The term adult refers to the age of a person or animal. In the case of humans, adults are those who have passed their youth but are not yet old.
The difficulty of realizing the idea of an adult
The idea of an adult has evolved throughout history. A hundred years ago, an 18-year-old was considered an adult, since he could join a job and assume a series of responsibilities. However, nowadays an 18-year-old is not seen as an adult but as a youth. This change in valuation is due to various social and cultural factors (for example, in the past 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 body. With regard 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 adulthood 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 it is legal to 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 the 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 behind youth are very diverse: hunting an animal. going to war, consuming an initiation-type substance, sharpening teeth, temporarily leaving the family home, or passing some painful or difficult test. All these rituals had or continue to have a symbolic component, since they represent entering a new stage of life, adulthood.
Today the rituals for entering adulthood have lost their original meaning. Despite this, we have created other "rituals" adapted to today's culture, such as the first drunk, getting a driver's license or the first trip with friends and without parents.
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