In your opinion, at what age or milestone does a boy become a man, and at what age or milestone does a girl become a woman?

Nowadays, it seems that boys mature into men about the age of 27 or 28. That seems to be when they’ve sown they’re wild oats to use the old phrase, and are ready to move up the work ladder and do whatever it takes to get the better money.

For girls the range is broader, some mature around 18 or 19 others as late as the boys, for girls it seems to depend on when they take on familial responsibilities, not necessarily having children, maybe just looking out for parents or siblings and recognizing the need for behaving more maturely to get the better money.

When they start supporting themselves.

I am equating “man” or “woman” with maturity and responsibility.

I don’t think that there is a single milestone or age. I think it depends on life circumstances. It think it happens when they are forced to look at the world through adult eyes.

It could be going to war, or a death or loss, or almost anything.

I think a boy becomes a man when he realizes what he can and cannot do.

Just typed a great long answer and lost it! I’m gonna cry like a little girl!

@janbb Don’t cry little penguin. Stuff happens. It’s how we handle the stuff that makes us men and women.

snotty flippers now but thanks Mountain Man!

I think the point I truly transitioned into becoming a woman was when I realised and acknowledged my marriage wasn’t working. I’ve had some girl-like moments since then, but the innocence of youth was lost at that point.

I think the point a boy becomes a man is when he doesn’t let the terror of becoming a father put him off trying. Just talking from my personal experience.

I guess when they can support themselves, but that can be determined by a lot of things, like the economy for example. So we would be basing someone’s maturity on their ability to manipulate the market or what?

I don’t know when (or if) I ever became a man, but I know I became a person when I turned 30. It was at that point that I realized I had enough perspective to know what I was going through in life.

I suspect people stopped questioning my man-ness earlier than that, but I know I was continuing to come to grips with man-ness even up until today. It’s a work in progress and I don’t think there’s a tipping point where I can say before that I wasn’t and after I was. I was and I wasn’t the whole way along. To greater and lesser degrees.

But I know where I fit in my community and my family and I think of that as being a person.

When he/she resists the temptation to weep buckets full of tears when a wasp lands on their ice cream. You’re allowed to scream, run away & act like a human windmill, but no tears please.

I do not know when I became a man, I just kind of grew into it, or will do eventually, depending on your point of view (See Biocentricity question).

I think that as a society we may have lost something by not having some kind of ceremony or bloodletting or something that says “ok guys and gals, time to grow up now”. Seems that this is something that gets lost when you become civilized.

A lot of people my age all about instant gratification and only care about themselves. If your life revolves around buying new things all the time and running up bar tabs, then you’re still a boy or a girl. If you start caring about more meaningful things and planning for the future, you’re an adult.

When they slay their first Jabberwock, of course.

Most often in your 30’s and sometimes never at all.

For the most part, I agree with @zenvelo (as I do not think this is a gendered milestone issue, but more about obtaining certain qualities.) However, I do not think that you simply become an adult. People certainly fall into retrograde where they cease being responsible and mature as if they were returning to a more helpless state. Likewise, I don’t think “childhood” is a thing that we lose. It’s more like we grow on top of that. Someone who loses their child self is a person to be pitied.

There is no such thing.

Children of either gender become adults when they move away from home and become financially independent, tax paying, self sufficient citizens.

When the boy leaves the money on the dresser. When the girl collects that money.

I grew up when my mom died, because I realized life wasn’t the perfect journey I thought it was.

When they learn to take responsibility for themselves, and their own actions.

This type of question can get you some real snotnose responses, especially the few that I’ve heard throughout my years. To me you become a man/women when you become responsible for yourself and your actions.