If you could travel back in time and ask your younger self, ‘What is something you’re looking forward to in life as an adult?’ what would the answer be?
Some would likely say that they would like to not be restricted by their parents’ rules or curfews. (Little do they know, though, that being able to stay in on a Friday night feels like a blessing when you’re older.) Others might wish to not have to go to school. (Not realizing that going to work might not be much better.) And there would likely be those who would be keen on moving out and living on their own. (Which, despite certain advantages, is not always an episode of Friends, either.)
While what people consider fun or look forward to when growing up differs with each person, one thing seems to be universal: adulting doesn’t affect people the same way—or at the same time—as it used to.
Take teenagers, for instance. Even though they’re not exactly adults yet, nowadays, they don’t seem to be in a hurry, either—compared to their counterparts from a couple of decades ago. A study from 2019, carried out by Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, Dr. Jean M. Twenge, and assistant professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College, Dr. Heejung Park, found that in the years leading up to the study, adolescents were less likely to engage in activities rarely performed by children but often performed by adults (such as dating, going out without their parents, drinking alcohol, or driving).
“Adolescents are pursuing a slower life strategy in a social context of greater parental investment, lengthened education, delayed reproduction, lower pathogen prevalence, and longer lives. The developmental trajectory of adolescence has slowed, with teens growing up more slowly than they once did,” the study read in part.
Data provided by Pew Research Center seconds the idea that young people nowadays are unlike their predecessors of a corresponding age back in the day. Millennials nowadays (in the US, at least) are reportedly more educated than the older generations were at their age. They have also brought more racial and ethnic diversity to American society, and more women to the nation’s workforce.
Millennials are also reportedly not as keen to marry or have children early. “Compared with previous generations, Millennials—those ages 22 to 37 in 2018—are delaying or foregoing marriage and have been somewhat slower in forming their own households. They are also more likely to be living at home with their parents, and for longer stretches,” Pew Research Center notes.
Many people believe that nowadays, young adults face more difficulties than their counterparts did back in the day. According to the Adulthood Across Generations survey, carried out by Life Happens, as much as 71% of respondents say adulting now is harder than it was 30 years ago. One of the main reasons for that, according to roughly as many respondents, is that the cost of living is higher than ever before.
When asked how they would define becoming an adult, more than half of the respondents (56%) in the Adulthood Across Generations survey said that adulting means being able to pay their own bills. For 45% of them, being an adult is being financially independent, while 46% said they started feeling like adults when they moved out of their parents’ home.
For many people, it takes something more significant than paying taxes to make them feel like an adult. Surveys carried out in the UK found that for roughly 55% of respondents, becoming an adult was dependent upon major life events, such as having children or getting married.
Moreover, for roughly half of people, the transition to adulthood happened in their 20s, while one in five respondents didn’t feel like an adult until their 30s. One in 20 respondents shared that they only felt like they had grown up when they were in their 40s.
Whether you’re in your 20s or your 40s, married, single, or divorced, living with your partner, your parents, or alone, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to what makes someone an adult. But if you found yourself relating to most of the posts on this list, chances are, you might have reached adulthood after all. But don’t worry! Some say that life only gets better from there.