From Adolescence to Adulthood: Responsibilities Trump Rites

Marking the moments that turn adolescents into adults

Getting married, buying a first house, and having a baby are life events that have traditionally symbolized a major step into the world of adults. (Biba Kayewich)

The online Britannica defines a rite of passage as a “ceremonial event, existing in all historically known societies, that marks the passage from one social or religious status to another.”

In the same article, the authors offer more specifics: “Many of the most important and common rites of passage are connected with the biological crises, or milestones, of life—birth, maturity, reproduction, and death—that bring changes in social status and, therefore, in the social relations of the people concerned. Other rites of passage celebrate changes that are wholly cultural, such as initiation into societies composed of people with special interests—for example, fraternities.”

In Western culture, a good many of these rites have traditionally involved a religious ceremony. For centuries, for example, a baby was baptized, adolescents received first communion and confirmation, a man and a woman married in a church, priests and religious brothers and sisters went through training and a ceremony confirming their new status, and the dying left this life with the last rites. In the Jewish faith, boys at about 13 years old underwent their bar mitzvah, a period of training in their faith followed by a ceremony that recognized their maturity and their ability to take part in religious services.

But what about today? Is there a ceremony or some sort of test which, in our more secular world, marks the transition from adolescence to adulthood?

Getting married, buying a first house, and having a baby are life events that have traditionally symbolized a major step into the world of adults. (Biba Kayewich)

Some Modern-Day Initiations

A rite of passage typically involves a journey from the familiar to the new, an expedition marked by education or some sort of ordeal or major event, and a transformation of the individual involved.

Our society has a plentitude of such rites, although they rarely go by that name. A 16-year-old studies the rules of the road, passes a test, and earns her driver’s license, thereby acquiring the legal right to drive two tons of metal, plastic, and rubber at 70 miles per hour on the highway. A Scout wins his organization’s highest achievement, the rank of Eagle, with his feat usually celebrated by fanfare and a special ceremony. Society still regards high school graduation as a step into adulthood, with the graduate heading off to college or into the military or the workforce. Some Christian churches still bestow the sacraments on the young, again with a ceremony followed by festivities.

Yet something is missing from these and other steps into maturity. They’re awards of achievement, which is all well and good, but rarely do they carry an accompanying burden of responsibility taken seriously, which is surely one of the keys to adulthood.

Odds are you are an adult if you shovel your elderly neighbor’s driveway and shoulder responsibility when you make mistakes. (Biba Kayewich)

Then and Now

Getting married, buying a first house, and having a baby: These events have traditionally signaled to others a major step into the world of the grownup.

In the apt words of the Apostle Paul, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I understood like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”

A wedding ring, a mortgage, and a tote bag holding disposable diapers are outward signs that childish ways—pizza for breakfast, dusk to dawn electronic games, road trips to the Keys for spring break—are now memories tucked away in an attic trunk.

These days, things have changed a bit. In “If you’re in your 20s and you don’t feel like an adult yet, here’s why,” Derrick Clifton wrote, as have many others online, of the reasons why those in their 20s and even their 30s don’t think of themselves as adults. A lot of them have remained unmarried—the median age for marriage for American women is now 28, for men 30—few have bought a house, and many remain leery of parenthood. Forty-seven percent of young people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents or other relatives, are paying down student loans, and often work in jobs they consider unworthy of their talents.

It’s true that home ownership and the like are signs of adulthood, but to regard the age of 29 as the end of adolescence must surely strike some people as disconcerting. George Washington was surveying the Virginia backwoods when he was 17 years old. The average age of an infantry soldier in Vietnam was 22, while the average age for new moms was 21 in 1970. Besides, if we extend adolescence by another decade out to 30, that would mean spending almost 40 percent of one’s life as a child.

The formula just doesn’t work. I have two good friends, for instance, ages 38 and 63, who have never owned a house, lived at some point as adults with their parents, never married, and never produced children, yet both qualify as grownups by any parameter. I’ve also known a 40-something man who was a husband, father, and homeowner but who struck many who knew him as juvenile.

Should we not then just devise a rite of passage that says to the recipient, “Today, you are an adult”?

The Trouble with That Idea

Here, we encounter at least two more problems, one having to do with the culture at large and the other with the individual young person we intend to cast overnight as a responsible adult.

In the first instance, our culture has come to disdain rites and rituals of all kinds. Think of funerals, for example. For most of our country’s history, the burial of a relative or acquaintance was a formal affair. You engaged a mortician, bought a casket, possibly hosted a wake, had services conducted in a house of worship and at the graveside, and so interred the deceased with a ceremony.

Many still practice these rituals today, this final rite of passage but not everyone. Several people of my acquaintance have put their loved ones, usually cremated, into the earth with no ceremony whatsoever. “Here yesterday, gone today,” runs this casual leave-taking. Another woman has stored her husband’s ashes in a closet for years, with never an explanation as to why.

The past few years have brought our newest method of burial, in which participants literally follow the old church formula, “dust to dust,” by composting a loved one’s body and using the remains as fertilizer for the garden.

The second sticking point comes with young people wondering when and how they’ll become real adults. On their 18th birthday, when they’ve reached the age of majority, we could make a grand ceremony of the occasion. A speaker might welcome them to their new stage of life as adults, we might issue a certificate confirming that status, and we could celebrate with a great bash afterward. But this proposal also has a major drawback: Unless our candidate feels like an adult, then this rite of passage and all the commendations in the world won’t make him one.

The Only Thing That Really Counts

And so a note to readers, young as spring or old as the hills: You’re only an adult when you think of yourself as one. It doesn’t matter where you live, what sort of work you do, whether you’ve tied the knot with another, or whether you have four children or none at all. You’re an adult when you think of yourself that way.

As for you in your 20s, if you’re working and pulling your weight, if you’re paying for a car and remember to have the oil changed every six months, if you put aside Minecraft to shovel your elderly neighbor’s driveway, if you shoulder responsibility when you make mistakes, odds are that you’re an adult.

The Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius once wrote: “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

Paraphrasing that adage, we might say: “Waste no more time arguing what an adult should be. Be one.”