Culture: What Does It Mean To Be An Adult Today?

0:00This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mint mobile.com. slash switch. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, it's Todd. Just a quick note that the 1A team is off for the July 4th holiday. We'll be back next week with a lot more new shows and conversations. Until then, here's an episode from our archives where we ask, what does it mean to be an adult?

0:39This is 1A. I'm Jen White. Throughout history, adulthood has often been defined by clear markers, like turning 18, signing your first lease, or getting married. But most of us know that being an adult by law is very different from being one in real life. Okay, everybody huddle up. We are in the roast chicken phase of life. So let's be vigilant and let's be normal and let's throw this dinner party like the grownups we are. Oh, he drank weird milk. That's a clip from the FX comedy series Adults. Traditional markers of adulthood like purchasing a home or getting married are also changing. The average first time home buyer in 1981 was just 29 years old.

1:26But in 2025, the median age for a first-time homebuyer was 40. That's a historic low, according to the National Association of Realtors. People are also getting married later in life. One in 10 adults are now marrying for the first time between the ages of 40 and 59, according to the Wall Street Journal. Today, we're revisiting our conversation about what it means to be an adult, especially when our definition of adulthood has evolved. And what happens when you never really feel like a grown-up, even well into old age. We spoke to Jeffrey Jensen Arnett. He's a professor of psychology at Clark University.

2:01He's also the author of Emerging Adulthood, The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties. Also, Claire Mehta. She's an associate professor of psychology at Emanuel College, where she leads the Lifespan Lab. She's also a staff scientist at Boston Children's Hospital. And Alexandra Solomon. She's a licensed clinical psychologist in private Practice. She's also on faculty at Northwestern University and the author of Love Every Day. Here's that conversation.

2:46Now, Professor Mehta, adulthood is difficult to define because it's not informed by a single experience. But you specifically research what you call established adults. So these are people between the ages of 30 and 45. And you spoke to more than 170 people in this group about how they define what it means to be an adult. What did you hear from them? And did any patterns emerge in these conversations? Yeah, first of all, it was very, very interesting to do this research because that age period, even trying to define that as a period, established adulthood. People did not like this term because a lot of people in this age period did not feel as though they were established and they didn't feel like they were adults.

3:27So that was really interesting to find that. And in those interviews that I did, one of the big things that came out, there were actually three main findings. And one of them was this finding that people felt that they had reached adulthood when they felt they were better able to self-regulate. And so in terms of self-regulate, what I mean is that they felt that they could make reasoned decisions. If they were in the heat of the moment, they weren't panicking and just doing something impulsively. they were thinking things through, even if they were upset, and that they were also able to regulate their emotions.

4:01So instead of letting everyone know exactly how they were feeling at any given moment, they could take a moment, they could process, they could think about what they were feeling and what they wanted to show to people. Some of the things that came up that you were talking about actually at the beginning that really aren't great as markers of adulthood now, like buying a house, getting married, having children. We know fewer and fewer people are choosing to have children and they're having children at later ages, those things still came up. People felt as though they needed to do those things to have reached adulthood.

4:33So that was something else that came out. And feeling independent was also a big thing. So feeling as though they were independent from their parents, as though they were financially independent and that they could stand on their own feet. And the thing about being financially independent that I thought was really interesting, it wasn't just having enough money to buy the things that they wanted, they wanted to be able to support family members. So if a parent needed money or an aunt or an uncle, that they were able to support them financially. And that seemed like a really big deal for people.

5:01So a mix of sort of internal processing, but also the ability to be in community in a very specific way. Professor Arnett, you research what you call emerging adults, and these are people between the ages of 18 and 29. And you've identified three main buckets that define what adulthood means to people in this group. What's in those buckets? Well, I started doing this research a little over 30 years ago. And when I started it, I thought I'd hear people talking about transition events like turning 21, moving out of the household, getting a job, getting married. Nobody talked about those things. Instead, they talked about three criteria that I've heard so much over the last 30 years that I started calling them the big three.

5:48And they are accepting responsibility for yourself. That word responsibility comes up a lot. Second is making independent decisions. And that means independent of your parents. And then the third is becoming financially independent. Again, becoming independent of your parents. So those three are interesting because they're all about individualism. They're all about learning to stand alone as a self-sufficient, independent person. They don't want to be self-sufficient and independent and alone forever. But they feel like before they marry, before they have children, before they commit to long-term adult commitments and roles, they want to be able to show they can stand as a self-sufficient person.

6:34That's what those three criteria are all about. You know, it's interesting, Professor Solomon, when I think about these sort of buckets that we heard described there by Professor Arnett. In those years between 18 and 29, you're figuring out who you are. But a lot of that has to do with your relationships. So at once you're looking for independence, but that discovery process comes from how you relate to your family, how you relate to your friends, how you relate to romantic partnerships. So how do you see those things fitting together? Yeah, I'm so appreciative of the work that both of these professors have done, really moving us from a role-based definition of adulthood to something that's more psychologically sophisticated.

7:23didn't. And I love that they both, you know, all they had to do was listen to people who are going to share that. But when we collapse, you know, the problem is if my story is I'm not an adult until I've done this role-based thing, that gap between how I feel on the inside and how I think I should be, that gap creates emotional discomfort. It creates emotional health problems. So I think this shift is really important. And exactly to your point, that it is, there's this forever tension between, you know, differentiation is I'm standing on my own two feet and I'm deeply connected to you. And it's not an either or.

8:02So becoming independent isn't I put everybody at arm's length. Becoming independent is I can regulate myself and be connected to you. That's truly what adulthood is, is separation and connection. We got this from Janelle who writes, I've been feeling like an adult and looking older before my older years. I keep thinking I'm handling everything. I'm able to handle confrontation and deal with living in an expensive era. It's just natural now. I mean, Professor Mehta, we've been focusing on certain age groups, but depending on the level of responsibility someone has to take on, they may feel like an adult much sooner than someone else.

8:40So setting age aside, what are some of those other perhaps external factors that play into whether or not we think of ourselves as adults? Yeah, I think that's a great question. And there's a mixture of things. I think it's different for different people. So we interviewed people, this is kind of a random subset of our group, was people who were former members of the Church for Latter-day Saints. And that group of people who we interviewed had all entered adult roles much earlier and felt as though they were adults much sooner than people in our established, than the rest of the group of established adults.

9:17So they were doing things like having children, getting married in their early 20s. And then they came to their 30s and 40s. And all of the things that we expect people to be doing in their 20s, which is figuring out who they are, what career path they want to go on, in some cases, whether or not they want to have children. A lot of these people already had children, but they hadn't had time to ask themselves that question of whether that was what they wanted to do. And so they were coming to these questions now suddenly in their 30s and in their 40s. And so they were thrust into adulthood earlier because of the roles that they had taken on.

9:52But they still found themselves having some of that questioning that we might be doing in our 20s. But now it was happening in their 30s and 40s. And I think something else that happens to people much later, I keep having conversations about this, by the way, there's something in the ether right now that people keep bringing this up to me, that I think the biggest shift when people really feel as though they've reached adulthood is losing the generation above them. So when you don't have parents anymore and you're looking around, and someone who I spoke to put this perfectly, she said, when you're nobody's child anymore, then you suddenly feel as though you've become an adult.

10:29So that might happen much later than we anticipate because I went in to interview these 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds, and I interviewed people up to 45, and I expected people, at least a group of them, to be saying, I feel like a grown-up. but they were still giving the answers that people in their 20s gave, which is I feel like an adult in some ways, but in other ways, I don't feel like an adult at all. And the only people I've spoken to who have really felt as though they've reached adulthood are those people who have lost parents and lost that older generation. And, you know, I kind of joke around that they're stood there looking around for an expert or the person who they can ask questions to and then suddenly realize it's them now all of a sudden that they're at the top of the pile.

11:09Well, we're hearing from you, Bill Wright. I am underemployed and I still live with my parents, but I am still very much an adult. I can take care of and pay for many of my own needs and wants. I wish I had my own place, but I still feel very autonomous in my current situation. More to come. Stay with us.

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12:09BetterHelp's 2026 State of Stigma report surveyed 2 ,000 Americans and found that 85 % believe getting support is wise, yet 74 % say society discourages people from doing so. Don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Start therapy with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR. Welcome back to the 1A podcast. Today, we're revisiting our conversation about what it means to be an adult, especially when our definition of adulthood has evolved, and what happens when you never really feel like a grown-up, even well into old age. We spoke to Jeffrey Jensen Arnett. He's a professor of psychology at Clark University.

12:51He's also the author of Emerging Adulthood, The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the 20s. Also, Claire Mehta. She's an associate professor of psychology at Emanuel College, where she leads the Lifespan Lab. She's also a staff scientist at Boston Children's Hospital. And Alexandra Solomon. She's a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice. She's also on faculty at Northwestern University and the author of Love Every Day. We got this message from Donna who writes, my three daughters are 42, 39, and 21. My 42-year-old likes seeing her years of experience in retail management as being valuable to her co-workers.

13:29My 39-year-old started feeling responsible in the last three years. Having a seven-month-old and a three-year-old, she now understands the magnitude of being a parent. But her career isn't a holding pattern until her littles are older. My 21-year-old is a junior in college. She's adjusting to not being a teenager and is amazed when her schoolmates marry or have children. I tell her, I was married for three years when I was your age. She just shakes her head. We got this from Kenan, who says, I remember distinctly buying an ironing board and an iron from a local department store and thought, if this is where my money is now being spent, I must be an adult.

14:06Professor Arnett, do you remember when you first felt like you'd moved into adulthood? Yeah, I do. And my feeling about it was different than most other people. For me, it was more the traditional kind of transition. So I got a faculty position. It was my first real faculty position. This was around age 30, by the way. And I bought a condo. It was the first place that I had bought and lived in on my own. And so it was really those kinds of things that made me feel like an adult. I'd also met the woman who was the first woman I lived with and who's now my partner and wife of 37 years. and that felt more permanent and turned out to be more permanent than any previous relationship I'd had.

14:58So for me, it was those traditional markers. That's why I was so surprised when I started interviewing people and none of those traditional markers resonated for them. It was the psychological and social markers that I talked about earlier. Yeah. Professor Mehta, what about you? Do you remember when you felt like, yes, now I'm an adult? Yeah, I think, So I think I still go back and forth a little bit. There are times I'm like, am I? Am I really a grown-up? But the big moment that I had was more psychological. And it sounds really depressing, so I want to warn everyone. It's not as depressing as it sounds.

15:32But it was actually when I first decided to study this age period, I looked at my bookcase. I was 37 years old. I looked at my bookcase and I thought, there are more books on this bookcase than I have years left. Like, there's no way I'm going to read every book here. And while that could have been something that was depressing, for me it wasn't. It was actually really freeing because I walked right up to that bookcase and was like, well, I never really wanted to read that one. I didn't want to read that. I don't care about that. And I just started pulling books off and getting rid of them. But I think that big time shift where I suddenly, instead of looking back, you know, when you're a kid, you just can't wait for your next birthday and you want to be 18.

16:10I'm British, so in the UK, you want to be 18 so you can go and have a drink. And then in the US, you want to be 21 so you can go and have a drink. and you're just waiting to get to those age periods. I remember a friend saying on his 21st birthday, I went to university in the US and he said, well, now the next birthday I've got to look forward to is retirement. And so I think, you know, you spend your childhood kind of waiting, you're looking for that next birthday and then suddenly you reach this point where you're thinking about time in a very different way. You're thinking about how much time you have left rather than how much time is passing.

16:41And so having that moment for me, that happened when I was looking at my bookcase And then I was like, well, I must be a grown up if this is how I'm planning the next, hopefully, 40 years of my life. Yeah. Professor Solomon, what about you? Do you remember what that was for you, the moment of adulthood? I think that, you know, I was the oldest daughter in a pretty complex family system. So I think that I took on a lot of emotional responsibility at quite a young age. So I think that that made me feel mature, you know, beyond my years. and now I just get paid for doing all the things I used to do therapeutically for free as a kid growing up.

17:18But there are two memories that come to mind. One is the first night of college and having this moment. I remember right where I was at University of Michigan and realizing I didn't have a curfew. Nobody knew where I was. That was sense of freedom that I could do what I wanted. And the other one is maybe 10 years later when I was newly married and my father-in-law received a really serious stage four cancer diagnosis and feeling and being in our apartment and thinking like, oh, where are the grownups? Like we need some grownups to come over and take care of us. This apartment is too big. This problem is too big.

17:52And realizing like, oh, wait, I think that we're the grownups. Yeah, yeah. Jen, did we get to hear yours? Oh my gosh. What's interesting is that I feel like I've had to redefine adulthood multiple times in my life because I have these same markers, buying a home, getting married, having children. I ended up getting married at 42. I didn't have children. And so I've had to redefine it for myself several times, losing a parent. That was another moment of redefinition. Losing siblings, more moments of redefinition because you find yourself stepping into different roles in your family as the family structure itself is reshaped.

18:43So I don't know that I have a fixed moment. Like you, Professor Mehta, it ebbs and flows. There are days when I'm kicking my feet on the couch and I feel like I'm 13. than there are days when I'm like, oh, yeah, paying that mortgage, adulthood. So it comes and it goes. Yeah. We got this from Brad who writes, when I was 16, I was provided a vehicle, a copy of the newspaper classified, and a swift kick in the rear to get a job. My parents told me that if I wanted to put gas in the car, I would pay for it. If I wanted to go out with friends, I would pay for it. I think that many parents feel as though they need to support their children to show love when true love is raising a child to be self-sufficient.

19:23Self-sufficiency has been waning in our culture, and I believe we should focus more on that aspect of life from an early age, not coddling our children and adults into their 30s. I think many people substitute the word adult for responsible individual. We also got this from Justin, and I think it's a slightly different perspective, which says, If an indicator of being an adult is the ability to support yourself and family members, then the reality must be grim considering that most people are living paycheck to paycheck. This country does not really set us up for success. I feel more like a rat in the race and felt more free in my youth.

19:59Professor Arnett, you've been studying this idea of adulthood for over 30 years. Has our definition of adulthood changed? You know, it's changed surprisingly little. When I first started doing this research in the early 1990s, I was the only one doing it. I was the first to do it. And I couldn't believe that nobody had asked that question before. What do you think it means to be an adult? And now, 30-plus years later, people have asked it all over the world. And including in recent studies, it's turned out pretty similar across that time and across societies. The big three, accepting responsibility for yourself, making independent decisions, and financial independence.

20:48Those come up all over the world. and they've come up over and over again over the last 30 years. Now, there's variation too, of course, as we've seen just in our little group today and when people feel like they've reached adulthood and what signifies that for them. But the big three are remarkably pervasive around the world. Professor Metta, what do you make of that tension that we're hearing, even in the messages we've received today, between these traditional markers of adulthood, but also the economic and social realities of today's society? Yeah, this is one of my favorite things to talk about at the moment.

21:32And I was really excited to hear Dr. Solomon talking about this as well, because I think this is really problematic for people. So as Professor Arnett was saying, we do have these more kind of individualistic ways of defining adulthood, but people are still looking to those markers. They still want to fulfill those adult roles. And it's harder and harder than ever before to do it. And so there are people who have written about this. There was one researcher who described these as fraying fantasies. And they've also been called, I call them missed markers because they're things that you think that you haven't managed to accomplish and that makes you feel like you're less of an adult.

22:11That came up time and time again with my participants where they would say, you know, I've got, I'm married, I have children, but I haven't got a house, so I can't be an adult. Or I haven't got retirement funding, so I can't be an adult because I don't have these things. And it makes them feel not great about themselves, right? I think it's really detrimental to wellbeing, but people still hold those. And so thinking about them as fraying fantasies, Someone else actually has called them, a researcher in the UK, Paul Dolan, refers to them as narrative traps, that we tell ourselves that we need these things to be happy, but we actually don't need them to be happy, right?

22:48You can have a very happy life being unpartnered. You can have a very happy life, probably. I have a two-year-old at home, so right now I'm like, you can have a very happy life being child-free. You can go out and do whatever you want and take a nap in the middle of the day. So there are all of these, and that doesn't mean that you're not an adult, right? That you don't have these markers. I have a friend who doesn't want to own a house because she likes being able to move frequently. And I think she considers herself an adult. So when we tie our sense of adulthood to some of these things that just aren't attainable anymore, I don't think it's very healthy for us.

23:22We're speaking to psychologists Claire Mehta and Jeffrey Jensen-Arnett, also with us licensed clinical psychologist Alexandra Solomon. And a quick correction here. I got married when I was 41, not 42. So for the record, just in case my husband is listening, I'm Jen White. You're listening to What A. We got this message from Rebecca who says, I wonder if your panelists can speak to the idea of adultification of Black girls and why that can lead to Black women having to take on roles of independence and being treated as such and expected to act as such. And Professor Solomon, as we were prepping for this show, this is something that came up, this idea that sometimes others perceive us as adults, even when we're not.

24:08So we know black girls, and this shows up in the research, are often treated as adults and perceived as less innocent than their white peers. This can start as young as five years old. Girls whose bodies develop faster than their peers may also be treated as older than they are. What are the emotional implications of adultification or being forced to grow up too soon or having that projected on you? Yeah, I think this is really important for us to talk about because there's a way in which it is a privilege to linger in childhood, right? It is a privilege to be able to take risks, to know there's a safety net beneath you.

24:44And so when we're talking about, you know, whether we're talking about black girls or anybody who's growing up in adverse conditions, we see this often with kids of immigrant parents, when, you know, it is how the culture perceives you and what is expected of you because of macro factors, not because of anything that really necessarily has to do with you. And what we often see, I'm thinking therapeutically, often then in adulthood, there's an important healing journey, which is about reclaiming that inner child, connecting with that inner child, acknowledging and validating you carried too much too soon.

25:17It wasn't your fault. This was done to you. And so there's an unburdening that needs to happen. and that can happen in the support of a therapist. It also can happen by reclaiming the things you didn't get to do. You know, you didn't get to do a dance class because you had caregiving responsibilities or you didn't feel safe enough to stretch in that way. So now you get to have a dance class. You get to have relationships where there truly is an exchange. So it's really important that we look at how it's not just how somebody feels on the inside. It's what the culture does to us based on things like race, gender, and body.