6 ms·

As childhood is extended, the other epochs have to be moved to accommodate it. Used to be, someone who was 16 was considered a (young) Adult, ready to live on

As childhood is extended, the other epochs have to be moved to accommodate it. Used to be, someone who was 16 was considered a (young) Adult, ready to live on their own, start a family, be responsible for themselves and others. Now that point is at least a decade later.

adrianN 3y ago
It used to be that people didn’t live on their own at all but instead lived in multigenerational households.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
I don’t know anywhere in the world where 16 year olds were sent or even able to live on their own. Maybe military or boarding school, or even some type of college, but it wasn’t really on their own. And outside of a few decades post WW2 USA, I don’t know of 18 to 22 year olds buying their own land/house either. Around the world, multigenerational households have been the norm for eons.
- cultofmetatron 3y ago
  traditionally, nowadays it seems more like a nice opportunity to get gifts. but a barmitvah used to be when a boy was considered old enough to marry and settle down. last i check, jewish boys have it at 13. Hell, Gandi was 13/14 when he got married.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Marriage does not imply self sufficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi > Recalling the day of their marriage, he once said, "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." As was the prevailing tradition, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents' house, and away from her husband.[31]
  - graemep 3y ago
    > nowadays it seems more like a nice opportunity to get gifts. People forget that it has extensive legal ramifications that protect people when things go wrong. The decline of marriage in the UK has lead to a lot of problems with things like inheritance, responsibility of children, the financial interests of the less affluent partner etc.
  - otteromkram 3y ago
    * Gandhi (Sorry! The silent 'h' is easy to miss.)
    - OJFord 3y ago
      It's not really 'silent', just pronounced differently to English (and a modifier to the 'd' rather than its own letter). gāñdhī is the transliteration of गांधी (correct name) vs. gāñdī looks like गांदी, and द is not pronounced like ध (which is is kind of a softer, more aspirated 'd'). (The ā, ñ, ī and similar 'accents' more often dropped in transliteration than the aspirative 'h' - I added them above just for accuracy, to talk purely of the d/dh, using the IAST standard for transliteration. But 'nobody' uses this for texting Hindi on qwerty. (And as someone learning the language the resulting ambiguity and variation is frustrating!))
- CalRobert 3y ago
  My mom moved out of her parents' house and got by with odd jobs in Chico and renting with students when she was 16 in the 70's. Though to be fair she might be omitting some details. Apparently she decided she'd had enough of living with her parents. Life was different when everything was cash. I really think we do our offspring a disservice by raising them like they're babies until they're 20.
  - allen_berg 3y ago
    > I really think we do our offspring a disservice by raising them like they're babies until they're 20. Why? People and society in general seem to be doing much better nowadays...
    - CalRobert 3y ago
      Because people spend years of their life artificially constrained by a system that infantilizes them.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country" For a lot of US history you could get land for free. It wasn't a matter of buying it.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I assume the vast, vast majority of people did not go west by themselves or even as a couple at age 16. A family unit spanning various ages was probably moving together.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      Lots of people did. You have to understand they were the children of people who went on a boat to move halfway across the planet, early America had a selection bias for the adventurous. It used to be a proper country.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Sorry, I am not buying it. I assume even the earliest settlers had some form of tribal relationship to each other, either via family or friend or even business networks. The picture being painted above is one of lone wolves (at the age of 16) securing and developing an already populated land (meaning waging war) into a new country is ludicrous. Here is an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn > In 1681, King Charles II granted a large piece of his North American land holdings along the North Atlantic Ocean coast to Penn to offset debts he owed Penn's father, the admiral and politician Sir William Penn. The land included the present-day states of Pennsylvania and Delaware.
- smeej 3y ago
  My great-grandparents got married at 14 and 18 and supported themselves. This would have been the 1920s, but nothing was apparently scandalous about their ages. The only scandal was that she was Scotch-Irish and he was Italian!
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Qem 3y ago
  > I don’t know anywhere in the world where 16 year olds were sent or even able to live on their own. Like, any rural area circa ~80 years ago. My grand-grandmother married with 14 and had her first child with 15.
OJFord 3y ago
> Used to be, someone who was 16 was considered a (young) Adult, ready to live on their own, start a family, be responsible for themselves and others. Now that point is at least a decade later. Where on Earth do you live? Afaik most people would probably call a 16yo a 'young adult' even if the bar is technically at 18. The 18yo is certainly ready for all that (as far as desire/affordability takes them anyway), and the 16yo too with parental permission. What 25yo is not ready to live on their own, or start a family, for any reason other than money (or that isn't going to go away at 26)? Certainly if you want to go back younger teens were married off etc. (Juliet of Romeo & being an oft-cited example) but I don't recognise where or when this 16 to 26 year old shift supposedly happened.
- valval 3y ago
  Your history knowledge isn't great if his statement seems outrageous to you. Having babies at 16 was far, far more common just 50 years ago in all of the western world. The answer to "where" this shift happened is "in the entire 'developed' world", and the answer to "when" is of course not a single point of time, but you can observe the graphs to find the derivatives.
  - TheCoelacanth 3y ago
    The baby boom era had people getting married and having babies at a younger age than both before and after that time period. It's a mistake to extrapolate the recent trend backwards beyond about the 1940s.

adrianN 3y ago

It used to be that people didn’t live on their own at all but instead lived in multigenerational households.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

I don’t know anywhere in the world where 16 year olds were sent or even able to live on their own. Maybe military or boarding school, or even some type of college, but it wasn’t really on their own. And outside of a few decades post WW2 USA, I don’t know of 18 to 22 year olds buying their own land/house either. Around the world, multigenerational households have been the norm for eons.

cultofmetatron 3y ago
traditionally, nowadays it seems more like a nice opportunity to get gifts. but a barmitvah used to be when a boy was considered old enough to marry and settle down. last i check, jewish boys have it at 13. Hell, Gandi was 13/14 when he got married.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Marriage does not imply self sufficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi > Recalling the day of their marriage, he once said, "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." As was the prevailing tradition, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents' house, and away from her husband.[31]
- graemep 3y ago
  > nowadays it seems more like a nice opportunity to get gifts. People forget that it has extensive legal ramifications that protect people when things go wrong. The decline of marriage in the UK has lead to a lot of problems with things like inheritance, responsibility of children, the financial interests of the less affluent partner etc.
- otteromkram 3y ago
  * Gandhi (Sorry! The silent 'h' is easy to miss.)
  - OJFord 3y ago
    It's not really 'silent', just pronounced differently to English (and a modifier to the 'd' rather than its own letter). gāñdhī is the transliteration of गांधी (correct name) vs. gāñdī looks like गांदी, and द is not pronounced like ध (which is is kind of a softer, more aspirated 'd'). (The ā, ñ, ī and similar 'accents' more often dropped in transliteration than the aspirative 'h' - I added them above just for accuracy, to talk purely of the d/dh, using the IAST standard for transliteration. But 'nobody' uses this for texting Hindi on qwerty. (And as someone learning the language the resulting ambiguity and variation is frustrating!))
CalRobert 3y ago
My mom moved out of her parents' house and got by with odd jobs in Chico and renting with students when she was 16 in the 70's. Though to be fair she might be omitting some details. Apparently she decided she'd had enough of living with her parents. Life was different when everything was cash. I really think we do our offspring a disservice by raising them like they're babies until they're 20.
- allen_berg 3y ago
  > I really think we do our offspring a disservice by raising them like they're babies until they're 20. Why? People and society in general seem to be doing much better nowadays...
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    Because people spend years of their life artificially constrained by a system that infantilizes them.
willcipriano 3y ago
"Go West, young man, and grow up with the country" For a lot of US history you could get land for free. It wasn't a matter of buying it.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I assume the vast, vast majority of people did not go west by themselves or even as a couple at age 16. A family unit spanning various ages was probably moving together.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    Lots of people did. You have to understand they were the children of people who went on a boat to move halfway across the planet, early America had a selection bias for the adventurous. It used to be a proper country.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Sorry, I am not buying it. I assume even the earliest settlers had some form of tribal relationship to each other, either via family or friend or even business networks. The picture being painted above is one of lone wolves (at the age of 16) securing and developing an already populated land (meaning waging war) into a new country is ludicrous. Here is an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn > In 1681, King Charles II granted a large piece of his North American land holdings along the North Atlantic Ocean coast to Penn to offset debts he owed Penn's father, the admiral and politician Sir William Penn. The land included the present-day states of Pennsylvania and Delaware.
smeej 3y ago
My great-grandparents got married at 14 and 18 and supported themselves. This would have been the 1920s, but nothing was apparently scandalous about their ages. The only scandal was that she was Scotch-Irish and he was Italian!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Qem 3y ago
> I don’t know anywhere in the world where 16 year olds were sent or even able to live on their own. Like, any rural area circa ~80 years ago. My grand-grandmother married with 14 and had her first child with 15.

OJFord 3y ago

> Used to be, someone who was 16 was considered a (young) Adult, ready to live on their own, start a family, be responsible for themselves and others. Now that point is at least a decade later. Where on Earth do you live? Afaik most people would probably call a 16yo a 'young adult' even if the bar is technically at 18. The 18yo is certainly ready for all that (as far as desire/affordability takes them anyway), and the 16yo too with parental permission. What 25yo is not ready to live on their own, or start a family, for any reason other than money (or that isn't going to go away at 26)? Certainly if you want to go back younger teens were married off etc. (Juliet of Romeo & being an oft-cited example) but I don't recognise where or when this 16 to 26 year old shift supposedly happened.

valval 3y ago
Your history knowledge isn't great if his statement seems outrageous to you. Having babies at 16 was far, far more common just 50 years ago in all of the western world. The answer to "where" this shift happened is "in the entire 'developed' world", and the answer to "when" is of course not a single point of time, but you can observe the graphs to find the derivatives.
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  The baby boom era had people getting married and having babies at a younger age than both before and after that time period. It's a mistake to extrapolate the recent trend backwards beyond about the 1940s.