When is the cut-off mark for being young?

[OneOfEachPlease]

Not a thread about a threat, but inspired by several threads! Am I being unreasonable not to understand at what point do you change from being young to being an established adult? And am I being extra unreasonable, not to understand the consensus on how long a relationship is before it’s serious.

Obviously all of these things are a bit “how long is a piece of string”, but there seems to be a real divergence about when people are young, free and single and should be prioritising their career and when they are at the stage in life where they should be a proper adult who’s got some responsibilities etc. So just hoping to garner views!

I’ll go first. My view is that people are adults basically as soon as they time out of being somewhere between 18 and 21. But that everybody needs help sometimes and you can’t expect people to be completely independent overnight. And I think any relationship which stretches more than 18 months is serious but that does not mean it’s time to propose! I think that I think there are more stages between casual/single and marriage.

I don’t know but I’ve noticed in political / economic discussion ‘the young’ now seem to be those under about 40.

Which is bizarre given you could
legitimately be a grandparent and at the top of your career by that point.

I've been wondering when does a young adult become an adult. Like in your 20s I would say you're fairly young, but 30s is just "adult", then 45ish is middle aged? Then over 60 is starting to be older adult, and over 70 is elderly?

I am the 3rd of 4 siblings. The age of the eldest is “old”, the age of the youngest is “young”. It’s continuously changing, and I will always be relatively young.

Young adult = under 30

I’m really surprised at 30! By 30 I had a very serious job, was married, had one child and was pregnant with the next… I’m really surprised that someone might think that someone at 29 is kind of still a kid!

This is clearly the ideal way of looking at things! Unfortunately I am the eldest… 😂

Depends how old you are. Currently young is anything under 50 for me.

I think it splits into 20s. So you're a child for the first 18 years of life, then a young adult in your 20s and 30s, middleaged in your 40s and 50s then old in your 70s and 70s and only elderly once you are in your 80s. Of course if we're all working into our late 60s then maybe the 'middleaged' bracket needs to move 5 to 10 years at least at the late end. My parents seemed to consider themselves middled aged until they were 70ish and in my mid 50s I have sympathy for that view.

Not that that has anything to do with being a responsible adult which some young adults are from being older teenagers and some elderly people never achieve.

Exactly, it all depends on in where you are looking at it from

I think up to about 28.

To me I’d say you’re a young adult 18 until 25, then you’re an adult until 45ish which is when middle age begins.

That said you don’t have to be young free and single at any age if you don’t want. I met DH at 18, got together, we’ve completed 4 degrees between us since, own a house, have had established careers, got married etc. We have done really well in our careers, travelled to over 40 countries, lived in Japan for a while. Stayed together and monogamous the whole time.

Stop trying to neatly box things up into shoulds and coulds and what’s expected.

I think you’re interpreting ‘young’ differently from other people. Nobody is saying that under 30 you’re still childlike. They’re saying it’s a young adult… which means someone who is an adult but newly. Young is a relative word…

I think it depends on context so for e.g. if you died in your 40s that would be young but if you had your first baby in your 40s that would be old.

Oh I reckon 29 and under! But I was recently having a conversation with a friend who just had her first baby at 37 (we’re the same age) and she described herself as a young mother! I was pretty gobsmacked 🤣

I would think about 30. It’s not that 18-29 are ‘kids’, but 30 felt like a watershed for me.

37 is not a young mum! Crikey on a bikey.🤣

When I was 38, most of my colleagues were 25- 28ish and they had never been Rick Rolled or had seen Friends. They were young & I was old!

I was an established adult at 20 (own property, totally savvy and switched on etc).

BUT everyone older treated me like i was an idiot 'oh, what does she know' until I was in my 30's.

Guessing the point where older adults finally start to value your opinion is when you are officially established.

Then, a few years later the young ones think the know better and you are officially old and past it 😆.

I consider a young adult to be 18 to around 24. I see that in people I know and people I work with. It seems less acceptable to not have your shit together after 25.

I'd say someone under 25 is a young person. I agree there needs to be a transition, so 18 is an adult but they will probably still need support and will be making some mistakes they learn from. By the age of 25, I'd expect someone to be employed, paying their own way and making sensible decisions with consideration for their future.
I couldn't put a time frame on a relationship being serious, I see it more in milestones. Once a couple are living together it's serious.

18-19 is still a teenager, 21-25 and generally closer to 25 for adulting.
relationship wise; I would think that even if you only meet up weekly by 2 years your in a relationship, but to me it gets blurry when after 2 years they still live apart. I don’t find that being much of a “couple”.

But that's not universal experience. My parents had me when they were 21 and I don't think it made them particularly adult to be perfectly honest.
At 30 I was a single girl living in London, partying most nights of the week and showing up for my relatively senior job in a creative field. By 35 I was a uni student with no responsibilities apart from studying. And I always thought "I can't possibly have a child because I still feel like a child". This settled by the time I was in my 40s and I no longer feel like a child but the transition was pretty imperceptible.
Physiologically, the frontal lobe is not fully developed until a person is around the age of 25-26, so anyone younger than this is still adolescent in developmental terms.

There is an element of it being dependent on the person. And I think this arrested development thing is actually pretty recent. My DM was married at 21, as were most of her friends, they were all parents in their 20s and empty nesters in their 40s. My 20-something colleagues though are all still living at home with their parents! That's why I think under 30 is still a young adult these days.

Yeah, this sounds right to me too - kinda a slow slide into adulthood

I will let you know when I get there. Am 57.

Up to a certain point i think it is a life stage thing more than an age thing.

I was married at 24 had my first child at 25 and my second at 26. I would class that as an adult.

A 24 is year old that is single, lives with their parents, goes clubbing, etc, is more in the young adult life stage category iyswim..

Im 52 now and firmly middle aged. (Still waiting to feel like a proper grown up)

To me, old or older adult would be 60+ in good physical shape and elderly is back to more of a life stage / condition descriptor with it being 65+ with debilitating age related conditions requiring care and support.