So there’s a not-too-commented-upon prejudice verging upon bias I want to address and it’s this: the retreat from acknowledging young people’s adulthood in American society.

In previous generations, it was easier (especially if your gender [male], race [white], and sexual orientation [straight] were privileged) to have your adulthood acknowledged.  Whether it was the greater availability of blue- or pink- collar jobs providing a living wage or military enlistments previously considered to be aging factors, a young adult was still considered that: an adult.

But currently, people are willing to infantilize, deny, and outright ignore that very status (based on college enrollment, living at home with parents, not owning a home or motorized vehicle, not being married, or any number of reasons).

Quite frankly, it’s pissing me off and it’s more than a little classist and definitely ageist (in a way that’s the reverse of what we tend to think, as young adulthood tends to be fetishized while senior adulthood tends to be patronized).

Eighteen years of age: this is a perfectly fine starting point from which to establish adulthood.  People who want to keep adding caveats (waiting till twenty-one, college graduation, white-collar employment, parental agreement on life and/or partner choices) need to stop it.

I get that young adults can be taken advantage of because of a lack of life experience.  But there’s no getting around the fact that young adults are always going to have a lack of life experience.  That doesn’t make them non-adults.  You’re old enough to have sex, marry, drive, vote, and establish your own residence at eighteen.  Putting even greater restrictions on having adulthood acknowledged, honored, and respected isn’t protection.  It’s control from entities outside of the individual and everyone should be fighting against that.

P.S.: We older adults, despite our greater life experience, can be taken advantage of easier and more often than we care to admit.  That’s the disservice we perpetrate against our newly minted peers: the idea that adulthood is some kind of force field that routinely protects us against disappointment and other people’s shitty behavior.