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

Parenthood is one thing that keeps cropping up thoughout this topic. I think perhaps kids see parenthood as an adult qualification too - I don't have kids but I have friends that do, in ages varing from two to twenty. Although I'm not much different in age from their parents, they seem to treat me more as one of them, differently to their parents other friends that do have kids of their own.

if that makes any sense at all

It makes perfect sense to me. I'm a forty-one year old single woman from a large family. I was the youngest child of six, trailing my youngest brother by eight years and my oldest sister by seventeen. I was isolated beween the generations of my siblings and their children. I was never really viewed as an adult by my brothers and sister or their mates, but recently I've begun to be accepted as part of the "mature" community. I always sat at the kids table, in charge of entertaining the "troops". While I've appreciated my position in the family, I still don't feel that I've "arrived" at adulthood... nor is it expected of me. I believe that has everything to do with not marrying and being a parent. I have a hunch that I'll still feel as if I haven't gotten around to adulthood when I'm old and gray. Go figure.

Oh yeah, and the kids do treat me as one of their own. They don't sense the parent vibe, although I know how to keep them in line.

I am right at the tail end of my thirties, and childless. And I was the youngest of four, trailing my elder sister by 12 years, and my younger by 6.

I certainly did not feel adult enough to have children until I was past 35. I do now, but won't have them. Not so much because my body is not up to carrying babies, but because my sleep patterns are not up to managing two-year-olds.

But I can well imagine if I had had children in my twenties that it would have forced me into adulthood a decade ahead of when it actually happened. And maybe my 'natural age' really is 35, as I suggested above.

There is a difference in the way I respond to children though. One thing I have noticed is that I tend to regard my 11 year old neice and to a lesser extent my 9 year old nephew as younger versions of the adults they will become, rather than older versions of the children they have been.

Interestingly my eldest sister, who emigrated when I was 13, still tended to view herself as and adult to my child until I wrote to her pointing out the differences in our adult life experiences. There are many things I know and understand far better than she does, and likewise there are many things that she knows and understands far better than I. To her eternal credit she took it on the chin, and treats me as the equal I am.

One thing which still feels odd is that I now feel twenty years older and wiser than my brother, who is ten years older than me. But in many ways I have covered far more ground in my 39 years than he has in his 49.

Ben

I think I'll see myself as an adult when I lose the conviction that I never want children.

Possibly I'll be adult when I stop saying the word grown-up.

But I don't really care that much about it. I'm me. I watch cartoons, I read loads, I enjoy my own company, I always return things I've borrowed and replace things I break without being asked, I've been known to use household things as musical instruments, people ask me for advice because I'm the responsible one, I write just for the enjoyment of it....

By the strength of those things, I'm between being a child and an adult. But I don't really want to lose any of them, so I hope that's where I stay.

My spousal unit and I were discussing this topic yesterday.
Giving birth or disseminating does not make you more intelligent.
Maybe some people are adult enough to realize that they would not make good parents.
Maybe some people will never be adults regardless of their parental status or experiences.
There is an old joke that you are only as old mentally as your youngest child. This is sadly connected to the 'empty nest' psychosis.

Apparently (sic!) the fact that you have children means that you have had sex. Now, the fact that you have had children because you have had sex is something that is so bald-faced that it needs to be dignified. So, people who have had children without benefit of having that sex justified or blessed by a church or society, these have dragged out into the open the fact that you can have children without the magic spell of a wedding ceremony....Oooooo! Way Bad!
So they are stigmatized and their children are stigmatized because of a bunch of idiots who want to legitimize something that any dog can do.

Now the flip side of this horsepuck is that unmarried and unchilded men and women are supposed to be 'immature' and a little bit 'strange'. They are also supposed to be chaste until a socially approved union takes place.

Conversely, a lot of people who got married because they 'had to' are very attracted to and fascinated by 'single' people and they feel they might have missed something by not 'waiting'.

I know a lot of people were very surprised when I got married and some were surprised even further when we reproduced.

I later found out that there were a whole lot of people who thought I was just an insane homosexual. I don't know if I would have been more flattered if they'd thought I was a sane homosexual. Plus, I don't know how many were disappointed by the fact that I turned out to be an insane hetero.

Some of this crap I've been spouting is covered in John Irving's landmark doorstop 'The World According to Garp', wherein his mother, Jenny, has to deal with the politics of being a 'Sexual Suspect'.

Thus endeth the rant.
My mommy will be along to apologize for my behavior without taking any of the blame later.

What colour is your collar, and is it studded?

One sure sign a person is approching maturity (aka adulthood) is when they use the words us and we more often them the words me and I.

Its brown leather and no studs. Nice sturdy leash ring, though.

Salu everyone!

I apologise in advance both for my English and for not remembering who said what. This is all most interesting! I notice that none of you is from country who require two years' military service of all their men (and in some places of women too). There is also rite of passage.

I too am unmarried and without children, and find the young adults children of people in my age-group seem to think of me as more a peer with them than with their parents. The parents vary whether they think I am immature for not having been through the official rites of passage of marriage and parenthood. Is much worse among French and even British people I know than Americains, that is certain. Silly cultural expectations... but they are there.

My dear parents treat me not as infant, as they treat my siblings (who are all married with children of their own), but more as alien from another planet. I suppose I was that, running off to join ashram as my way of 'finding myself' which had to start with 'losing my family and culture'.

Alors ('so' feels just not the same...), on one hand I am same person who has been looking out from behind my face since I was born, and don't feel I am no different.

On other hand I can say now what are my limites, I am not shamed. I can say what are my strengths and am not proud (or shamed -- which is the more expected thing and I don't understand too much this shame for good qualitys). I am aware of all persons' mortality in a way I know I was not, in my teens and twentys even.

And I finally understand I did not lose my family and culture when I ran off to ashram; I take them with me there. To find myself, I seek inside myself. That is probably the most clear difference between me as adult and as youth. Of course, children know this instinctively until is taken away from them by schools and parents.

Violent nature of educational systeme is one of my personal griefs. I have taught most of my life, in differents subjects, and different countries, and always in all schools there is such violent treatment of the open mind to close it, and of the curiousity to stop it, and of the interest to put it out like fire. Is miracle people survive schools.

Apologies for the tangent. This is my bee in my bonnet, or fly in my ointment, or thorn in my paw, or whatever in my something else. I don't go on about it more.

Thank you all for most intriguing discussion.

S.

Hail and well met, good fellow!
No Problem.
The perversity of ignorance is a little acknowledged thing, particularly when one has to go to school to get this ignorance injected so you don't ask the wrong questions or give the wrong answers.
The police run around looking for people who molest our children's bodies and eyes and ears, but have no time for the ones who are molesting our children's minds.
I went to the army.
I lived on the streets.
I could never join an ashram or anything similar. I am a Grouchoist.
It is against my religion to join anything that would allow anyone like me as a member.

A rite of passage wouldn't make you an adult I'd say. Something like bungee jumping for example, only tests your courage. It doesn't show if you're a responsible person and all. Or showing you're a good hunter isn't any good either.

Also the military doesn't seem like a good idea either. If you meet someone with a high rank they might seem responsible and all. But if you meet the recruits they can be very very immature. I used to live in a town with an army base for wannabe sergeants. Wow, what morons.

I believe it is an individual answer for most people. Some people are able to put off adulthood for years whereas others reach it much sooner. Some people confront it suddenly when events such as births and deaths occur. As a young child, I never thought of myself as 'little'. I started to become an adult when I realized that I didn't know all that much. It wasn't instantaneous and is still occurring as I reason out parts of my life and society. I think to be an adult, you must mature both physically and mentally.

Xanatic,

How is bungee jumping a rite of passage? As I understood Satyagraha, which might not have been very well, but I know the word, and remember the ashram-joining people I knew, from the seventies, he or she (?) meant "rites of passage" in a cultural sense. In Judaism, you have your Bar-Mitzvah or Bat-Mitzvah at the age of thirteen, at which point you're supposedly an adult. In the past, kids did get married and have families, and work, starting in their early teens. Someone said way back in this thread, that "adolescence" is a new invention. It is, and it's also a luxury. In the past, you were out working as soon as your body was able, and that's still true in many places.

I think what Satyagraha was talking about were social or cultural rites of passage, which include school, and any further education if you have it, marriage, parenthood, various anniversaries, becoming a grandparent, which if my son isn't smarter than he acts, could happen to me any time... retirement, all are rites of passage. There are also religious ones. I think they serve to demarcate periods of different kinds of responsibility -- who you're answerable to, and who has to listen to you.

Being in the military, as such, wouldn't mean much. In countries like Israel, where there are two years of mandatory military service for all citizens who don't have medical reasons not to serve, that is the one that comes after school, before higher education and marriage, or becomes a career path. I doubt anyone who calls him/herself "Satyagraha" thinks that it means any more than the physiological ability to procreate does in terms of maturity. It does mean risking your life for your country, as soon as you finish school. That's answering to a different authority than your parents or your school.

Anyway, that's how I read it. Bungee-jumping? It's a recreational activity. Learning to drive is, to some extent, a rite of passage. Getting your first car really is. Getting your first paycheck is. I think I've hammered my point home sufficiently. Oy vey!

As for what constitutes being an adult, I agree with all of you who said "it's personal and it varies". I know I am one, and know I realized it some time in medical school, but I don't know how or why the transformation took place, except it was about when I told my folks I wasn't going to practice clinical medicine.

::Shrug::

Quincy

Where do you think the West learned to jump off a tall platform with a rope tied to their leg? I believe I saw it on some Nation Geographics special where it was a right of passage (or it could have just been a test of bravery, but same differance) for the males of some african(?) tribes to tie a vine around their leg and jump of a tower specially erected for just that purpose. So in that case It would fit.

It would fit for the African tribe, who did it as a rite of passage. Americans and Western Europeans do it for FUN. That's a whole different thing, isn't it? I think so, anyway.

So it's not simply the act of doing something it has to be the social importance of the act?

Well, it certainly helps to have a CULTURE beyond that which changes according to the whims of the insane.
The rites of passage in the US used to involve getting out of kneepants and into trousers, lopping off the ringlets and getting a proper haircut, and being strong enough to suffer pain without crying.
People are so soft today they can't walk a block. They have to drive their ittle uns to the school eight blocks away.
I think that adultness is like intelligence. It is nigh on undefineable (sp?). You think you know it when you see it but you can't just be sure, because there may be something you can't see.

My spousal unit thinks that the ability to hold a job is a sign of adulthood. I know damn well it isn't.
I know people who believe that a college diploma is a sign of adulthood. I know damn well it isn't.

I know I expect a certain standard of behavior from people who look grown-up and wear grown-up clothes and have jobs and diplomas and wives and kids and when they don't meet that standard, then they are not an adult, period, full stop.
If it walks like a duck...

It wasn't African, it was the Phillipines. And it was considered a rite of passage, as well as a test of bravery. What I meant was that most of those rites of passage tests just one thing, so it doesn't seem to me you can define adulthood as after you've hunted down a wild boar or so.

Yeah, people used to get kicked out after their confirmation. Which forced them to become adults quite quickly. I'd say being adult is about being responsible for your own life and youre own actions and not being dependent on others for the essentials.

I can't say how the israeli army is, but it probably helps people to get adult a lot better than the Danish one. It seems to me the Israelian army is damned efficient.

*swoops in and shouts BOO!*

Back to the original question... There are no adults. There're just different aged people who have differing abilities to be able to ACT like adults! I know what I should act like, I know what my responsibilities are (or what they should be), and I know there are myriads of etiquette rules for the "general public" to mirror.

But I want my childhood. I will NOT let it go. Its great, it's wonderful, it's NATURAL.

Woohoooooo

*streaks and runs round the house. Because I can!*

spooky "childish, childlike" buz