h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This may seem like an incredibly shallow perspective, but as a friend and I were discussing the other day, you're an adult when you own your own clothes washer and dryer. Going to the Laundromat is a real pain. Of course, that's just my Imperialist American mindset talking...

This isn't even true in all of America. It only seems so.

When I moved to New York City last year, I quickly discovered that the huge majority of the population here use laundry services or laundry rooms centralized in their building. With living space at such a premium, few people want a washer and dryer in their apartment.

The same goes for cars here. While much of America puts great significance on having a driver's license and car, New Yorkers more often use the subway, buses, and cabs. Even going on long journeys, they can take a train, an airplane, or rent a car. I know many adults in their late 20s who've never owned a car, and they don't intend to.

And as for the person who said being able to live on your own is the key to being an adult, think again! You'd have to be extremely rich to live on your own in Manhattan. If you can pay even half the average rent here, you're doing very well. Most native adults live with friends, with their parents, or (ideally) with their spouses or SOs.

Beware of using material definitions for adulthood. Worst case scenario, you are condemming billions of people in less advantaged societies to permanent infancy. That hardly seems fair to me.

and when myself & my husband were travelling SE Asia, it cost about $1 to get your entire rucksack of clothing cleaned, ironed & returned to you in vacuum packed loveliness - you'd have to be mad to do anything else.

I'm more of the thought that owning a pet is the "starting to be adult - thinking of being responsible for more than yourself" key, after which kids are the huge jump.

The rest is just window dressing (which is why I'm so scared of doing the kid thing, but have a very spoilt cat at home).

Melx

But I had a pet when I was 6 years old!

Please note, Fragilis, the use of the word "shallow" in my comment. Let's not be overly serious here.

Aaaa, but you may have had a cat when you were 6, but I bet you didn't take sole responsibility for feeding it - I have memoreis of my mum screeching at me when a teenager "Your cat would die if I didn't feed it for you, you're so irresponsible".
I rest my case, m'lud

This is a fantastic philosophical argument, isn't it? Lots of children get taken into care because the "adult(s)" they live with don't feed them or look after them properly.
Is adult a positive concept concerning responsibility and trustworthiness or is it about the attainment of rights, or is it something very different?
Is being an adult the same as being grown up?

oh i think being an adult and being a grown up can be very different things.

Adulthood is a state of physical maturity whereas being grown up is more about your behaviour.

But as my dad always says "i may be getting older but i refuse to grow up"

So do I. A woman friend asked me what to buy her boyfriend for Christmas. I told her a toy. She bought him a radio controlled aeroplane and he was absolutely delighted. Just as I would have been.

ooh i want a remote control aeroplane too!

as the old saying foes "what seperates the men from the boys is the price of their toys"

I think you become an adult when you start to lie to children and yourself.

Have you ever asked your child who ate the last biscuit?

Lying to someone else is pretty normal.
Particularly if you get away with it.
But to attempt to fool someone who cannot punish you and to successfully fool yourself into believing that you have the right to, is an adult thing.

I pretty much expect my child to lie to me. I also expect her to eventually learn to do a better job of it. That way I can feel better about the lies I've told her. Until then, I feel that I have taken advantage of her inexperience.

Has anyone ever attached a lie detector to a child in such a situation? I'm not sure they always distinguish between truth and lies when they are very young. If that IS the case then they were successfully lying to themselves, while at the same time believing they were telling you the truth.

Never mind the children. I've met adults who do that.