
The cut-off keeps getting later and later.

And that's because the cut-off is not biological, it's social. If you give
people adult responsibilities they act like adults. Except people want to wait
till they are already adults to do that, leading to a Catch-22.

You can't act like an adult till you are one, but you won't become one till
you act like one.

So the age keeps getting later and later. In my opinion by 15 or 16 people
should already be expected to act like adults. And don't tell me about the 15
year olds you know who act like babies - that's simply because that's how they
are treated.

~~~
tankbot
> And that's because the cut-off is not biological, it's social.

I disagree. There is a wealth of biological evidence to show that a human's
brain doesn't finish maturing until (approx.) age 25. By that standard you
could make the argument that 25 is when people reach adulthood.

Of course, what we're really talking about here is expectations of
responsibility, so even though "by 15 or 16 people should already be expected
to act like adults" these young people still have maturing to do.

It's not surprising that in our rich modern society the age of 'adulthood' has
risen to 25, especially considering we live so much longer than we used to.

~~~
ars
Why is the definition of adulthood "finish maturing"? If anything that should
be middle age, i.e. in the middle of adulthood, not the start of it.

By your definition as soon as someone becomes an adult they start degrading in
mental ability. The peak of mental ability should match the middle of the
productive years.

But in any case the maturity of the brain is not just biologically controlled
- it's environmentally controlled. The brain of someone treated like an adult
will be more mature than that of someone teated like a child.

The brain responds to stimulus, it doesn't really have a pre-programmed
makeup. It has basic abilities, but that ones that are expressed are the ones
that it needs/uses.

~~~
tankbot
All fair points, but I never defined adulthood, only disagreed with the parent
which stated "the cut-off is not biological, it's social". Of course there are
social factors as well as biological. I'm sure I'm not qualified to form such
a definition, though if I tried it would have to include many factors.

I, for example, moved out of my parents' house at 18, but I wouldn't say I
became an 'adult' until at least my early 30's. Even now I feel like a kid
most of the time, in spite of my many responsibilities - even with a kid of my
own!

I don't think we ever finish maturing, and I think we never stop learning,
even though our 'peak' mental ability may come and go.

------
a-priori
_I 'm going to sound like an old codger here, which is a strange experience
for a 28 year old, let me tell you. Bear with me, I'm not going to tell anyone
to get off my lawn..._

No, biologically people are adults at puberty. That marks a sea change where,
among all sorts of other changes, people stop maturing based on time and so,
from then on, primarily mature based on experience.

What we're seeing here is the steady march of a feedback loop that began when
the terms 'teenager' and 'adolescent' appeared. Those terms represent a meme
that has changed where the dividing line between someone being a 'child' and
an 'adult' lies. Before, people aged 11-19 were adults. Young, inexperienced
adults, but adults nonetheless.

Then teenager-hood was invented as a phase of life and the line began creeping
upwards. They were no longer adults; now they were old children: not yet
responsible for themselves and their actions.

The feedback loop comes from removing opportunities to gain life experience:
treating someone aged X like a child means that they will gain less experience
and therefore mature less by age X+1. If this happens to a whole cohort, it
means that people aged X+1 will start looking more like children, which will
cause older generations to treat them as children. Then the cycle repeats at
age X+2 in a new cohort.

Apparently today, we're seeing the line creep into the early 20s.

~~~
dllthomas
There are definitely neurological and biological changes that are time-driven
after puberty.

~~~
greedo
As is forgetfulness and senility as we get older. Doesn't mean we dumb down
the definition of adulthood and continue to infantilize people so they can
live in their parent's basement til age 30.

~~~
dllthomas
Yes, clearly my correction of a factual claim means I support the opposing
side to an absurd degree.

------
impendia
Am I the only one who is instinctively skeptical about any discussion of
"adulthood", "responsibility", and "maturity"? Although some aspects of
adulthood are obviously good (paying your bills on time), these words often
seem to also mean "willingness to conform".

I recently moved from San Francisco to South Carolina. San Francisco is often
derided as a city of eternal adolescence, whose residents still live with
multiple roommates, party at odd hours, switch jobs often, don't think too
much about the distant future, and disvalue stability. In contrast,
traditional adulthood is alive and well in South Carolina. There's a
counterculture, but overall SC is much closer to Leave It To Beaver.

SC has some merits, but personally I'd take SF over SC any day of the week. It
is more fun, and it's also contributing much more to technological and
cultural advancement, the creation of wealth, and the economy overall.

~~~
nilkn
The lifestyle you describe in San Francisco is unsustainable over the long run
for most people. This is one reason why that lifestyle is considered to be
more adolescent: it is not realistic for the average middle class person to
maintain that lifestyle while having a family and eventually retiring
comfortably.

San Francisco the city is eternally adolescent, but the people there are not.
There are few long-term residents, and most people who move into the city will
eventually move out because it is outrageously expensive (and it's not a great
environment for kids: it's very dirty, not particularly safe, the public
schools are generally terrible, etc.). That six figure salary is not doing you
much good when your small and cramped house is well over $1M, you're paying
$1500/month in daycare, you eventually are paying $25k+/year for private
schools (not college), and you're hit by high income taxes before you even
start making all those payments.

South Carolina is a place where people are less constrained financially. If
you want to settle down with a family and a house, you can probably afford to
do so if you're middle class and up. You could also probably afford to party
all the time. What's interesting to me is that in the presence of choice we
see people tend towards the former rather than the latter.

~~~
sliverstorm
_What 's interesting to me is that in the presence of choice we see people
tend towards the former rather than the latter._

Partying all the time sounds awesome when you are 19, after which it begins to
slowly lose its luster.

------
scotty79
When people domesticate animals to be pets infantile traits become prevalent
in mature specimens. It's possible that this might be happening to humans as
well. We consistently are becoming less violent
[http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...](http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html)

Infantile traits such as imaginativeness and playfulness become selected for
in environment changing faster than ever.

Cut-off point to adulthood is completely arbitrary and cultural. Attempting to
motivate it with science is bizarre. So what if brain and body changes from 18
to 25? It also changes from 25 to 35 and so on.

I think it's bit of a myth that you take some time (18 years or so) to reach
your final form that then gradually deteriorates. I believe it's a continuous
process and there's no final form (unless you mean it to be gray haired,
wrinkled corpse in a casket).

------
luisivan
My parents gave me total freedom at 14, and thanks to that I created my first
company at age 15, traveled around the world, start paying my own bills and
now that I'm 17 I am totally independent living on my own rented apartment. So
it all depends on the freedom you give to your sons to actually start building
their own way.

------
smtddr
Complicated.

While I understand the whole social push of "be more mature", I think there's
something to be said of having a healthy carefree childhood & young-adult-
funtime. I think 18 is fine if only because society supports this cutoff.
Since you can get in trouble with the law like an "adult" at 18, you better
understand consequences by then. Personally, I think there's plenty of time to
figure out adulthood(barring horrible life-changing mistakes) but losing out
on your childhood & young-adult years is a greater loss than not being
"mature" by 25. But that's just my viewpoint, to put some context around it I
think the people who condemn shows like the jersey shore are (sub)consciously
jealous they couldn't live life that way or somehow lost out on their
childhood/young-adult-funtime and think their speedy rise to "maturity" is
something everyone should strive for. I told my wife that if I ever won the
lottery, like the powerbowl's 400 million, I'd travel all over the world
following all the Hed Kandi parties.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyJ7He58rcE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyJ7He58rcE)
. Is partying all day & night "mature"? I don't know, but it's fun!

------
didgeoridoo
I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, brain scans seem to show that
development of the frontal lobe (planning, foresight, organization) continues
through the mid-20s, especially in males. On the other, people throughout
history seem to have been perfectly capable of handling themselves by their
late teen years. Are our brains developing more slowly now? Is our world now
so complex that it takes a fully-developed brain to make sense of it? Or are
we just big whiners?

~~~
Detrus
Could be that we're just going through biological changes because of a
different diet. Seems to change the age of puberty.

------
NovemberWest
The modern world is more complicated and difficult to navigate. It is also
increasingly abstract and we don't (collectively) do a great job with helping
our youth really understand the connection between those abstractions and
reality.

My father got paid in cash for many years while in the Army. Today, a lot of
employers require you to have a bank account and only pay by direct deposit.
My oldest son likely has dyscalculia. Kind of like a dyslexic doesn't deal
well with reading, he doesn't deal well with numbers. I gave him cash and made
him do the household grocery shopping for a while. It helped him wrap his
brain around budgeting.

Now he can cope with a debit card but that would have been a disaster if we
had skipped that first step of helping understand in very concrete terms the
relationship between money and material quality of life. I think a lot of
young people get a bank account, get their paycheck deposited and just cannot
relate these abstract numbers to the need to eat all month, among other
things.

------
guyzero
"TV sitcoms are littered with such comic stereotypes of juvenile adults, such
as Smithy from Gavin and Stacey or Private Pike in Dad's Army."

As a non-Brit, I enjoy the completely opaque cultural references in BBC news
articles. Although thanks to Netflix I have seen Gavin & Stacey.

~~~
coldtea
Well, it's not like American news sources don't assume everybody has an
American pop culture either...

------
saalweachter
I'll believe 25 is the new 18 when we raise the minimum age for military
service from 18 to 25.

~~~
objclxt
...on the other hand, if you're in the US you can't buy alcohol until you're
21.

~~~
saraid216
This is interesting to factor in, too:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_candidacy_laws_in_the_Un...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_candidacy_laws_in_the_United_States)

------
jontas
They mention car accidents as a statistic that drops off after the age of 25
(I only briefly skimmed the article).

I have thought for a long time: leave it to the insurance companies/number
crunchers to best predict when "maturity" sets in (at least for the average
young adult). The fact that you can't rent cars until the age 25 always
suggested to me that the insurance companies had run the numbers and pin
pointed this age as when it is "safe" to trust someone with their assets.

When there are legitimate business interests at stake (read: $$$$) they tend
to get this stuff right.

~~~
ccallebs
You can in fact rent cars before the age of 25, but they charge a hefty
premium. Source: I rented a car 2 weeks shy of 25 years old. There was an
additional $80 fee per day.

~~~
jontas
That premium is there to cover the additional risk they have identified is
associated with renting to people under the age of 25.

------
crb3
Is this leading towards an upwards adjustment of the legal age of majority? I
think Tolkien had it right with the hobbits' "tweenies", but the last thing we
need to do is set it as law.

It takes awhile, once you're finally allowed behind the wheel, to develop a
sure hand and a discerning eye for steering the course of your own life. _That
's going to be true no matter where they set the age below which you're not
allowed to drive yourself._ Better it be when the brain still has the
described plasticity so the needed life-lessons are learned well.

------
typicalrunt
So if 25 is the new cutoff for adulthood, and 30 is the new BS cutoff for an
employable programmer, that leaves 5 years to learn everything?

~~~
dragonwriter
People who aren't adults can learn things. Indeed, that's a pretty important
function of the non-adult portion of life.

------
icedchai
I know people in their early 30's who shouldn't be considered adults. They're
perpetual students, have never held a real job (meaning, one that would
actually support their lifestyle), have rich parents who bail them out of
everything. Basically, they are overgrown teenagers.

------
leokun
Does being an adult just mean being old? There are 24 year olds with more
responsibility, money, skill, influence, and intelligence than people older
than that. Of course they're adults.

------
Dewie
I was gonna write something longer, but I decided against it. What I wanted to
say is: I'm in my 16th year of school, so to speak. Going to some kind of
learning institution for such a long time might seem like a continuation of
childhood, but I don't know: since I started university I've had no one but
myself to blame for any of my academic achievements. When it comes down to it,
all I'm left with is my brains, an exam paper and the cold student
identification number written on that exam paper. I guess at least in some
ways, I would say that I've learnt some self discipline.

