to think that 21/22/23 isn't that young?

[smellmybacon]

i see it all the time on here how "young" you are if early 20's. i'm 23 and have a 1 year old and live in a house with my partner. most of my friends have children and some are on to their second baby.

i can't imagine still going on nights out all the time or not being settled down. when do you think you start being a grown up if early 20's is young?!

When I was your age smellmybacon My dd was 8. I felt grown-up compared to friends. I'd never went on holiday or had lots of nights out with friends.
Now at 41 I do think early 20s is young.

RedPanda But your friend with the Ph.D in Physics, working the two jobs etc. couldn't be as young as you, so it's not really an accurate comparison?

23 was the best age ever for me, in the 90s in London! I definitely was young and in my prime and apart from full time work I had no other responsibilities! I had my first DC aged 26 and still felt young until I was around mid 30s. However I don't care and still enjoy life now and age after all is only a number!

I had a mortgage at 21 and married at 27, spent my 20s having 2 lovely long haul holidays a year - I’m 35 now and definitely view myself as young (albeit mature) back then.

I definitely see 20s as young, it’s depressing if not because what are we saying, you have 19 years of being young and then you’re old until you die!

My oldest is 21 and seems very young. I remember being that age and was so young, naive and vulnerable, without realising it. I did things I now know, with the wisdom of age, were very stupid and self destructive. I was so lucky to meet my DH at 23/24 and with his support I matured into myself. So I do think 21/22/23 is young. I think by 25/26/27 you are more grown up.

It is very young. I did four years at Uni (aged 18-22) and then three years post grad training. I met DH during my first term at Uni but we still had lots of growing up to do and life to live before we were ‘grown up’.

RedDwarves another red!

Okay, well I have two other female friends my age, both finished uni and graduated, one now working as a teacher and one as an accountant, both engaged. One getting married 2019 and the other just bought and moved into a house with her fiancé and has a load of rescue cats so waiting to marry.

I was just going for the most extreme comparison with male friend, but yes you're right he is a few years older so not the best comparison. Was just trying to show there's a bit of everything in my friendship group. And we're all I guess middle class.

23 is young to be 'settled' with a child/children, let alone 21. It's great that you're happy, but objectively, in a country with life expectancy of 80+ years, 23 is definitely young.

It's somewhat unusual for all your friends of the same age to have children too, at your age. I'm 31 and still less than half of my friends from university are parents.

I think a previous poster summed it up well - you can be young and have a lot of responsibility (house kids marriage etc) but you are still young. If life expectancy is 88 or whatever it is now, 20s is definitely young.

On the one hand I was settled down with mortgage, DH and a baby at 19. I didn't feel too young.
On the other hand that baby is now 18 and I am certainly not wanting to be a Grandma in the next five or even ten years!

I wasn't grown up until about 26/27. At 21-23 I was definitely still a child - not in terms of what I was doing, that was quite adult, but definitely in terms of how my brain processed information.

In my 30s I felt like a real adult.

i know it's young in terms of life expectancy. i just mean some people seem to think i should be out drinking or travelling instead of getting excited about a trip to ikea

I’m 53 and still don’t think I’m a grown up

Are you me ?

Of course it is all relative. At my Church, I am still considered "young" on many a committee, as I'm often the only one who isn't retired

However, if you are talking about all adults, then obviously anyone in their 20s is 'young', as you are an adult from aged 18 until you die - most likely to be late 80s. So, if you are in the first 5 years of a 70 year span, then it is indisputable you are young. If you only hang about with 18 year olds, then you wouldn't be.
Not sure what you are trying to prove / dispute though.

early 20s is young, no matter what you are doing. You are young but you are fairly settled, OP.

My son is 21. He is still a student at university, he works too, doesn't really live completely independently, hangs out with friends, sails, goes to parties. Most of his friends are similar or just starting first proper jobs.

His best friend is 21. He is living with his girlfriend for past 2 years (in apartment that is very slightly subsidised by family - was his grandmothers and they want someone to live there so give a slight break on rent), didn't go to uni so has been working as an EMT for past 2 years and is pretty settled.

At 23, I was just about qualified as a lawyer, yet to meet dh, having a good time socialising - came across my diary and letters from that period recently and there were a lot of weekends away with friends, trips to london, going to theatre festivals, going to cinema, working hard, meeting friends for lunch/coffee/planning holidays - no hard drinking or drugs or clubbing. different things for different people. I wouldn't have wanted to be home with a baby (and since I hadn't met anyone I wanted to procreate with at that point, it would have been hard) but was happy to have a baby a few years later.

Many 22 year olds are still at uni. I think 23 is very young to have children.
The brain's prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until 25 and so I would say 25.
I didn't really feel grown up until my 30s.

I thought I was mature at 23. Now I realise how wrong I was!

Your brain continues to develop until 25 years old so you are definitely still young at 23! Psychologists sometimes refer to 18-24 as late adolescence now for that reason.

However I'm over 25 and don't feel any more mature or insightful than I did at 23!

Fertility peaks in your early twenties and 40 years ago most people probably had their kids at 20-24. The average age at first baby in the UK now is 30.

I grew up at the age of 30 when my mother died at the age of 57.

So sorry to hear that LovingLola that must have been hard x

I didn’t finish university until I was 24, then I was a junior doctor working 100 hour weeks for eight years, so I didn’t really feel grown up until I’d had my first child at 33, second at 35, and been widowed the day before my 36th birthday.
At 21, I was still a daft medical student, living in halls and going out drinking - I certainly couldn’t have coped with life as a bereaved single parent at that stage.

@LovingLola @Babdoc

However I'm over 25 and don't feel any more mature or insightful than I did at 23!

25 is still young too. Most people I know were early thirties when they 'felt' grown up.

I do think you should be out drinking or travelling instead of being excited about Ikea. But hey, you have time when you're my age and your dc are grown up to travel or whatnot. Early 20s seems very young and world at your feet, when you're older - it'll happen to you too in 20 years time .

I think one of the main realisations that I wasn’t as young as I once was is that in your 20s unless you’re very unlucky you have good health, and time on your side. You can eat what you like, drink what you like, fuck things over several times and start again (even marriages!), change your life so many times. You feel - or I did- totally undefeatable and almost immortal.

When you hit your late 30s and then on you change physically - wrinkles start appearing and you just have to look at a cake and it leaps on you in lbs. You have to work harder to look good in every sense of the word. Things become more difficult - you’re settled financially and children are either just coming or older and you can’t just start again so easily. Life feels more “oh shit this is me being a proper grown up I don’t know how many chances I’m going to get to do this”. It’s hard to explain but that’s my own experience anyway, may be not the same for everyone!

It’s quite a sobering thing really. I don’t like getting older.... I would quite happily stay 23 or early 20s forever. Physically and mentally I felt like the world couldn’t touch me. And that was nice.

(And before someone leaps on me... I’m not actually depressed. I am happily married, 2 dc, stable financially, happy life etc etc. Just would rather less of the creaky body and wrinkles and endless time to do whatever I wished without thinking about how much time I have left or when or if my health might go)!

I agree with you, but then I look at DS 27 who acts like a teenager.