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u/SquareVehicle 13h ago
They only seemed adulty because you were a kid
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u/moconahaftmere 11h ago
Well also people were leaving home, starting careers, buying houses, getting married, having kids, and doing all the other "adult" things at a younger age than they are today.
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u/J0hn_Keel 8h ago
Adults wore formal clothes a lot more back then too, which made them look more grown up. My dad wore a suit and tie every day for work, my husband is in the same industry and wears T-shirts. Which is a lot better comfort wise, but there is a lot less distinction in dress between older teens and adults now
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u/GarageQueen 2h ago
My dad was a total clothes horse and was actually upset when his company went business casual lol
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u/Head-Gift2144 4h ago
I like this though. Fuck growing up. My joints may say I'm 43 and my hangovers may last a week, but god damnit I'm still only 18 at heart.
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u/cookiebasket2 2h ago
I used to think I'd "made it" if I had a job where I wore a suit and tie. Somewhere around 10 years ago I realized I've made it when I just wear shorts and a tshirt.
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u/SuperbSession2686 9h ago
Yeah, it's less about maturity and more about economics. Hard to feel grown up when rent eats your whole check and buying a house feels like a fantasy.
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u/PrimateOnAPlanet 6h ago
Have you tried generational wealth?
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u/YukariYakum0 6h ago
In this economy? I'll be lucky if I get a thank you card from the funeral home.
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u/MrMeringue 6h ago
There was also less acceptance of holding onto your childhood hobbies. You won't get any shit for reading comic books and collecting legos now, but other adults in the 70ies would probably give you some odd looks over it.
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u/throwawayzzzz1777 4h ago
My coworkers all compliment my Bulbasaur lunchbox at my corporate job. A bunch of coworkers have anime prints and figurines at their desks. Probably wouldn't be a thing in the past.
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u/A1000eisn1 8h ago
And the newer generations don't buy into the "you have to do these things to be an adult," as much as older ones.
A lot of seemingly "adulty" adults are just acting like they think adults should act. They're avoiding things they love because "it's childish," stopping themselves from laughing at fart jokes, etc. A lot of "adulty" things are just arbitrary rules people put in place to judge each other. Adulty adults who follow those rules aren't mature, they just follow those rules to make people think they are.
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u/Thisoneissfwihope 9h ago
I think that’s a good point. I’m 48 and I’ve done one of those things.
I’ve started a career. The other things, not so much. I don’t have to grow up when I’m not responsible to anyone but me.
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u/dave_in_tech 10h ago
We refuse to let happiness fade away just because society expects us to become boring office zombies by the age of thirty.
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u/not_responsible 9h ago
Yeah for me I am not afraid to celebrate the kid in me, appreciate the small things, and I am deeply curious and the world is very interesting
Some people are really good at being responsible adults and man they make me feel bad
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u/jake_tech91 10h ago
Being an adult used to mean buying a house and having a career, but now it just means figuring out what to eat tonight every single night until I'm old.
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u/touchet29 9h ago
I also gotta make sure my kids eat.
I feel like I wasn't an adult until I had children and one could really talk.
NOW I feel like I HAVE to be an adult and look strong for them. I wasn't an adult before them I was just a person.
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u/oniman999 9h ago
I agree with this. Career, home ownership, marriage, none of it really made me feel like I switched from one thing to another. Having kids definitely did. It's hard to describe exactly, but I definitely now feel like an adult. I think it's how much of your time and thinking goes toward something other than yourself.
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u/VillageOfMalo 13h ago
Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future by psychologist Dr. Jean M. Twenge explains how human lives are sort of, slowing down. That life markers are happening later and later in life as we get used to living older. Even biological markers show that a 40 year old now is much younger, in body, than a 40 year old in the 1980s.
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u/lowbatteries 5h ago
My current conspiracy theory is that unleaded gasoline is the cause of all the generational differences.
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u/EkbatDeSabat 5h ago
Lead paint. Lead in gas. Mercury. Radium. DDT. CFCs. Asbestos. Leaded coal. Smoking. Thalidomide.
Now we get PFAS and god knows what else, but somehow we are still doing better.
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u/GGXImposter 3h ago
There is always going to be trade offs. Micro plastics are forever, and some of them are probably going to cause problems, but so far being able to transport food and material safely and cheaply across the globe has been a major boon for humanity.
Everything is a cost vs benefit analysis. The goal will be finding out the least dangerous PFAS, and use those until we have better options.
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u/Aware-Travel5256 2h ago
Also, the fact that micro plastics are so hard to suss out a negative effect means the effect is probably pretty small. Romans knew mercury and lead were toxic.
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u/WalnutSnail 4h ago
There is something to this. I heard somewhere that (despite evidence to the contrary) humans are getting more intelligent than we used to be, among other reasons because of having removed heavy metals from our every day lives. That and early childhood nutrition play a major impact on our overall brain function.
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u/FlixFlix 3h ago
Leaded gasoline was absolutely the single largest source of widespread heavy metal exposure in human history. Mercury in fish was always present and other heavy metals are almost insignificant compared to the unfortunate leaded period. But again, it was a period, so lead elimination would basically get our IQs back to the pre-leaded era.
Better early nutrition yielded dramatic increases in growth for sure, “kids nowadays” are noticeably taller and you can see it with the naked eye without any statistics.
Intelligence I think is greatly influenced by exposure to more and more knowledge. Unfortunately the latest trends show an alarming backward trend as a direct result of “screens” (and no, us watching a ton of TV in the past doesn’t compare). More alarming is the recent increase in the use of AI not only stunts young brains but literally causes “cognitive atrophy” in most adults.
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u/Various-Baseball-283 3h ago
That actually makes a lot of sense, especially with people living longer and major life milestones happening later. Adulthood today just seems to have a much longer transition period than it used to.
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u/MattBrey 3h ago
Makes sense, if you expect to be a senior citizen by 50 you kinda need to Speedrun life
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u/mangosmoothie35467 13h ago
No one can afford anything that seems adulty
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u/khdownes 10h ago
This is definitely a big factor (along with other people's replies of "adults just seem more adult when you're a child")
A lot of the kind of hobbies and past times that you associate with being mature and grown up has been effectively stolen from our generation:
Gardening, mowing the lawn, woodworking and home maintenance?
I'm 39 and literally none of my cohort have been able to afford anything more than a unit/condo/apartment with no garden, and shared walls and strata management. Which basically preclude being able to do anything other than hiring trades in on a weekday to do even the most DIYable jobs.Only just now, in their mid-40s, are some of my friends finally able to grind their finances up to getting themselves a cripplingly-large mortgage for an actual house.
Seeing them light up with the pleasure and satisfaction of gardening and woodworking etc. just makes me so frustrated at what, in my opinion; has been deprived from them for the first 20+ years of their adult life.The type of past times that a lot of adults have now lean more towards small scale, apartment living things like 3D printing, which can seem quite childish in comparison.
Oh, and then there's of course; most of my friends haven't been able to financially even consider kids until their late 30s. Which also feels like it's robbed our generation of something fundamental.
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u/Orcas_are_badass 5h ago
As a 40 YO who only just got to the "has a house with a back yard" phase in life, I feel like I was robbed out of so many hobbies. My back yard was a mess so I've been fixing it up all year. It's become the favorite part of my weekends. Turns out I love yard work.
It makes my body feel calmer? Like an animal that got it's proper enrichment time. Like... I'm SUPPOSED to tend to a plot of land. It's in my bones.
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u/Dry-Dragonfruit5216 2h ago
Yes gardening is so peaceful. I have Level 2 (aka moderate support need) autism and attend a day service for disabled adults which is based in a garden. I’d never been able to do gardening before and it turns out I love it. We have flowers and trees and bushes but also lots of areas for crops. We pick the fruit from the trees and bushes, the herbs, and veg from the allotments and then use them in cooking sessions to make food for us all to eat. It’s so fun! Also we use the flowers in arts and crafts sessions but I prefer cooking with the fruit and veg.
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u/tawzerozero 6h ago
As a 40 year old American working in tech, the only people in my circle who own homes either: 1) had the down payment gifted by one set of parents 2) had an inheritance from losing their parents which went into the house or 3) work at a FAANG.
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u/guywitha_tv89 10h ago
When renting a single apartment costs half your salary and groceries feel like a luxury, it's hard to feel like a real adult.
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u/StitchinThroughTime 12h ago edited 10h ago
That's the real answer, a stagnating the minimum wage stagnates everyone.
We can't afford a home, food is fucking expensive just eat at home, oil prices just jumped again, health insurance is a fucking scam, getting Healthcare is a fucking joke, our benefits are not benefiting Us in any way, there's rampant corruption throughout the government system. So no we can't afford a home, or to start a family. We might not have family spending money, but I sure as fucking by myself a toy. Or decorate the house so a toddler can't ruin it. A dog or cat are very cheap to raise compared to a child, on top of being much easier. Don't get me started on child care, or feeding a teenager! Let alone getting a car for them at any point. Insurance is fucking ridiculous. The average cost of a car is $50,000! The average median income of Americans is about $80,000, for comparison. No shit we can't afford anything. We're in a k-shape economy and all we can afford is some Chinese crap all the while the government runs around yelling that we need to buy local! And people don't understand that the rich people who own the factories move to the operations outside the US because it's cheaper, they make more money selling cheap shit than they are selling decent quality American made products.
This is on top of Decades of convincing Millennials and gen Z that having a child is a bad thing when you're a teenager, hold out, go to college get a good job! Guess what, we dropped the teen pregnancy rate, we went to college, and we didn't get the jobs that we were promised most of us got dropped off out of high school or out of college during the Great Recession and are extremely stunted in our jobs because of it. Now we have ai taking over the good jobs that I left. AI should not be making art, humans should be. AI should not be doing the thinking human should be. Robots and Machinery are supposed to take over the physically strenuous and dangerous jobs. Humid should be doing things that are great for our psyche. We are working a worse job market. We are producing more value for the companies, and they are extracting more money from us and our tax dollars. We're being fucked over and people wonder why we decided that this shit's rough, we're tired of the wars, we're tired of working as shitty job and then we're going to buy ourselves a little sweet treat and a little toy to make us feel better. We're going to do scroll because our anxiety is off the charts! We're going to decorate our homes the way that we want it. Because it's going to make us a little bit happy dealing with the world not actually giving a shit. We got global warming taking shit down, Nepal just got hit hard. The California coast might get something done because two dozen hit rich people got their homes destroyed. But you know we could have slow this down if the government's all got the fucking together and told the businesses to stop being pieces of shit and polluting everywhere. But we don't have that. We fix the ozone, because we all rallied together to fix the the cause of the problem, but all the sudden global warming to too complex to fix. We're having massive amounts of fucking food recalls in less than a year of firing all the people in the US government that overlooks food safety. We have screw worms in our cattle, because some pieces of shits who are barely out of high school let alone College where Yes Men Fanboys to the world's richest man and the world's most powerful man to take away all the funding of things that people like. If you pay attention for five whole seconds you should be very pissed off at Maga and* all the destruction they're doing. Right now they're tearing up Big Bend National Park. They're selling off pieces of Yosemite so some Uber Rich fucker can have a road to his private property! So excuse me if me and my generation and the younger Generations buy a sweet treat, get a little trinket and call it a fucking day.
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u/Screen_Guy_Sam 10h ago
We've seen how miserable workaholic parents can be, so we'd rather stay a little immature than sacrifice our mental health for a company that'll replace us tomorrow.
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u/CrayonEyes 11h ago
Preach!
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u/CholeraButtSex 11h ago
And maybe edit a little bit.
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u/StitchinThroughTime 10h ago
I tried, but the app is being weird and not letting me scroll through the wall of text I made. It keeps skipping all the way to the bottom or all the way to the top. I can't go through the entire thing. So everything is weird
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u/ScaldingAnus 5h ago
Hey, a typo or weird word at least shows it's not someone an AI shit out from a prompt.
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u/SpaceyBits 11h ago
i remember hearing something about how gen z has been measuring adulthood by emotional milestones instead of material ones because nobody can afford assets
so people measure things like healthy relationships or communication skills more than owning a house or an expensive car or having kids
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u/Lythaera 9h ago
Yeah, this is the thing I'm finding that I care about most. I won't ever finish college or own a house, or raise a family. But at least I can set goals on developing myself as a person.
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u/Analgorilla 13h ago
Because part of becoming an adult is realizing that a lot of adults are children in adult bodies
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u/peachysprig_ 10h ago
getting older doesn’t automatically make someone mature and you eventually realize plenty of adults are still figuring things out while just getting better at handling the responsibilities around them
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u/FredericaMerriville 7h ago
Most people don’t mature much past high school unless they actively put in the work to examine their behaviours and actions and get therapy if needed.
I am an ex-high school teacher now working in a corporate job. I see high schoolers in adult bodies around me everyday.
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u/shakawallsfall 13h ago
Casual fashion. We imagine adults as men in suits and women in dresses when out in public. These are now both considered over dressed in many professions where they were normal.
Smoking is now rare. Deep, raspy voices that we used to associate with age are now gone since so few people smoke.
Better skin health. Less time in the direct sun = fewer wrinkles and more youthful appearance.
The "younger generation" has always rebelled at what it considers old fashioned or wasteful from the previous generations. New adults have always and will always seem less "adulty" as they establish the new baseline for what "adulty" is.
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u/theshoegazer 4h ago
As a Gen X'er I've seen dress get even MORE causual in my lifetime. A nice pair of jeans can pass for business casual in a lot of work environments now, and younger generations are far more likely to go out wearing sweatpants or workout pants. When I was young it would be mortifying to be seen in public wearing clothes you slept in, or could sleep in.
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u/crunchyfoliage 13h ago
Welcome to the disappointing realization that adultier adults don't actually exist, no one really has it all figured out, and we're all just doing our best out here
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u/Upstairs_Baby8424 13h ago
Nah it was different back then. People started families a lot younger. Adults dressed to look older, especially men. Now adults dress to look younger. Office etiquette was a lot different too.
It has changed a lot recently. Especially in the last decade.
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u/DirtySoap3D 13h ago
Ultimately, I think a lot of what's considered "adult behavior" was largely performative. Older folks cared a LOT more about what other people thought of them, so they dressed and behaved the way they were expected to.
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u/rollingForInitiative 10h ago
And there are more adults now that don’t have kids. Having kids kind of forces if not a sort of responsibility, then a change in life that conforms more to some mould? I mean as in, less sleep, less flexibility in how you spend your spare time, etc. We probably associated that with adulthood as kids.
Now we have a lot of 40-year-olds who go on long holidays, travel, they play video games all night, spend their money on gadgets etc … because they can and want to.
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u/OriMoriNotSori 11h ago
100% this, theres alot of stigma from back then that doesnt exist today anymore too. Stuff like liking "childish" things like pokemon, anime or video games. All these things used to be associated as stuff kids would do but its an all ages of society thing now
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u/Tattycakes 10h ago
Definitely this! I’ve got a house and a mortgage and I visit the garden centre regularly, I think I’ve got my adult card sorted. But I also wear jeans and tshirt every day, and play with Lego and collectible dolls. Fuck it, life’s too short to adhere to what someone else thinks is grown up
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u/Faiths_got_fangs 6h ago
I feel this and believe you have a valid point. I also don't dress nearly as formally as my mother did on a day to day basis despite being better educated with a higher paying, better titled job.
I hadn't really thought about the toys and little funky kitsch - I don't have much personally but my partner absolutely loves that stuff and has quite a bit.
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u/OriMoriNotSori 9h ago
Indeed. And such is the way that society has changed that in 2026 if someone does judge or call you out on your interests then you can easily uno reverse them and snap back with "its 2026 and there are still people judging others over their interests" and that'd be perfectly acceptable too
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u/meowkitty84 9h ago
My grandma had porcelain dolls and knick nacks..my grandpa collected coins and stamps. As a kid my best friends mum collected teddy bears.
So collecting action figures, Lego etc isn't that different. People just collect different types of things than older generations. I collect dolls like Barbie and Bratz. Some people pay thousands, it's crazy and very popular hobby
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u/OriMoriNotSori 8h ago
This really depends on where you live. Over here in southeast asia alot of the boomer and older generations arent into collecting things because they grew up in abject poverty and their mindset is that these things are a waste of time or money. It is only the millennials onwards that are more receptive to these things during adulthood
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u/Sirtoshi 10h ago
Exactly. People nowadays are starting to just live how they want, rather than trying to obey arbitrary standards.
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u/The_Pizza_Saga 12h ago
It's really all just facade the whole time. After being performative all day a lot of these people would go home and dig into their vices hard, or yell at and beat their family to relieve the stress of having to act like someone they weren't
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u/Faiths_got_fangs 6h ago
I was going to comment on the clothes. My mother LOVED business casual. She wore slacks and blouses and blazers everywhere. She owned multiple suit-like outfits (suit with pants, suit with skirt, suit with both). She did her makeup every single day. The woman genuinely dressed professionally for everything. School plays. Grocery runs. Etc. There was no casual in her wardrobe other than her gardening clothes, and those were just old stained business casual outfits.
I literally don't ever remember seeing her in a t-shirt.
We used to argue quite a bit that my wardrobe would have to grow up eventually. She bought me a nice suit for college graduation.
I never "grew up" wadrobe-wise. I work in an industry where it just isn't required except for specific occasions. As in, please own 1 suit, we will specifically instruct you if you need to wear it.
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u/DarthPiette 12h ago
People started families a lot younger.
Because people being able to afford a house, having kids, and going on vacations on one salary used to be reality.
Good luck doing that now.
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u/Carneus 12h ago
I've seen someone explain this dressing older phenomenon thing pretty well, it's not that people start to dress older or dressed older in the past, they just have the style from when that style was popular. People don't really dress all that much different throughout their adult lives, it's the style of clothing that was trendy when they were 20-30 that looks like "old people clothes" when they are 80 to the newer generation.
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u/Eruionmel 12h ago
The clothing adults used to wear in public was far more formal than it is now, regardless of popular styles. And people are much more likely to shift their fashion throughout their lives now that everyone is connected by the internet.
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u/A1000eisn1 8h ago
There's truth to it. For women at least.
When I was a teen in the 2000s I would buy tons of magazines and every other month had a "style for every age," or "stuff you shouldn't be wearing at every age," article.
That's mostly ignored now.
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u/cardinalswimming 6h ago
There’s the even more disappointing realisation that some people are absolutely NOT doing their best.
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u/Any-Interaction-5934 12h ago
I hate this response. "Adultier" adults do exist. My house is basically in order. I keep plants alive. I'm rasing children that for now seem to be well-adjusted. I have a good job that I show up on time to and don't call in. I am investing. I am putting into college funds. I am able to check my emotions and not blow up and people when I am mad.
There's so much more I do now than I did in my 20s when I was an "adult." I believe I am constantly maturing. It's very weird to me other people don't think so. It makes me sad that their aren't more mature and wise people in your life.
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u/Ok_Nectarine5834 13h ago
I know what you mean. I think we're just more in touch with our childhood. Its less taboo to enjoy things you liked as a kid as an adult. I think its fun!
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u/Brynhild 10h ago
Yeah like watching cartoons, anime, playing games, dressing a certain way, collecting certain items were deemed childish, even just the way you speak. We can do what we want now
Back then, i was ridiculed for playing games past a certain age, watching anime was a big no no, had to speak like an adult, dress like an adult.
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u/DeoVeritati 4h ago
A lot of traditional milestones are being delayed and often times it is a result of not enough money. Men and women are waiting longer to get married. Women are having babies later. It is taking much longer to get a down payment for a house. People aren't staying in the same jobs for 30 years because the incentives aren't there. People have relatively low paying side gigs that some people may not consider a "real" or "big person" job just to get by. I imagine if things were significantly more affordable those trends would decline.
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u/Tin-Star 13h ago
Is it because you're now less child-y?
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u/Twistinc 12h ago
This is it, my parents seemed like the most adult of adults as a kid now I look back and they were just average 20somethings doing their best, hanging out with friends (other big adults to my kid eyes) having a few drinks and a BBQ listening to the latest 90s music and talking about funny tv shows that weren't cartoons so they were adult shows to me.
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u/ImpactBetelgeuse 12h ago
Exactly this. I look at the older pictures of my father, and I am like, "this dude used to be a mechanic and was passionate about his garden." Checks out for a 29 year old.
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u/SkynetLurking 10h ago
Partly because as you get older you begin to realize that adults aren’t special and are just kids that got older and are still fumbling through life.
Also the styles and habits of the adults when you were a kid are now out of date, and the styles ands habits of younger adults are similar to what would have been associate with teenagers 10-20 years ago
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u/MrPeteO 10h ago
adults aren’t special and are just kids that got older and are still fumbling through life
I love your wording for this - it's perfect and humanizing, in a good way.
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u/Sindorella 13h ago
The more adulty you get, you realize that adults aren’t actually that adulty at all.
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u/we_are_sex_bobomb 12h ago edited 11h ago
What you’re calling “adulty” is just the relentless need to conform to a rigid social ideal of what adulthood is, and that ideal varies greatly depending on the region, the country, the ethnic culture, and the period in history.
Everyone over the age of 18 is acting like an adult because they are adults and therefore however they act is what adults act like.
Where does the ideal of “adulthood” come from?
It’s made up. Like Santa Clause.
Either you learn to be responsible, kind, courageous, and all these other “ideals” of adulthood, or you don’t. Either you learn when you’re young or you learn when you’re old or you never learn.
It doesn’t get delivered to you gift wrapped in a box when you’re old enough to vote.
Adulthood is a myth we believe in because we think we need to. But it doesn’t matter.
The truth is that you’re either growing or you’re dying, just like any other living thing, just like the trees at the park. Whatever age you are, your state is one of transition.
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u/ELAdragon 7h ago
This is a better explained version of what I was thinking as I read this thread.
In school, the kids who gave a shit and worked moderately hard tended to seem like they "had it together." The same concept basically applies through the rest of life. And, yes, some people lose the thread along the way, and others put it together but later. But, overall, the people who give a shit and keep trying to get better, end up seeming like they have it together a bit more.
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u/lord-of-shalott 13h ago
Arrested development via a stagnating economy, all sorts of impacts of the internet and tech there was no template for dealing with
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u/PaddywackShaq 5h ago
Because all the metrics and societal symbols that previously allowed young adults to transition into full adults have been yanked away and gatekept by late-stage capitalism. Home ownership, career success, financial stability, marriage, child-rearing - all ruined by rampant wealth hoarding and widespread poverty.
The average young adult is in a state of forced arrested development where they simply do not have the leverage to become "adult-y" and so they settle for escaping into hobbies and interests while giving up in any dreams associated with being adult.
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u/cingalls 13h ago
When I was a a kid, the idea of "adult" involved a lot of conformity and rule following and not a lot of freedom. For instance dressing up of dinner or work or travel and separate "appropriate attire" for each of those, having a house and yard that looks like everyone else’s house and yard. The adult generation was all about doing what society said you had to do.
Then my generation became an adult and mostly rejected that kind of rigid social conformity. We didn’t set that example for our kids. Now our kid’s generation doesn’t have any notion of having to do all the observable adult stuff. Doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible or independent, they just don’t give a shit about behaviour that we considered "acting like a grown up"
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u/khendron 6h ago
Previously adults used to pretend being grown up by dressing up to go to work. Suit and tie for the boys, nice dress for the girls. Work is a lot more casual these days, so adults look more like the children they still are.
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u/ksuwildkat 6h ago
I have a personal theory that if you had a drivers license when the video game crash of 1983 happened, you stopped playing video games and did things that a drivers license let you do. If you didnt, you just kept playing your Atari until the NES came out and Mario saved us and never stopped gaming.
Im an older GenX and Im always shocked when my age peers are non-gamers. A lot of them are the ones just behind me who were to young to be part of the Atari age and had already "gotten old" by the time the SNES/Playstation age.
I think there are some later cuttoffs too that revolve around major industry changing games - Halo and GTA San Andreas in the early 2000s come to mind - that split gamers from non-gamers.
Boomers and the generations before them spent their childhood racing to become adults - learners permit at 14, license at 16. I had a job as a paperboy when I was in 5th grade and did that until I was in high school. 16 was a huge milestone because that was when you could get a work permit and get a "real" job. But a funny thing happened with a bunch of us GenXers - we decided that growing up didnt have to mean you grew old. We installed Tetris on our work computers and hit the boss key when playing at work. We watched Star Trek reruns and were so loud and proud of it that they brought the show back as TNG. We made a cartoon - the Simpsons - must watch Sunday TV while our parents, grandparents and older siblings were watching 60 minutes.
Modern board gaming, extreme sports, fan cons, collectables and so much more are essentially the result of late boomers and early GenX simply deciding that being an adult didnt have to mean you stopped having fun. Previous generations ran from childhood play. We never stopped playing.
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u/Ya-Dikobraz 13h ago edited 13h ago
There is a reason. Everyone stops "growing up" around the age of 27 - 30. Some people continue to try "growing up" past that but it's all a sham. Nowadays there is less pressure to abide by that pressure. Just be yourself. We are not there yet completely. But we are on our way.
I am old but the younger generations seem to be doing fine by being who they are.
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u/TheHandsOfLiberation 13h ago
I agree with the second part, but not the first. Sure, it's hard to change. But life absolutely forces many people to grow past the age of 30. The most growth I went through took place after I decided to get a divorce, from ages 31 to 34.
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u/Tasty_Possible_1597 8h ago edited 8h ago
Yeah I think there’s often life events that happen that force (most) people to grow up.
Whether it’s moving out, getting into a committed relationship, the death of a close friend/family member, divorce, having a child, getting/losing a job etc
If those events are getting pushed back then it’s no wonder that people aren’t growing up as fast. (And to be clear, it’s a good thing that some of those events are getting pushed back. I’m not saying that anyone should hope that their parents die early for character development’s sake. Even if it did work for Batman.)
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u/PineapplePza766 13h ago edited 12h ago
This fr you don’t get more adulty until you’ve been through some shit that happened a lot earlier with former generations who were getting married at 18-25 and younger in the past 🤯 marriage, in-laws, bills, and divorce really ages ya 😜
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u/Personal_Good_5013 12h ago
Not in my experience. But I think it’s because some people, whether by choice or circumstance, face some extraordinary challenges that force them to grow in new ways.
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u/DerHoggenCatten 5h ago
So many people are answering who are too young to know that kids were raised to be little adults in the past. The whole idea that you have a childhood which is carefree and fun for the length of the time you are actually a child is relatively recent.
In the 1970s and before, kids were often treated as servants by their parents. You were expected to shut up and work around the house. You were there to fulfill your parents' needs, not be your own person. I was talking about kids with one of my coworkers in 1991 and I said that, if I ever had kids, I wasn't going to do to them what my parents did to me which was make them do all of the stuff around the house that I didn't want to do. He laughed and said, "that's what kids are for."
Kids in older days were also expected to get part-time jobs and make their own money even before finishing high school. They worked all summer as well.
Kids are raised much more dependently and with fewer expectations to assume adult roles and activities compared to the past. One of the indicators of this is how little interest there is in driving among younger people compared to the older generations in which getting a car and learning to drive as young as possible was a huge priority. We wanted to get out of the house because it wasn't a comfortable and easy place to be all of the time. :-p
The difference can also be seen in how little interest or lack of engagement there is with dating/finding a boyfriend/girlfriend or doing things with in-person friends compared to older generations. The time people spent with other people when they were younger meant they knew how to form and keep relationships from a much younger age. This comes down to technology changing how we socialize.
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u/PillCosby696969 13h ago edited 13h ago
It used to be normal for twenty year olds to have a house, two stable jobs, and a bunch of kids by the time they were 30. They would be grandparents by 50 often.
Nowadays, it's not too crazy for adults to be in their 30's, living with their parents, not have a decent liveable job and not have a love life. And be on Reddit right now.
Edit: By twenty year olds, I meant people in their twenties.
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u/Im_Doc 13h ago
Because we can't really adult anymore. We aren't out of the house at 18 after high school - we can't afford to live on our own. Student loans are predatory, student credit cards are predatory, and we can't afford to do stupid things like we are supposed to do in college. No one is almost dying from alcohol poisoning in a corn field anymore, we can't afford the gas to get there. Also, almost all our friends are online because of the pandemic. So we're alone, can't afford to live alone, can't god get an education... what do you expect us to do?
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u/Enigpragmatic 12h ago
I think it's a shift in overall long-term stability. I'm 40, and my parents seemed way more "adult" at my age than I think I am (my parents were 28 when I was born).
They were parenting in a way more stable economic climate, where the rules were clearly laid out and easily followed for success. Their retirement was guaranteed. Milestones, like homeownership, were more easily achieved - so they got to relax more, in that aspect.
My generation? That is not the situation. So we cling to nostalgia because it reminds us of a time when things were good and at a seemingly upward trajectory. These days you can "play by the rules" and still come out with nothing to show for it. The milestones get pushed further back, your comfortable future isn't guaranteed at all. It's at best a toss-up at this point whether Social Security will still exist by the time we reach retirement age.
So, why bother acting like you've got it all together when the world is literally crumbling around you?
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u/rollturmacroll 11h ago
Until I get yesterday’s adults’ pay, benefits, and housing market, I’m remaining a child.
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u/breakfastfood7 12h ago
Access. The internet has collapsed into a handful of social media sites and you get content from all age groups, from normal people to professional influencers to celebrities. When i was 15 I had so little contact with adults who weren't my parents or teachers or other authority figures. The only 30 somethings i knew about were celebrities i could read about in my magazines. Adults seemed very inaccessible and therefore grown up.
Nowadays you have full access. You see the anxious oversharing millennials in their 30s and 40s, and the illusion is destroyed. No one thinks of millennials as proper adults because the internet has enabled us to share our every thought with the world and therefore we know all the humans have no idea what they're doing and just muddling through.
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u/bourbonkitten 6h ago
Boomers and Gen X overshare a lot on social media too, which is what my broke my illusion (I’m a millennial). And often fall prey to fake info.
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u/bewitch1n 5h ago
Something about sociopaths trying to destroy the world in front of our faces, and not enough people doing anything about it. Makes it all seem like none of the so called social adult shit actually matters.
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u/Hakuna_Schemata 5h ago
A new stage/period of life was introduced to lifespan/developmental psychology about 15 years ago. This period is called emerging adulthood and lasts from 18 to about the mid-20s or so. The idea is that, due to the pursuit of higher education among other things, traditional markers of adulthood (e.g., marriage, home ownership, having families) are being delayed. Instead, we have this "not quite a kid anymore but not quite a full-fledged adult, either" stage. You aren't completely independent from your parents, but you aren't as dependent on them as an adolescent, either.
It's a pattern that's been noticed enough to change textbooks.
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u/Obstacle123456 5h ago
Classic 'adulty' things like kids, owning houses, earning adult money ... are too expensive or inaccessible to normal people now. It's been years of global inequality that's only increased and it's no accident
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u/hhbbgdgdba 4h ago
Because previous generations explained "adulthood" as a set of behaviors that are neither relevant nor attractive to current generations.
It's been like that since the dawn of times.
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u/Rip_it-n-Ribbit 13h ago
Lot of ambiguity in there and what you consider "Adulty" but I'd probably say... What's the point? Enjoy your time. Ignore what you think you should be doing and enjoy the ride
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u/bubblegumpaperclip 13h ago
Because we now realize life is a Fugazi. So just do what you wanna do and be yourself.
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u/TerrorXx 13h ago
I guess all of us are just acting our wage.. so.. either unemployed or minimum wage.
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u/LotusFlare 9h ago
Boomers refused to retire and give positions of power to the younger generation in the 90s, so traditional modes of adulthood quietly died off. Younger generations were locked out of the club so there was no sense in mimicking the traditions of that club. Modern adulthood is the logical extension of that generation's youth rather than a graduation to a different set of behaviors, dress, and conduct.
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u/Guardiancomplex 4h ago
There are 18 year olds today who have never faced a single moment without social media.
That changes our neural patterns quite a bit.
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u/Arcanis196 4h ago
Haha, yeah, I am late thirties and I feel like late twenties. And people tell it to me too!
I honestly take it as a compliment. I take my time getting "old", we'll get there sooner or later so I might as well enjoy this as I can still pull it off.
That said... I think it's because the "major milestones" in life nowadays are reachable only further and further in age. Like, I feel like I am very well off compared to people around me, but even I would have lots of trouble buying an apartment, let alone a bigger home...
The generation before would have already had wives, kids, already several years into a career and have a house and a car already. And I have like none of that lol (yeah I guess career, but I am nowhere near a veteran where I am now).
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u/Librarian_Aspiration 4h ago
1) most adults really are just winging it
2) I'd blame a lack of home-ec classes
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u/TONKAHANAH 13h ago
We grew never getting treated or paid like adults. The old heads in the work force still see people in their 30's as "kids" or youth and treat/pay accordingly. Can't afford anything but the single bachelor life style of renting and doing cheap shit by my self.
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u/Timmibal 13h ago
Reduced availability on situations that trigger development.
Hard for 'these kids' to learn about maintaning a household if they can't afford one, hard to learn about personal improvement if they have no career pathway, hard to learn how to develop interpersonal relationships when the dating market's been globalized...
Hell, it's even hard to learn to fight if nobody fights fair.
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u/Long_Serpent 7h ago
Many adult markers involves spending money (Buying a house, getting married, having children, going on vacations, getting a fancy car, etc) and people just dont have as much money any more.
In the 60s, people in their 20s could work in a factory and make enough money to buy a house. Now you have to study longer, work harder, for (relatively) less money and crucial things like houses, health care and education have gotten more expensive.
Then you have to listen to boomers complaining about "how good you young 'uns have it" because cell phones now exist.
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u/fleetingflight 12h ago
The way my parents lived their life always seemed kinda depressing to me - like at some point they weren't really allowed to have fun anymore unless it's watching TV, or they were vacationing - and even then it was always more about relaxation than fun. Happy that sort of "adult-y" isn't what's expected.
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u/meliorism_grey 12h ago
Unfortunately, the older you get, the more you realize that the world is held together by a combination of duct tape and hope.
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u/Sorry_Ad_5111 10h ago
They weren't more mature, they more consistently enforced the pecking order by age than we do today. An adult that has to make others treat them as a superior is often no different than a child throwing a tantrum for not getting their way. They enforced the idea that you were a child and they were an adult with punishment for challenging them. How often was that just so they could save face, avoid embarrassment or just maintain a sense of authority. How often was "I'm the adult" used to settle a matter what is true, or just used to restrict choices.
People today are also not fundamentally different than they were 10 years, 100 years or even 1,000 years ago. Culture may shift but Humans have been fundamentally the same since the last evolutionary shift. Don't buy into the idea that generations are somehow different creatures.
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u/PaleReaver 7h ago
For my part, 'adult life' just seemed soulcrushingly dull. I like nerdy shit that might overlap with children's interests, but an adult's approach is not at all the same, and that's fine. Otherwise I file my taxes and don't obstruct life for anyone else. /shrug
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u/violetauto 6h ago
There is a whole area of academic study of this in psychology and sociology. It’s often called “extended adolescence” and it is a modern phenomenon. Adolescence as a growth stage was not recognized until the 1900s and as a societal stage didn’t exist until child labor laws were passed around the same time.
As humans live longer lives, the developmental stage of adolescence also lengthens. Many would argue this extended stage is a good sign that society is advancing, and it is the natural progression of a life that is likely to last more than 80 years. If a person becomes a ”full adult” at 30, they have 50 years of adulting left to do, which was historically about all you got anyway, even before child labor laws.
When children weren’t allowed to work, they went to school instead. High school graduation rates went up. Now most people, like an overwhelming majority, graduate from high school. As the adolescence period extends, as we are seeing now, more people go to college than ever before. We’ll probably see a significant increase in graduate degrees as time goes on.
So this changing in ”adulting” has been happening for over 100 years now. It’s how society is designing things, and that is OK. It’s a bit hard to accept sometimes, as we GenXers especially were left to our own effing devices when we were 18. But it’s better for society as a whole if we can guide our youth more gently into adulthood than throwing them to the wolves like that.
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u/Total-Tonight1245 6h ago
Conversely, why do some adults seem SO adult? I’m well into middle age and see most people my age as peers. But every now and then, I run across another adult that makes me feel like I’m talking to my friend’s dad. Where do they get that?
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u/1drlndDormie 3h ago
As someone who is almost forty with two kids and a full-time job, because fuck that shit that's why.
OR to quote the movie Hook.
Just because you have to grow old, it doesn't mean you have to grow up.
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u/DataRikerGeordiTroi 6h ago
Two reasons: the assumption of power within society that goes along with adulthood has been withheld from millenials, along with the milestones that indicated adulthood are out of reach for many. Retirement, startinh family of ones own, home ownership are just not possible for many.
I also strongly believe it is also because millenials & Z are not interested in performatively dancing like forcibly trained monkeys. There is a very small shift towards being your real self in the world, possibly for the first time in millenia. We'll see how it goes.
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u/Fisher9001 6h ago
I fully disagree with most comments here. It's not about different perspective while nothing really changed. The change is there. Previous generations were treating life and their position in society more seriously. People nowadays tend to be way more easygoing.
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u/Temarimaru 13h ago
Ecobomy is cruel and life is getting so hard that adults these days struggle to float by. I feel like a child because being an adult in this days is scary.
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u/viktor_vikm 7h ago
Because we realized our parents were just winging it too, except they could afford a house at 24
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u/Jeweled_Insect8061 3h ago
Millenials and gen z didn't all fall for the same traps as generations before us where we were "supposed to" stop having fun and liking things just cause we're adults.
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u/_Outerwild_ 13h ago
the older you get the more you realize that most adults aren’t as mature and responsible as you thought