Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
To most of us, adulthood means being able to earn a living, possess a home, get married and rear children, and this implies having autonomy or control over one's life. In the 19th century, becoming an adult was celebrated as a liberation from paternal authority. Today we regard it more as a time of regret and stagnation.
What I want is to have people's notion of adulthood no longer be so defined by being a parent. There is some kind of conventional wisdom that you're not really a mature person until you become a parent.
As far I'm concerned, being an adult is way more fun than being a kid. But then I was a kid who wanted to be an adult. I'd watch shows like 'Bewitched' and see Darren come home and mix a martini and I'd go, 'That looks awesome! I want to do that!'
Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.
Being an adult comes with a whole new set of issues.
Being a teenager is chaotic because you're kind of coming into your own, but you're not an adult; you're fighting with your parents over responsibilities and freedom.
Many of the things that I have written on have focused, at least a big part of the story, on adolescents. I think that in that period of life, so much happens, and it's the period of life where you're forming into an adult. In certain ways, you're already an adult and in certain ways you're still a kid.
You don't wake up at 18 and necessarily become the person you want to be as an adult - you have to work hard to become them.
To be adult is to be alone.
Being a grownup means assuming responsibility for yourself, for your children, and - here's the big curve - for your parents.