For the past few years, I’ve been wondering how to best define the word "adult." It’s not merely a function of aging – some of the biggest children I know are living in the bodies of fifty year-olds. I’ve asked friends, and their responses don’t offer any particular clarity. I’ve observed people whose lives contain the societal markers of adulthood – homes, families, cars, pets -- for clues that don’t really exist.
I think this question once had more obvious answers, such as financial independence. Among the most visible examples was owning a house of your own. Add in marriage, children and the expenses of a lifestyle that might include a second home, exotic vacations, summer camp and private school, and the equation at its most simplistic became money plus its accoutrements equaled being an adult.
In today’s world of an economy upended and prolonged adolescence, children return to the family home after college or divorces. Parents continue to financially support their children in their twenties and beyond. And the zeitgeist increasingly accepts these things as the “new normal.”
Nowadays, I see more and more of my peers struggling to achieve, much less maintain, the financial quality of life in adulthood that they believed was their birthright. I’m experiencing it myself – I’ve recently made decisions that preclude my earning a comparable income to that of my parents, much less surpassing it.
In the middle of a recent session with my life coach, as I expressed my anxieties about money, career and life in general, she interrupted me and said, “Emily, being an adult isn’t for everyone.” At first I laughed at the humor in her words, but then I spent some time thinking about how true they rang.
Adulthood: It’s not for everyone. That's a definition I can work with.