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?!

Less educated people have children earlier.

The demographic of Mumsnet is more educated than not so there will be more people thinking 23 is young.

life decisions and how grown up you feel are not a measure of whether 21/22 is young. Given the average life span of 78 21/22 is young

If you think you become an adult at 18 - the span of being a young adult has to be a certain amount of years

Otherwise you are basically middle aged from early 20s and I certainly did not feel middle aged then

Middle aged generally begins at 35 and ends around 60 so anything below 35 is surely young?

I was married and had my son at 22 and I was too young. I know someone who had her first at 14 and ten years later is still with the dad and has 3 more kids and is an amazing mother. I know a 40 year old who rarely sees her child because she’s out partying all the time. Age does not determine how good a mother you’ll be

I would be very sad if my children settled down at 22.

"Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.

But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked..."

...of course 21/22/23 is young!

"Settled down" "23 is old" what's wrong with you?! Why the rush to be old and dull? Big world out there. When you get to 40 you will kick yourself. Popcorns quote spot on. Agree with Bertrand too I would be so sad if my dds took your path. So sad. I will get flamed for that but how I feel. You're young! Make the bloody most of it!

I got married at 25, I’m now 28 and I’m still the only married one in my friendship group! Two of my friends have children but one is in her mid 30s. So yes, 21/22/23 seems very young to me, especially to have kids (I’m not saying it’s TOO young or judging anyone! I’d just say someone of that age was a young parent).

I had children late in life, and honestly I am not sure I would wish it on my own children. I am constantly exhausted, too tired to be the mother with energy and vitality. Young women’s bodies pop back sooner, they can manage the long nights and years of sleeplessness. I would of course encourage my dd to get the best education and life experience but if the opportunity presented itself having babies at a younger age is sensible biologically. I have travelled the world with mine so it def didn’t hold me back. The vodka nights you can keep it - yuk!
Enjoy your youth with your babies, keep fit and well and have your plans for a future career if you are not already in a great job, you have the whole world ahead of you.

I think I aged overnight the day I had dd. I was only 17! She was premature and extremely poorly in intensive care. The next 3 years were a rollercoaster. Dd nearly died again at 2 years old. In the last 6 years I've built up my career and almost finished an OU degree whilst working full time. I feel like I've aged in dog years.

I'm 26 now and just don't feel young.

However, life is good! I have amazing friends and family, social life etc. Dd is an absolute star.

When dd is 18 and hopefully at uni I'll be 35 and I'm planning to take a 'gap year' from being a grown up and go back packing

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.
it depends on the context of the posts your talking about surely often i see someone asking about there relationship at that age often the response is move on as you dont want to spend many years with the wrong person.
and many people this age do not have children simply because you would normally want to be in a relationship for a few years before you have children therefore the difference people go from in the 18-20 years range inevitably mean even if you are in an relationship they end.

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

Ok.

You're still young.

But you are young in your early 20s

i also think it depends on the definition of young but in the op you seem to be stating you have a child live in a house with a partner therefore you have responsibilities and less freedom which are not qualities usually associated with being young

You can be a 'young' 'grown-up'; the words aren't mutually exclusive.

My mom & grandma were both married with 2 babies at 18. That was grown-up... and still very young!

Of course 22 is young! It's not an insult you know. I had such a ball when I was 22, I'd just graduated and got a job in London where I worked and partied hard, shagging a selection of gorgeous and unsuitable men, before meeting my husband. They were very happy times, in fact I carried on like that until I was in my early thirties and decided it was time to settle down a bit and have a baby. I look back on my twenties with such joy, and think how lucky I was to live in London in the 90s before it got so incredibly expensive. Some of my cousins were settling down buying houses and having babies in their late teens and early twenties, they thought I was mad and vice versa! . We are all different, thank god. My son is a teenager now and I am definitely encouraging him to go to uni, travel, maybe work abroad before he settles down and buys a house, there's plenty of time for all that when he's a little bit older.

I think your preoccupation with being viewed as a 'grown up" is an indicator that you are indeed relatively young. Like a child is always counting down to their next birthday, it is only the young that wish to be perceived as older and more mature. You realise as you get older that your youth is something that should be prized as it is so fleeting and special. I know this sounds incredibly patronising but I'm only a decade older than you and my perspective on this has changed so much in the past few years so I do honestly understand where you are coming from.

It's frustrating when society doesn't seem to view you as an equal to older adults when you have experienced in many ways more than some of them (through having children etc) but again I think what is hard to grasp when you are young and relatively inexperienced is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to fast track true maturity. All those adults that are decades older than you have not spent all those years doing nothing and the chances are they have experienced a wider variety of things and have learnt the sometimes very painful lessons that come with this. I guess in the end it comes down to wisdom and there is a reason why historically the elders in tribes would be respected and called upon to offer advice.

Also a quick note of caution, don't be so keen to disregard the experiences typically associated with being young in a bid to prove your grown up status. Lots of people never get into going out and getting drunk, others carry on doing this into middle age and beyond, so it's not really a definitive sign of maturity. Again I think that's a thing you learn as you do get older, there isn't a checklist of traits or behaviour that makes someone a grown-up. In fact I think the true sign you have matured is when you do the things you enjoy with little regard from how you are perceived.

I find measuring youth by nights out an odd concept.

Being young was about freedom for me, and nights out were a very, very small corner of that. At 22 I was living in my own in Japan and spending my holidays from work exploring Japan and Taiwan with old school and uni friends who came out to visit, or on my own, or with new friends. It was a life I couldn't have lived with a husband and baby in tow. I could choose to go anywhere I wanted. I moved all over the world, always working and relying on myself, before I married at 30 and had my first baby.

A lot of travel opportunities are really very much more easily available to the young. Youth prices tend to apply up to around 27 or 28, working holiday schemes used to be available up to age 30 but I think some have expanded to 35, suggesting "youth" stretches perilously close to chronological middle age!

Having a spouse and baby bars you from a lot of the perks and opportunities of youth, so it stops you falling into that category I guess. If you just never wanted to do those things then it's no skin off your nose! I did want to do those things, so to me early 20s is still young, because it's a time when the world's your oyster if you aren't tied down with responsibilities.

Vodka really has nothing to do with it, plenty of people whose children are grown up go on nights out!

Being young isn't an insult though, just because you are settled and don't go out partying doesn't mean you aren't young. I'm 44, early 20s is young to me

I get this too. I’m 24 expecting twins, and have a three year old. I don’t feel that young.

Personally, I think university and inflated house prices has extended what people think of as childhood. In the 50s, my nana had two children at my age.

Now, I don’t know many other people my age with kids to be fair. I’m always the youngest at playgroups, parents evenings and so on. Everyone seems to be having babies in their late 30s. Which is fine, but it doesn’t make our age really young!

I think your preoccupation with being viewed as a 'grown up" is an indicator that you are indeed relatively young.

Easy to say when you aren’t constantly thought of as your child’s older sibling! I spend a lot of time with my mother and we take my son out together. People always assume she’s both our mother. She’s 55! We both look very young (she looks about 45 and I look about 16) so I can see why, but it does get frustrating when you are an adult with a job and a house lol!

It's all relative though isn't it. When I was 18 I felt like an adult, 10 years later I laughed at my former self and finally felt like an adult. 10 years after that, same again and so on.
To me, 0-25 is young.

I'm retraining at the moment and on a college course with people aged mainly between 20-25, though there are a few of us in our 40s...

The difference between the youngsters and the grownups is the fact when you're older you give no fucks about what other people think. It's immensely freeing. I can stand in front of 40 people and give an off the cuff presentation in a language I only started picking up in my 30s, and not worry about what the people in presenting to think of my hair, my clothes, my manirisms or whatever. I honestly don't car whether people think I'm young or old, unless it's being use to discriminate against me in a job interview...

Being young is so fraught with a weird mix of arrogance and self consciousness, you can do anything, you know everything, you're king/ queen of the world... but what if someone thinks you're too young/ dumb/ frumpy/ have bad hair? You get upset by things that don't matter, even if you know that they don't matter. Youth has thin skin.

I was 40 before I grew up! Wild 20's & 30's

I think it hugely depends on the individual. My brother is 32 and still behaves as though he's 15 a lot of the time. His new girlfriend has just turned 22 and, whilst I've not met her and can only go by social media, she seems obsessed with image and going out. She does that thing where the tongue comes for every photo, the peace sign etc which I would associate with someone much younger than me (I'm 34.) I was pregnant with dc1 are her age, married at 25 and dc2 at 26. Not saying that makes one better than the other - just that I don't think it's the number, it's how quickly you mature.

Ha ha ha. A question that can only be asked by youth. Enjoy it while you have it.