The term adult refers to the age of a person or animal. In the case of humans, adults are those who have passed youth but are not yet old.
The difficulty of concretizing the idea of adulthood
The idea of adulthood has evolved throughout history. A hundred years ago, an 18-year-old person was considered an adult, since they could join a job and assume a series of responsibilities. However, nowadays an 18-year-old individual is not seen as an adult but as a young person. This change in valuation is due to various social and cultural factors (for example, long ago it was common for women to marry very young and this does not happen to the same extent today).
The consideration of adult has a biological component, since it is considered that a man or a woman reaches adulthood when they have fully developed their organism. With respect to women, they are biologically adults when they can already procreate, but this assessment does not fit with the social vision of what an adult woman is.
The idea of an adult is associated with the vital and intellectual maturity of a person. Despite this, someone can be an adult chronologically speaking but be an immature individual.
From a practical point of view, adulthood generally begins at 18, the age at which one can legally work in most countries and the age at which people legally abandon their youth status.
The ritual to become an adult
Today we are talking about the legal concept of an adult person, but in some isolated places there are no such legal considerations. When this happens, adulthood is acquired through some initiation ritual.
From a historical and cultural point of view, the rituals to leave youth behind are very diverse: hunting an animal. go to war, consume an initiation-type substance, sharpen your teeth, temporarily leave the family home or overcome some painful or difficult test. All these rituals had or continue to have a symbolic component, as they represent entering a new stage of life, adulthood.
At present, the rituals to enter adulthood have lost their original meaning. Despite this, we have created other “rituals” adapted to today’s culture, such as the first drunkenness, getting the driver’s license or the first trip with friends and without parents.
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