Feeling less of a grown up because people have kids

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I still live with parents and still not in a relationship and when I see and hear other people the same age or younger who've got married, have a place of their own and have kids, it makes me feel like am "less of an adult". I hate feeling this way.

You are an adult. By the dictionary definition of the term.

Being a grown-up is different than being an adult. Many, many, many grown-ups do not have children.

Having kids doesn't make you a grown up

Taking responsibility for yourself and your family and the world around you whether you have children or not makes you a grown up

Many people who have children don't have the maturity to look after them. They don't even have the maturity to look after themselves. They're abusive, neglectful, or just plain clueless.

I do not see the association or assumption that having a responsibility necessarily meant more maturity or deem someone as an "adult".

Kids are a responsibility.
A career is a responsibility.
A relationship is a responsibility.

But would that make a person worth being with?

Would that make a person better than those who do not have those responsibilities that's been measured as societal milestones?

Should one's capacity to responsibility itself tie to one's self worth?


Think taking those risks makes someone feel like a grown up?

Nope.

That just makes them having a responsibility.
Responsibility doesn't make someone a grown up. It just makes them more reliable.

The title itself, one that makes someone question less, whatever that might be (parent, manager, whatever delegate) is an illusion itself.


I say...

To feel grown up is more like a term of stopping associating one's self and rely over a narrative as someone with "having or not having a potential" or some form of youth fragility or sensitivity to take whatever informed risks, and just move on from such idea instead.

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I love feeling like less of a grown-up, me.

Sometimes I think people just have kids so they'll have someone else to blame their problems on.

Just look at all the commercials for headache medication where the headaches are just about always caused by loud, obnoxious kids.

I don't have kids but my hair is going grey. How can that be possible? Parents are always saying it's their kids stressing them out that is making their hair grey and/or falling out. But there are plenty of other things to blame it on the way the world is.