It took me until my mid-30s to feel like I had crossed a threshold in processing grief and trauma from my late teen years. I was capable of adult behavior long before then, but my concept of the world and how I fit into it (or don't) was still childlike in many ways on a fundamental level.
Like most such things, I'd expect this to be a spectrum, and I may be somewhat of a late bloomer. Regardless, I have a theory that there is somewhat of a protective effect operating here. Believing in a simpler reality which involved future wish fulfillment for me - however unrealistic it was - may have helped me survive. Coming to acceptance of what I see as a more accurate but far bleaker perspective required me to grow strong enough to sustain my will to live despite that perspective.
Biggest lesson learned: I could not do it without at least one other person (or more) who I trust almost 100% with all of myself. Realizing that going it alone is futile is definitely part of what I consider becoming an adult, and it can take a long time to fully accept that.
> Biggest lesson learned: I could not do it without at least one other person (or more) who I trust almost 100% with all of myself.
Its strange. The biggest lesson I learned was almost the opposite: I learned that the meaning of life has nothing to do with other people or their estimation of me. It has more to do with who you are when there is nobody else around. Other people often act as a sort of fun house mirror that distort and reflect back a false image.
Learning to be happy alone and seeing through the pleasant lies is absolutely vital to becoming an adult.
On the contrary, developing a deep relationship with someone very different than myself (different religions, native languages and countries, socioeconomic class, race, gender) has shown me the lies I've been telling myself all my life.
It's easy to identity lies and hypocrisy in others. But the brain has all sorts of tricks to prevent it from looking inwards; at least for me it prefers feeling rewarded to deep self-criticism. Finding someone who sees me and will happily call me on my assumptions, conditioning, and BS has been a great gift.
I'm not sure I'd have phrased it as "lies I've been telling myself", but I have a similar experience from a cross-cultural relationship, from mid 20s to early 50s. We had to work through conflicts more explicitly, with a lot more communication. Many things may be misunderstanding due to divergent assumptions, expectations, and even different body language signals.
I guess the "lie" exposed here is the way people can automatically believe they're seeing the truth of a social situation. It is easy to project false experience and motivation onto others. A more truthful approach recognizes windows of uncertainty around many encounters.
I think this applies to basic single-culture contexts too. Even in the same culture or the same family, we don't really know exactly what another person is experiencing.
Many seem cocksure that their social read is correct, and any grief is the other party's deliberate action. It takes a certain detachment to realize that your misreading of a situation may well be the genesis of a negative spiral, rather than a justified response...
The social aspect is a part of it, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. So much of how we fundamentally see the world- the role of the individual vs society, luck vs skill vs determination as being important for success, what defines a 'happy' life- is determined by our own conditioning. By seeing someone else's perspective you start to appreciate that there aren't many 'first principles' in life.
Take a simple example, marriage. If you're a Millennial you were probably brought up to think marriage is for love, and should produce kids. Depending on your orientation and enculturation, the wife is 'supposed' to stay at home or 'supposed' to have a career. We don't question the basic outlines of what a marriage looks like, unless you happen to be a part of the polyamory or fundamental religious communities, in which case you probably take those standards as being the ideal.
My husband's entire family had arranged marriages. Seeing their relationships gave me a new perspective on what a marriage can be, and forced us to be intentional about what parts of our culture we bring along. It's not that we're doing marriage 'better' than anyone else, but when you can't assume anything about what a marriage looks like you have to really examine it in detail.
From an evolutionary standpoint what would be the benefit of the brain looking inwards and constantly questioning itself? Certainly lower animals mostly just go with what instinct tells them, maybe with memory of prior experience in the larger-brained ones. Most people also seem to operate on their feeling of "common sense" without much reflection, at least in my observation.
> what would be the benefit of the brain looking inwards and constantly questioning itself?
When what you think matters. An animal that questions its belief "there is no tiger behind that bush" and finds a tiger lives longer than one that doesn't.
I feel like we need both. There are mental/emotional experiences I have on the regular which there is no point in trying to communicate to someone else but still bring me great benefit. We need to value our alone time, absolutely.
We also ultimately derive pretty much everything we most value in life from our interactions with other lives, which is why I think it's so important to develop high-trust relationships with at least one or two other people so we can continue to grapple with the fact that we all have different perspectives, weaknesses and strengths and can usually learn more and get significantly more things done when we cooperate than when we're running solo. Which requires trust.
YMMV, of course. Some people can go build a cabin in the woods and live off the land and spend all their free time meditating and be perfectly happy. But that's not most of us. And even those people eventually get too old to keep taking care of themselves.
> We also ultimately derive pretty much everything we most value in life from our interactions with other lives
This implies that almost everything you value is something transient that can, and one day will, be taken away. If not willingly, then by death. Doesn't it make more sense to have a few core values that don't depend on others and then build relationships and all the rest upon that foundation?
To steal from Alan Watts, lets use an example. Imagine a whirlpool in a clear stream. It has great beauty and takes intricate forms as it dances a whirls. You sit beside it and enjoy watching it for hours.
Now ask yourself is it the particular group a H2O molecules that make up the whirlpool that you love? If so it will be gone in an instant, and each moment for you will become another in a series of great losses as the molecules are swept away by new ones. Is it the pattern the water makes that you love? No, the pattern itself changes every moment as well. The change itself is part of what mesmerizes you.
What you love about the whirlpool is something deeper, and more fundamental, something that change can't take from you. That's the thing you have to build your appreciation of life from. Other people are just the molecules and ripples.
> Some people can go build a cabin in the woods and live off the land and spend all their free time meditating and be perfectly happy.
I would argue that a man who can't stand to be alone with himself is either a bad man who is a good judge of character, or an incomplete person.
I don't mean that everyone should go live alone, just that everyone should be able to. You're probably right that most people can't do it, but the majority is often wrong.
It depends on how you view life. In my view, the purpose of life is to build relationships, love, and understanding. I can be alone, but loneliness forever is, in my mind, indistinguishable from me not existing. Tree and the forest and all that.
Yes, relationships die because everything changes constantly. Nothing is stagnant. But then again everything dies. Ultimately, I want to impact others and be impacted.
This is an interesting perspective but I think both are necessary. At different times in my life (perhaps correlated to the "brain eras," though I'm still a bit skeptical of the details here) I've needed others for development and contentment, and at other times, I've needed to focus on self-love and solo happiness as you describe.
Whatever your "meaning of life" may be, it's not the estimation of you that other people have that is important, but we are incredibly social creatures. Life is really not possible for individuals of our species without some level of society and community. Even Christopher Knight - the North Pond Hermit in Main who lived alone without human contact for 27 years - survived by burglarizing cabins and camps and was eventually reintegrated into society.
I guess my point is this is a dialectic. Both can be true, and both are true. The "trust almost 100% with all of myself" might be debatable, but "I could not do it with at least one other person" seems kind of obvious, as does "Learning to be happy alone is vital to becoming an adult."
We're a social species. It's not a funhouse mirror, it's just another side of your personality. No human can even survive in isolation, so the solitary side of you is an exceptionally small part of who you are.
Both of you are right - OP is right that life does become weary when you have to do everything yourself, with no help or support from others - and that includes emotional support. We are social creatures, after all. You are right that we as adults also need to learn to be comfortable / content with our thoughts when we are alone with them, and not define our happiness through our relations. We all need both solitude and company, to introspect and grow.
The danger with self reinforcement is you can convince yourself of almost anything.
There are many selves, and you will never know your true self. Because you can only process yourself through your own mind, which will perform transforms, regardless of how hard you try not to. And maybe there isn't even a true self, only perceptions.
I buy my socks in "generations", alternating white and black. I ruthlessly purge individuals when they develop holes and I purge the entire n-2 generation whenever I buy a new batch.
I've been buying socks from Sketchers for years now. It's the only brand I buy. They're not amazing, but I get holes in my socks so fast I don't really care. At the very least, all my socks match, even though I probably have some that are 8 years old and some that are 2 weeks old.
The parent’s advice is toxic and mistaken. It’s a road to codependency. I’ve been with my wife 20 years, married 15. I would have said the same thing they said — I can’t do it all on my own, I need someone else.
Rubbish. And also dangerous rubbish. I’ve been weak for a long time simply because I hadn’t taken myself seriosuly. I literally believed that I couldn’t do it alone, which was wrong.
It was unfair to my wife to use her as an emotional support when she didn’t want to be. She’s been there for me a lot over the years. But when you tell someone that you can’t do it without them, it’s no longer their decision, and that’s unfair. Both to her and to me.
Please read Codependent No More, and especially Lost in the Shuffle by Subby. (I’ve identified a lot more with the latter.)
The point is, it’s okay to be having a rough time with your wife. Let go. Let her do her own thing. Stop caring so much. It’s okay for her to be upset and not want to help/have sex/go to an event/involve you/whatever the problem may be. The reason it feels rough is because you personally let it feel rough. Once I adopted that mindset, it became so much easier. And ironically my marriage improved.
Meds are also important. Make sure you’re on a good dosage of antidepressants if you need them, and a mood stabilizer. I recently started Latuda and dropped Seroquel per my psychiatrist, and it’s been night and day.
Lastly, keep trying to talk to people about your problems. I ended up reaching out to a random person on Twitter. They were kind and to my surprise happy to listen. It was one of the main reasons I was able to get through it all. The best person to talk to is a therapist, though I’d be happy to listen till you can find one.
You’re strong. You need to believe that. And you’re strong independently of your family or anyone else. Give yourself credit for getting as far as you have; that part has been important too.
Apparently “codependency” means something significantly different to what I guessed (which was interdependency, depending on each other). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency:
> In psychology, codependency is a theory that attempts to explain imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's self-destructive behavior,[1] such as addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.[2]
> Definitions of codependency vary, but typically include high self-sacrifice, a focus on others' needs, suppression of one's own emotions, and attempts to control or fix other people's problems.[3]
I've heard codependency described as being dependent on others being dependent on you.
It probably has some rational basis in child rearing, it will benefit survival for the parents to be deeply dedicated to supporting their children, to the point where they receive a psychological reward from that dependency. But unhealthy when it comes to adult relationships, at least beyond a certain point.
There is a huge difference between acknowledging that humans are an inherently social species that usually needs comfort and psychologically benefits from an intimate relationship and straight up codependency, where you violate the boundaries of each other and thereby take away psychological safety.
I agree! The point is, don’t use your wife for your comfort and psychology benefits. Use the other people in your life. Especially when you’re having marital problems.
Just want to point out codependency--especially if you read Codependent No More--is not about being dependent on another person. That is dependent personality disorder perhaps.
Codependency is better described IMO as secondhand addiction. It was coined to describe the symptoms of people who live with alcoholics and other substance abusers and the destructive coping patterns they use to survive in the addict's wake. The codependent does not depend on the addict. In fact closer to the opposite.
Upvoted just for mentioning the book though. It was life changing for me.
I get what you're saying. A therapist is one of the types of people I had in mind, although that obviously isn't an option for everyone.
I agree that it's important to be able to have your own independent autonomy to properly function in a healthy relationship, especially a romantic one.
The point I was trying to make is perhaps more subtle than it came across, namely that webs of trust between humans (e.g. 'community') are, in my view, essential to being a fully actualized adult. If you aren't close to anyone, I think that means something is wrong which deserves further inspection, particularly within yourself.
Sorry for the somewhat harsh words. You have a point. The problem is that it’s way too easy to fall down the codependency rabbit hole when you start thinking of it as “I can’t do X unless someone else Y’s”. It was true for me, and I just wanted to make sure it wouldn’t be true for the poor fella going through marriage problems.
The trick and the trouble is that it’s easy to acknowledge the importance of being independent, especially in a romantic relationship, vs actually doing that in practice. After your 30’s your friends start to fade away, and one day I woke up without any except my wife. That was clearly a degenerate situation unfair to her, and expanding your social circle is something that should be done independent of whatever relationship you happen to be in. In fact, needs to be done.
Another complication / nuance is that, of course you should be serving and supporting your partner (and vice versa)! Its part of what makes relationships rewarding. They're not always 50/50 in all aspects.
The trick, as you say, is to know when that is crossing into something unfair. When it goes beyond something like who does the dishes or makes the most money into supporting the other person's core identity. Or when it becomes unsustainable / exhausting for other person. Identifying these issues can be difficult. It requires both partners to be in touch with their feelings and able to communicate openly.
Sorry I don’t know your circumstances but “Walking on Eggshells” by Langford has literally saved me.
The only wisdom I can offer: other people emotions don’t have to control yours (despite what they tell you). The best take on this that I know: be like a goose - they don’t get wet, just shake it off.
I have had many difficult times with my current S.O. over 15+ years.
Everyone's situation is different, but I can say that in even a semi-healthy relationship, time heals many wounds, greater mutual understanding grows, hard edges can soften and people will often surprise you. You can also learn things you could improve about yourself which you were previously blind to. The sense of stability this reinforces is immensely helpful.
On the other hand, I also have an ex-- and while I wish I would have ended that differently in hindsight, it did need to end for my mental health to improve. If you are with someone who abuses you, cannot be reasoned with and never admits fault, it is wise to plan several exit strategies.
I'd hit up a solo therapist. I went through a hard time with my wife and turns out she just sucks. Be warned that she sucked a lot worse in the divorce and states differ wildly in how biased they are against fathers if you have kids.
It was helpful to figure out some of my stuff and deal with a bunch of trauma.
Thanks unfortunately neither of those are the case. Things are quite bad (haven't spoken with the kid since Christmas) and probably have not yet hit the nadir.
Or else books / online communities. I can't recommend using ChatGPT for this kind of help but it can be used to validate your experiences, provide a different experience, and if you ask it, point you in the right direction.
For example, if you explain it (or Reddit) an interpersonal situation it can break it down and e.g. point out certain behaviours or boundary crossings.
But I would be careful, as these chatbots will by default put you in the right, even when you aren't.
Even therapists are a mixed bag - and some are legitimately dangerous - but in my experience at least 100x safer than a chatbot or just books.
If for no other reason than a chatbot can’t call you out on your bullshit, because it has no hope of telling what is or is not bullshit. And that is key. And has no actual feelings, remorse, license to lose, etc. etc.
I found a chatbot helpful when I explicitly requested it, in detail, to argue the other person's side with me. I basically approached it as "I want advice on this particular conflict," I explained who the other party was, I explained my best summary of the situation as a whole, and I went back and forth.
I found it cathartic because I could basically argue with that person about it, without asking that person to do emotional labor or be subjected to my criticisms of where I felt they were wrong. Ultimately I landed on several points I did eventually go to that person with, I dropped several others that the chatbot pointed out weren't really something it was fair to criticize them for, and I think our friendship is overall better for it.
I don't think there was anything revolutionary there, it's basically journaling with an LLM, but it was more efficient if nothing else.
Edit: I would also caveat that I've attended a lot of therapy, individual and couples, so numerous concepts that some people may not know, things like emotional labor, boundaries, healthy communication, etc. are already very familiar concepts to me. So, I wouldn't recommend a chatbot as a FIRST stop? But if you've attended a lot of therapy and already know a fair bit about how your own feelings work, I think it can help, as long as you explicitly request that it doesn't just glaze you continuously.
Consider posting on https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/ . Note however that they don't allow posts about identifying problems - e.g. Why am I having a hard time with my wife?. Rather, you are expected to know what is your specific problem and seek solution to that. Don't go to Reddit - the standard advice there will be "your wife / husband is a toxic partner, run and get a divorce".
Every person is different. Some people don't need a stable relation, some people *can't have* a stable relation, some people thrive with it.
Every relation is different. A successful relation is built when both side are compatible.
What does compatible mean, though? Some relations are swingers. Some relations follow strict religious rules. Some people need taking a beating, and I don't mean an erotic one. In None of this cases I am meaning they are codependent, and then there are successful codependent relations.
The only constant I have seen is that every successful relation has discussions, fights, momments when they considered separating. And there is compromise, in every case.
I am sorry I don't have any specific advice. Good luck
> Realizing that going it alone is futile is definitely part of what I consider becoming an adult
Weird, for me its the complete opposite. I accepted to live alone for the rest of my life because a) I am undesired and I wont make a move. b) I barely met people I would even consider it being worth talking to, I need to feel equal on a cognitive level and not a lot of people match that requirement. I either feel lesser or above.
You certainly don't need to have someone in your life -- as someone who married late and has two kids now I sometimes look back on my long period of begin single with fondness -- but I would also recommend being very honest with yourself. Very few people are totally undesirable and expecting others to meet some predetermined standard is very common among people that don't interact socially very often (I speak from experience). While I'm lucky that my wife is very bright (and in many ways much smarter than me) the most important thing that she has given me is new perspectives on life and seeing that it's more important to be kind and helpful than smart.
It's very hard to see outside of our early conditioning without outside perspectives. We may have a vague sense that we might not have been given the best tools for social development (we may even be brutally aware of it), but having someone that has the skills that we are missing is often more important than that they have equal skills in areas we are strong in. Having a good partner can make you realize things about yourself and open you up to things that you never even realized were there.
Yea I get that. A partner would be nice but in 30 years of my life I met 2 women I liked. I am extremely self aware in that regard. I am repulsed by modern dating and dating apps and I dont get myself "out there". I also have way too high standards but I cant just ignore them. Also being chronically depressed does not really help either...
So I just accept my situation and I don't want to change my ways as I am content with how my life currently is.
It's good you are so self aware and can accept your situation to find a level of contentment.
No partner is perfect so being in a relationship requires evaluating tradeoffs and deciding where you can compromise compared to your ideal. To do otherwise or expect someone (or yourself) to change is unfair to them. Unfortunately sometimes we think we can deal with something but ultimately can't - that's part of the self discovery and vulnerability/heartbreak of relationships (because we can of course be on the receiving end too). Really you have to be willing to embrace a person's flaws and take long term joy in doing so, and also have gratitude for them doing the same.
So if you know all that's not really for you, then good move on your part.
I often talk indirect because lots of things are obvious to me and dont need to be explicitly verbalized in a conversation so I am expecting my conversation partner to keep up with my pace. I know its possible because I met people that are able to do so. Although most are not. I dont talk to teach or to be taught. I value teaching and learning but regular conversations are not a place I learn from or I teach at.
I've grown up with a lot of trauma and a lot of topics simply have no meaning to me, that's why I regard a lot of conversations as pointless.
For me to regard a person as worth talking to it requires them to either have lived through similar trauma, be a master at some craft, have some (to me) interesting hobby or a lot of life experience to talk about. I simply dont want to talk about someone's favorite sports team or some trash tv stuff. A lot of topics are also above my head so I zone out easily.
They said that they either feel lesser or above. (Though this might point at a different problem; I'd hope one could enjoy the company, really enjoy it, of both sets of people.)
Assuming they are, just for the sake of the discussion: what kind of answer do you expect to this question? You think someone who is arrogant has a theory of why they are so and are willing to share it? I would expect they are mostly blind to their own arrogance. Can be useful to point it out.
I guess it was just a rhetorical question. But it feels weird. Do you think it can possibly do anything else than create hostility?
Did you read until the end? I wrote I either feel lesser or above. It works both ways. Arrogance is lived experience, I met a lot of people in my lifetime.
Your A) is a fallacy. Carefully consider that one. Fore B) You're mad projecting onto other people. I used to do this and frankly, I came across as a complete ass a lot of the time. People are super complicated and no other person can figure them out completely, let alone as quickly as you think you are.
I know that people are complicated, but to me 90% of complications do not, and will never matter.
People having people problems bores me so much. I am the type of person ready to irrationally throw their life away in the blink of an eye, I guess I am looking for people like that.
As an example I started tattooing myself without ever having done it before. My arms look like shit but it doesn't really matter to me, I wouldn't change a thing.
Additionally, my social energy is drained very quickly. Having people around me would make me feel trapped. I am nice to every person I meet irl, it would surprise me a lot if people considered me an ass. I am the silent type.
Also no. A) is not a fallacy. In 30 years I was approached once. Whenever I used dating apps I wouldn't get any matches. All I had were some charming talks with friendly women that I initiated when having a night out, but thats about it. I sit in my room all day doing stuff on my computer. Also not the most tidy person. Definitely not desirable and also not willing to change my ways.
I did not feel fully adult until my parents passed on. I was in my early 40s at that point. Then I knew that there was no fallback; it was all up to me.
A person becomes an adult once they take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences thereof. Many people never reach that status, regardless of age.
It's not so tersely defined as that, I don't think. It's kinda like wax in a lava lamp of information. Some gloops, the others glop, until eventually you gloop and glop and feel confident. Rigid labels and markers on the spectrum don't really hold universally true, I'm finding.
Sounds like you cannot bear making yourself the sole person responsible and need to involve more people in your decision making cope. Not sure if that’s healthy tbh, just sounds like you don’t like shouldering blame for responsibilities.
So if you were childlike before in your thinking I guess at least you’re a college student now.
The parent comment was talking about having trauma. They were probably once in a position where they very much weren’t healthy, and through the gradual gaining of awareness came to the realization that they needed help.
If I had a broken leg, it’s obviously not going to help trying to fix it myself. Why would it be a stretch that unhealthy thought patterns, which by their nature are self reinforcing, not require an external influence to help break the feedback loops?
It's kind of interesting to compare this to Ptolemy's eras. In the Tetrabiblios, Ptolemy argued that man went through seven ages in his life, each associated with a different celestial object.
1. Infancy --- The Moon. Since the Moon waxes and wanes more rapidly than any other celestial object, this period is characterized by the fastest development.
2. Childhood --- Mercury. As Mercury is the fastest of the planets, at this age children have the short attention spans and flit from one thing to the next.
3. Youth --- Venus. Starting around puberty, a man's mind starts to become focused on love.
4. Young Adulthood --- The Sun. A man comes of age, he starts to think about his work and people begin to take him seriously.
5. Middle Adulthood --- Mars. In his mid 30s a man's demeanor becomes more severe. He realizes he has certain goals he would like to accomplish and there is not much time left to achieve them.
6. Maturity --- Jupiter. By his mid 50s, having achieved what he can in his life, he has arrived at a position of authority in the community. He has gravitas and respect.
7. Old Age --- Saturn. By his late 60s, he starts to decline physically and mentally.
It is worth noting that this exact sequence (the Chaldean sequence) of the seven classical celestial objects follows the same paths as the Serpent of Wisdom coiled about the Tree of Life in the Hermetic Qabalah. This is the western analogue to the Hindu notion of Kundalini, which shares the same serpentine symbolism; both of which represent the process of the psychological maturation of man.
See Liber 777 Col. VII [0], Key Scales 3 through 9 inclusive. Also note that Key Scales 4 through 9 in Col. XCVII, excluding Saturn in old age, correspond to the "Ruach," "soul," "mind," or (one could say) "post-bicameral ego" of man.
I sat down and divided my own life into thematic epochs not long ago. Mine are split differently and more specifically to my own lived experience but I, too, arrived at the fact that I'm entering #5 in my mid-30s. Interesting coincidence!
I suppose that constantly changing and revising the language we use to refer to everything at least has the upside of allowing us to use the latest frontend frameworks every year.
I think you meant to reply to a different comment. I talked about dividing one's life up into periods based on experience and themes, not about linguistic revisionism or Javascript frameworks.
I've always thought that I'm just extremely late to mature. I'm 36 now and haven't really felt like I sort of "get" things until my early 30s. My 20s were full of learning experiences, failures, and addiction to doing whatever the hell I wanted. I got a puppy with my wife at 29 and it felt like my life was over. This all really makes a lot of sense to me. It also makes me wonder why the human body rewards young parents when their brains are just simply not fully finished cooking. I couldn't have imagined raising a child at 22 with the way I acted and how important freedom was to me. I would've simply been a miserable father.
Thousands of generations of parents had children much younger than today. I think we’re too worried about having everything perfect and de-risked these days. Also realize that parenting is what grew me up. I don’t think people are ever “ready”
It’s a lot more complicated financially for people. You used to not have to rely on dual incomes just to survive. Wealth inequity, housing affordability, and healthcare have all changed. This is why many are choosing to have kids later in life or not even at all because of those reasons and even the environment with climate change it’s a hard decision to make to bring new life into this world to suffer in it.
It's always been financially complicated for most people. The notion of a nuclear family prospering with a single income was mostly only possible for a limited slice of the US population during a few decades post-WWII. If you take a broader historical view that was a brief anomaly.
And it's really weird that anyone would think of something amorphous and uncertain like climate change as a reason not to have children. Even the unlikely worst case scenarios are still going to have less impact than the major wars and plagues that our species has lived through. Some people just lack a sense of perspective.
The family used to tax the grown or mostly-grown children in the form of farm labor. The government in many prior centuries taxed like 2-5% total and the rest was intrafamilial support.
Now it is flipped on its head. Everyone else's families tax your child for their social security, socializing the benefits while still you retain most the costs privately.
Thus tragedy of the commons situation. Why make that investment when you can just tax everyone else's kids and rest assured of your own social security, if they don't pay it you can just have them tossed in a cage or their assets seized, no need to have children yourself.
What you write is the mathematical fact of societies with flattened and upside down population pyramids and wealth transfers from young to old, not sure why you are downvoted.
I don’t know about that. My great grandmas and grandmas didn’t have lots of kids for the labor, they had them because they didn’t have a way to not have them. The grandpas might have though.
Coincidentally, my aunts did not have to have more than 2, and almost every single one had 2 kids.
It feels more like people [used to] have kids because they fucked and hadn't made the connection between that and having children. Them working at whatever you worked at was just necessary so you can help them grow, keep an eye on them, and pay for their upbringing.
> It’s a lot more complicated financially for. You used to not have to rely on dual incomes just to survive.
This is a toxic myth and acts as excuse to blame extrinsic factors that won't see change by the time you'll need them to, even if they can be fixed. Economic life today can be a lot more complicated for middle class professionals and skilled laborers, but they were only ever a fraction of the population in the first place, and families in tougher circumstances than today's middle class folk figured out how to navigate the cards they were dealt.
Emotionally, it legitimately sucks if you come from a comfy middle class background, and have a career that you believed should have been good enough to deliver the life you remember your parents or grandparents having and now doesn't seem to be. It feels unfair and disorienting, maybe. But the fact is that middle class lifestyle is gone for now, and if it does manage to get restored, that restoration will take a generation or two to come.
In the meantime, you have to figure out how to adapt and live that more modest and "more complicated financially" lifestyle. It can be done. Lots of people have been doing it for a long time. Along the way, you'll probably discover that lower class folk who never had the luxuries of your parents and grandparents in the first place were not seeing the world as something they had to "suffer in": they lived in homes, but often with more people in them. They traveled, but more infrequently, less glamorously, and with more pragmatic rationale like "visiting family" than "seeing the world". They had parties, but served simpler dishes on less fancy platters. They had "child care" when two parents worked, but got it by exchanging favors with family or neighbors instead of sending half a paycheck to a prestigious daycare. They laughed, they drank, they had kids. It's not a world of suffering to just not have some luxuries.
Yes and I think many of us remember childhood with rose-colored glasses. My 1970s "middle-class" parents had one car. My mom had to drive my dad to work and pick him up so that she could have a car during the day. When my brother and I were older and in school she worked part time. We lived in a simple ranch-style house. We almost never ate out or went anywhere out of town. Entertainment was going outside and finding something to do. Something like going to a movie was a rare treat. I think of it all fondly today, never with a sense that I had missed out on anything.
Today many young people would consider that life to be stifling, boring, or "suffering" but it was fine. Kids really don't care as long as they feel secure.
> Today many young people would consider that life to be stifling, boring, or "suffering" but it was fine.
There’s major inflation in middle class expectations. People earning median income are expecting a very upper-middle-class lifestyle. A house bigger than their parents owned with nicer finishes, two new cars, frequent travel, eating out constantly, etc.
My parents were on the upper end of middle class when I grew up and we lived in a home with carpet and laminate countertops. Now everyone wants hardwood floors and quartz and more square footage, too. A lot of folks are driving cars that cost a year of their take home pay. Cost of living is too high but expectations seem to have risen even faster.
This comment is harsh, but I think important to remember for a lot of people who don’t realize that yeah maybe the hand we’re dealt sucks, but you can find joy regardless. People dance, sang, drank and found life and love through all of history, it won’t stop now.
I suspect it's a cultural thing as well, with most (all?) wealthy cultures veering towards individualism and working. Whereas with previous generations, the grandparents and environment would be more involved in raising children and educating the new parents.
But I also feel like people grew up or had to grow up earlier back when. My parents were married, bought a house and had kids on the way by their mid 20's, when I was that age I had just about finished my education and started my first fulltime job, it'd take another decade to buy a house. Buying a house / getting a mortgage is a major commitment, and I think you'd get a big boost of adulthood / personal development if you do that in your mid 20's.
Early twenties family formation bring the norm was more of a postwar thing. The guys that came back from the war really did have to grow up fast (seeing your best friends getting blown up at 18 will do that), and they essentially had zero desire to have racous twenties filled with dating around and traveling and soul searching. They'd had enough chaos already, and were all extremely eager to settle down into a peaceful family life immediately upon their return home. The age of family formation has slowly crept back upward since then, and historically, in normal peaceful times it's usually been late twenties.
I agree. Having children does make ones priorities very cut and dry. I found it a lot easier to "adult" once I had children. My Friends, at the time often asked, "Is having children hard?" I often replied, in the beginning at least, "Children are easy, it's everything else that is hard."
Indeed, it is society's expectations that are hard.
I moved to the middle of nowhere after my kids were born. One day I let my child walk home "alone" from school, for the portion that is on our own property, and of course as soon as you do that a fucking Karen will randomly pop out of nowhere, and start interrogating the child. It is like clockwork. You could be 100 miles from civilization and as soon as you do something someone somewhere disagrees with, a fucking Karen (and even in a minivan, down rugged rural dirt roads, how the fuck did she get there?) will magically be there that exact second with a cell phone at the ready to call CPS. Thankfully I was able to stop her before that happened, as I was actually watching from behind the bushes, which in itself is shameful but saved my ass.
Exactly that. It's not an arbitrary dated threshold that lead to "growing up". It was the event of having kids. I'm still able to look at my current life through the lenses of a 25 year old me and hell, that looks bleak. But I can say with confidence that I'm content. Of course there are little things here and there but mostly everything is fine.
I only wonder if there is going to be a next stage, the magical "midlife crisis", where I'm going to question all my decisions up to that point and I'm curious how I'm going to handle that.
Maybe also because the life spent leading up to the child having was much different earlier - I mean society, jobs, distractions... I'm sure this has an important role as well in setting up expectations and kicking up responsibilities.
People that tell you you need to be ready are lying. The only thing you need to be able to sustain is feeding them, and the rest mostly works itself out. As it has for millennia.
The only reason this would not be the case is if you have specific requirements for the life of your child.
I would encourage you to look at the medical costs of children in the US. My children's braces alone will cost ~$7k-10k over the life of each of them, with insurance, and to do without will cause irreparable oral damage into adulthood. Certainly, this doesn't apply to other developed or developing countries, but to say "you just need to feed them" wildly differs from reality. You're just ignoring suffering at scale by saying "it'll work itself out." It doesn't, and I can provide pages of citations, grounded in data, to support this assertion. Also, having served a short stint as a Guardian ad Litem to advocate for children going through family court, I have anecdotal observations as to failure scenarios of failures to adequately provide for children, both materially and emotionally.
> The only reason this would not be the case is if you have specific requirements for the life of your child.
If humans could do without 2000 years ago, if the kids in africa can do without now, then clearly the same is true for your own children. God knows they don’t need $7000 braces, which are unaffordable to 99% of the US population too.
Maybe the "rewarding the young" in the top comment is from the genes of savanna humans when they collected fruit, hunted and didn't care about expensive medical procedures because the latter simply didn't exist?
Perhaps. Genetics doesn't reward rationality, empathy, suffering reduction desire and self awareness, etc, only biological line go up and reproduction fitness. A bug to patch.
> I've always thought that I'm just extremely late to mature. I'm 36 now and haven't really felt like I sort of "get" things until my early 30s.
I'm 43 and I'm still not convinced that I'm not three kids stacked in a trench coat.
I remember being 33 and buying a house and thinking "Someone call the cops, this banker is letting a child sign mortgage papers".
When I put on nice clothes for a fancy dinner, I feel like I'm cosplaying as a functional and responsible adult, despite having a great career (Staff-level engineer that will likely be promoted to Principal in a few months). I fly First Class and feel out of place, like First Class is reserved for people that have their shit together.
Someone said that this feeling goes away when your same-gendered parent dies, but my dad passed in 2019 and it's still pervasive.
"Everything before 40 is research" I once heard, and every day, I find it to be more true.
I'm a great parent because it is what is necessary and my children had no choice or consent in existing, but I also tell anyone younger that unless they are absolutely sure they want kids and are ready for decades of suck, don't do it [1] [2] [3]. Live your best life, be true to yourself, find your passion and joy exploring and being curious; one can do this without children. If one needs kids to mature or become a better human, find a therapist first. Also, maturity is optional. You have to grow old, you don't have to grow up (take on responsibility unnecessary to take care of yourself, broadly speaking). Religious beliefs aside (potential reincarnation and whatnot), enjoy life, you only get one run through your part of the timeline. Don't waste it on the expectations or belief systems of others.
[1] (lack of support systems, both social and familial, ~$380k in 2025 dollars to raise a child 0-18 in the US not including daycare and college, etc; n=1, ymmv)
If it makes you feel any better, that's about the age I started functioning mostly like an adult. It started around 30 but took a good decade to take hold.
Just because people can physically, biologically have children does not automatically imply that they can - or should - be the only ones to raise the children. Children used to be a community effort; the US strayed from this a long time ago. Of course it would be much harder to raise a kid at 22 (or 16, or) than 40!
Yet our physiology is tuned to become parents at 16 rather than 40.
I think nature doesn't care whether it's easier or better or whatever. It only cares for _more_ children to survive until their own time to have children.
you just restated what i said. perhaps i could have been more clear.
by whatever mechanism, humans can breed at a much younger age than they can feasibly take care of their offspring. Up until maybe 75-100 years ago, "it takes a village" wasn't just a trite canard, it was actually how you raised children. I just finished watching a youtuber explain that raising children after having had to move away from your extended family because of affordability is suck and "maybe that's why young people are waiting to have kids, because there's no village anymore."
We used to have grandparents around and extended family. Think about how different life was 50,100 or, 500 years ago. Not enough time for evolution to respond
And we have to guess that evolution didn't "respond".
Sooooo, we have some lack of fit, evolved over 10s of thousands of years for life as it was then and for the last ~5000 years in selected cultures faced with something quite different, powerful governments and armies, metals, weapons, tools, sailing ships, agriculture, domestic animals, ....
Supposedly for those 10s of thousands of years in parts of Europe people formed tribes and had some communal living, that is, in a long house, maybe 50-100 yards long 10-20 yards wide, with walls and roof forming a semi-circle. So, women and children got their socialization, security, lessons, skills, not merely from a couple, a bonded husband and wife living just as a couple, but from the tribe as a whole. I.e., now, for a lot for a person to learn and have, including shelter, we are depending heavily just on the mother and father.
>At around the age of 32 the strongest overall shift in trajectory is seen. Life events such as parenthood may play a role in some of the changes seen, although the research did not explicitly test this. “We know that women who give birth, their brain changes afterwards,” said Mousley. “It’s reasonable to assume that there could be a relationship between these milestones and what’s happening in the brain.”
>From 32 years, the brain architecture appears to stabilise compared with previous phases, corresponding with a “plateau in intelligence and personality” based on other studies. Brain regions also become more compartmentalised.
--
I felt this 32-year-old shift, but later (now 43). I joke with friends that I was a bone-head like most males until about 30. Joke yes, but feels right.
Prior to 30ish, I was more insecure. Lacking in emotional intelligence. My conclusions from my experience, not projections from what I've read about that time.
My career and relationship history reflect that switch-flip in a way. Only during the second half of my 30s did I begin to feel more secure and more confident in my career, despite not achieving some outrageous senior position or level of income. That career is now in a better and more measured place - in which I recognize what I do well and what I don't do well, and don't beat myself to a pulp for not having "it"
Only in my 30s did I robustly embrace the power of compromise in friendships and relationships. Now I'm near 10 years married (and happy, most of it, let's be real) with two wonderful kids.
And now I'm much capable of reasoning with my anxities, emotions, and insecurities. Do I still ruminate? Yes. Do I still react? Yes. But I know how to redraw situations to reset my in-moment feelings and/or avoid unecessary negative action.
I don’t know about any of this “era” stuff but I do know and believe in just how much becoming a parent has changed me. It completely overhauled the calculus on what’s important in life. It’s given me a very clear main quest line, relegating all kinds of things I used to think were important to the “side quests” category.
And it has had positive side effects too. It’s incredibly useful to be uninterested in promotions and raises. To want to work less, not be paid more. It makes it easy to say and do the right thing rather than the self-preserving thing or self-promoting thing. It’s kind of ironic because I think that makes me better at my job.
It’s quite calming to have such a clear identity. There really is a peacefulness to knowing, at all times, where my compass points.
Kids rewired my brain too. Definitely not a perfect operator at all times, but I have - as you stated - a clear intention on how I'm spending my day.
Contrast to 20s and even some of 30s - definitely pre-kids but also pre-marriage - when I worked a lot more and thought that work was my most important north star.
Try this. Think hard about what you think "it" is. Is it CEO? Making $1M a year? Making $5M a year? Healthy family? Etc.
I think what you realize in the brainstorm is you have some of "it" already. But something's missing.
So, then ask this question: can you change your situation to attain that missing thing? If so, how? And if you aren't doing that, why? Ask why again. A third time.
Inaction is a very easy way to get stuck overthinking "it" when you might get that thing just by changing/trying your situation to the best of your ability.
I am articulating what seems linear but in reality its messy and not very linear. It's work and it's trial and error.
But more than ever, I'm ok and comfortable with the construct of my life. I don't make anywhere near what I hoped to make. I'm not an executive. I don't now think that I NEED (and am missing) those two things to fufill my life. (those are examples, I have others)
It was a week-long silent meditation (Vipassana), focusing on "Mindful Awareness".
It was at a point in my life where I was able to do it (and I'm grateful), but I have a kid in kindergarten now, so it'd be hard to convince my wife that it's important enough that she should single-handedly manage for a week.
Overall, I think the major benefit for me, was that it bootstrapped this mental model:
* Our minds are constantly spawning processes, and "learning how to start + keep running a debug process" is an invaluable tool for gathering data.
* Once you've gathered a reasonable amount of data, you will start to spot patterns. One of the teachers at this retreat expressed it as "wisdom will arise"
I have a long way to go, but I'm grateful every day that I have this foundation.
In an ideal world, it'd be nice to do this again, to compare where I am today (IIRC, it's been ~8 years).
For what it's worth, I think recognizing patterns and then stepping away to say "execute this way, or choose another way" is a huge huge skill. Not all past patterns make sense for current/future situations!
As the authors mentioned, ~30 years is the age many people have kids, and it is already well known that female brain changes after giving birth, for example. The authors didn't research if being a parent can explain a part of the difference (and also if parent brains are any different than childless people brains).
I'm personally curious about this: I'm slightly above 30, I observed significant changes in my behavior recently... and I became a parent this year.
Just a heads up, the female brain changes are reverted 1 year after giving birth (that's what the health professionals told us).
They also discovered that the male brain changes too.
I felt way more empathetic during the first year my son and my daughter were born, but I feel like I lost that part of me. I kinda miss it
I realize that sounds silly but it really does work. A lot of emotional behavior is muscle like and setting aside intentional practice will lead to longterm change.
1. Set a trigger to engage in the practice like "When I hang out with my kids immediately after the work day"
2. Do the practice. Try to be empathetic to your kids small daily issues. At first, like all newish things this will feel silly but over time it will feel natural.
Obviously try to be genuine. If your kids plight of someone snatching their favorite toy or whatever doesn't move you, don't force it. Just try to practice visualizing yourself in their place. Don't go "fake empathetic kid tone".
I agree, it makes sense. The thing that changed is my initial emotion: frustration because of expectations, then I think about it and realize my expectation is wrong and usually apologize.
While during their first year, my initial reaction was usually the correct one. I felt I could "read" them better.
Are you insinuating that childless people never fully mature? Because as a childless person I've noticed that a lot of the distance I felt with my friends with kids disappeared as soon as their kids were grown. Essentially we're all childless now, and think of the world in the same terms.
It's not a given, but a personal anecdote is that there simply hasn't been a situation in my life prior to kids that required such a sustained focus on the happiness and wellbeing of another person before kids. It really is a type of growth that would be dare say impossible to duplicate without kids. But of course, I could say that I've never had to live through war and don't think that I could really say that I've built the fortitude that that experience gives you, so the point might be moot. Just to say, kids really give you a perspective, that choosing to be childless does not, while being childless is a perspective that all people with kids got.
> It really is a type of growth that would be dare say impossible to duplicate without kids.
Perhaps, but as a childless adult who had to take over my parents' affairs as their physical and cognitive health declined, I marvel at the wonderful hits of dopamine parents get as they watch their children grow. It's an adorable perspective on life that I didn't get to share as my mother gradually forgot who she was.
> while being childless is a perspective that all people with kids got
This is a naive view of the world. Being childless is a qualitatively different experience for those in different walks of life. A childless financially unstable young adult will have a very different experience than that of a childless financially stable middle-aged adult.
I mean, yeah at the end we're all individuals living qualitatively different lives. However, you can get a very close approximation by say dropping your kids off at their grandparents. Even during babysitting, you get nothing close to the experience of having to constantly reprioritize towards another that depends on you and giving them the tools to become independent adults capable of doing it themselves and going into the world, at least by default you don't. I feel like caveating that the human experience will be different and there are a thousand ways to add nuance to the conversation but the generalization definitely holds.
i think its incredibly difficult for a male to truly become a man without children. it is very easy and seductive to be a manchild forever, whereas society seems to force women to grow up. And its certainly possible for a father to remain a manchild, but i think without that kind of responsibility and focus of having to mentor and keep another human alive its difficult to fully mature.
I don't think it's as-different-as-it-used-to-be for men and women now but I agree with the sentiment.
Becoming an engaged father shifted my perspective on who I am, changed opinions on societal matters, and made me feel like the person I was -- despite, from a young age, spending non-trivial amounts of time on contemplating morality and society and considering myself as a youth to be "mature for my age" -- was a selfish git.
I went from "c'mon what's the harm"-ing naysayers to "HEY think big picture! LONG term!" on SO many aspects of life.
The man I was would not get along with the father I am.
Your statement won't be popular, but I agree that, statistically-speaking, it's an overt intellectual "next stage".
> Many of the parents I know are deeply and profoundly unhappy.
As a childless person, I believe this is a societal problem, not a biological one. We've broken apart the tribe and made just two people (at most) responsible for most of child rearing. And worse, we pretend the parents are directly responsible for a child's safety and development at all times, even though we all know some kids are just way easier or harder to raise, right out of the box.
Smart take. Parenting used to be more communal in some ways. Now it's up to two (maybe) working parents to deal with kids.
43-yr-old parent of 2. I love them. They're amazing. But there are so many challenging moments. So many.
In those deep/profound moments of stress, I try to remind myself that the only thing I really need to do is stay calm. Allowed to have emotions, course.
But to execute some level of calm really helps resolve so much of what you experience.
Maybe they are unhappy but on the flip side, most people with children will tell you that if you haven't been a parent you don't know what happiness is. The happiness of being a parent is just unimaginable, cannot compare with anything else.
Strangely enough, I think I do understand. As near as I can tell, life's two greatest pleasures are
1. Love (both loving and being loved)
2. Voluntary hardship
I mean, what is parenthood if not love and voluntary hardship?
On the other hand, I think you are describing your subjective experience. I've talked with some "one-and-done" parents who deeply love their child, but wouldn't want another one if you paid them.
Parenthood being the most intense happiness possible is not my subjective experience. It is probably the most obvious fact in the world, literally if it wasn't true human societies would be radically different.
Interesting, given the decline in birth rate that seems to be the inevitable consequence of widespread prosperity.
"Happiness" is one of those words that has thousands of different definitions, so I would frame it this way: Parents almost always describe their children as the greatest joy in their lives, but (in America at least) they also generally express more dissatisfaction and frustration with their lives than childless people.
The authors charted human brain and divided it into "eras" where they saw significant changes based on age. Major life events can affect brain structure, and becoming a parent is one of the most important adult life events. Becoming a parent in early 30s is common. Just these facts combined mean that being in early 30s correlates with brain changes somehow. The authors explicitly mention that they know about this, and that they didn't control for this it yet.
Back to your question, I never said anything about maturing. It is a well-known fact, that female brain changes after childbirth. There is also research that suggests that first-time fathers brain changes too. This doesn't necessarily mean becoming more mature.
So .. the thing is, this is a descriptive account of the biology of the brain. However, I sometimes see the "discourse machine" building narratives around pushing the age of majority later, and I suspect this will get used in ammunition for normative purposes.
Just when the "brain doesn't finish developing until 25" nonsense has finally waned from the zeitgeist, here comes a new pile of rubbish for people to latch onto. Not that the research itself is rubbish, but how they name/describe the phases certainly is. The "adolescent" and "adult" phases don't have any correspondence to what we normally think of as those developmental periods. That certainly wont stop anyone from using this as justification for whatever normative claim they want to make though. It's just irresponsible.
Seems a stretch to use this as the basis of any radical change like raising the voting age to 32 (although maybe it supports reducing the minimum presidential age from 35 to 32!), but it does perhaps suggest looking at what kind of soft-paternalistic structures might help “adolescents” make better life choices. It is a little absurd that we expect an 18 year old to navigate the world with the same competence as a 40 year old.
I think it's weird having an arbitrary minimum age to be president. I would probably never vote for someone in their 20s anyway, but I don't think there should be a legal barrier. In my country (Brazil) it's the same age, but we usually just copy US in think kind of policy. I wonder how common it's in the rest of the world.
I'm more bothered by the geriatric politicians in various democracies than I am that you're missing out on some amazing politician in their twenties.
The UK has a practical minimum of 18 for Prime Minister (technically there is no minimum but practically there is) but realistically never elects a PM under 40.
For British Sovereign there is also no limit, any particularly young Sovereign has effectively delegated to a council of regents historically. In practice this is also unlikely - although in theory of course we are two untimely deaths from a 12 year old taking the throne.
> It is a little absurd that we expect an 18 year old to navigate the world with the same competence as a 40 year old.
I don't think it is. 18 year olds are smarter than most people give them credit for. They probably know math better than most 40 year olds just given their adjacency to math practice in school.
Life skills and wise decision making are very hard to judge and most people will disagree on them though. I don't think 18 year olds make all the worst life choices and 40 year olds make far better ones, but I also can't really prove my statement, nor could you prove a counterfactual statement. It's hard to prove what life skills are valuable and who is good at them.
Math is at least important in many life skills most would consider important imo. Like budgeting, financial planning, retirement planning, investing, etc.
I've become an advocate of restricting the voting age to 25-54. It's basically a reversion to the property holder rule, but shifted to production. The people paying for everything would get to make the decisions.
I'm not in favor of restricting at all the people they can vote for. Let them elect an Iraqi toddler to be US president for all I care; if they're the ones taking care of us, they probably have a good reason.
> The people paying for everything would get to make the decisions.
Just as a thought experiment: what if the threshold for having a vote was tied to paying a positive amount of personal income tax, and the weight of each vote was proportional to the amount paid? How skewed might such a system be? My first reaction is that in countries with high inequality, the wealthy would disproportionately influence the outcome. However, on the other hand, if people avoid or minimize paying taxes, they would lose the power of a weighted vote, which theoretically could incentivize paying taxes in full.
I think tying it to pension age would make a very interesting dynamic. I can see a lot of incentives and alignments around the issue would instantly shift around, and I think for the healthier and will incentivize finding the true ideal pension age.
You're uneasy because you're a frequent advocate for policy positions that most people tend to be weary of once they've accrued some amount of life experiences (although the experiences and speed of acquisition differ from individual to individual) hence anything that casts shade upon the decision making of the youngest adults is a potential threat to your goals, if only a theoretical and circuitous one at that. If such policy positions do not survive life experience are they worth advocating for? 100yr ago people has been treated by the world around them as adults for at least half a decade by the time they got to vote at 21. Why not do the same today?
Regardless, specific policy implications are totally beside the point.
The problem with this "well you're not akshually an adult until X" stuff is that it is basically a re-hash of long out of fashion "women are hysterical, blacks have big muscles and small brains" type crap from 200yr ago that was used as a justification to continue preventing these people from finding their own way in life unbounded, consequences and all. First off, the logic is flawed and self referential, of course housewives and slaves couldn't adult, they never had the opportunity to gain the experience, same with 22yo college kids you're measuring today. Removing the racism and sexism by simply applying it to everyone doesn't change the flawed logic. But that's not even the big problem. The big problem is that at a societal level you're reducing the number of person-years available for full adult capacity work and productivity. You can solve this with coercion (state, social norms, etc), but people are less productive when they're not working for themselves so you're still handicapping your own society. A society that does not encourage people to develop and become adult and achieve and produce at full capacity as quickly as possible (which is likely a different timetable in an agrarian society than an industrial one, details left as exercise for the reader) WILL eventually be outcompeted by one that does, though a head start may buy time.
This is why you've gotta actually think about what you believe morally speaking at an early age and then stick to it. I don't vote, drink, or drive myself, and never will, but I hope I will always defend the rights of the youth to.
I don't know if it was adulhood, but after 30 I started feeling calmer & more adult than before.
There was no special event in my life that kickstarted this, it was tge beginning of a more mature way to look at things & people. I started to see some repeated events & behaviours that I had already experienced and this also contributed to have a more tempered way to manage things.
As you age of course you still face unknown things, but you star to see that supposed new things rhyme with things you already know.
The stats warrant some caution, though. The main finding is based on figure 4 [1] and I wouldn't be surprised if the number and location of these 'eras' varied a lot if the authors use 40,000 people instead of 4,000.
Especially the last era - over 83 - is suspicious. With 4000 people and ages 1-90, how certain can we be about this? But I don't want to cast unjustified doubt, I'm sure they did the math.
Thanks for sharing the longitudinal brain-development framework from the Cambridge study. However, I don’t see strong direct practical value for an individual or educator in the life-stage breakdown (~birth–9, ~9–32, ~32–66, ~66–83, ~83+) beyond broad observation.
In contrast, frameworks from learning theorists such as Vygotsky, Piaget, Bloom, Gagné, Maslow, Bruner and Kolb provide more explicit actionable guidance for parents/teachers (e.g., scaffolding learning in the “zone of proximal development”, designing spiral curricula, applying experiential learning cycles).
My perspective guides me to prefer the pragmatic actionable frameworks. That help someone guiding children (or students) set norms, limits and scaffold growth in daily practice.
I do like the conversation that's cropping up here though from this article. A lot of lovely self-reflection.
I question the correlation and causality. I wonder how much of these eras are caused by brain physiology and genetics versus changes in the behavior with age, which can even be caused by external sociological factors, for example. Or a mix of both.
> From 32 years, the brain architecture appears to stabilise compared with previous phases, corresponding with a “plateau in intelligence and personality”.
For example, here - is this *caused* by genetics, or is it because in today's society this is about the age when you have finished your schooling and first working experiences and have simply less to learn?
I know my examples simplify the reasoning, but the question about causality still stands, I think.
Yeah I could distinctly feel my brain shifting into its adult era over the last couple of years (I'm 31)
It was kind of odd. I'm more serious now (but at the same time.. less?). I'm way more easily able to focus on what actually matters in this life. (In saying that, I think it's more likely that my brain has finally decided what's important... in a way I feel like a passenger)
I have the exact same feeling. Turning 30 was like flipping a switch for me. Since then, I've even felt like I've become more intelligent, especially in math. It's like everything suddenly clicked. I struggled with math throughout my entire school life, but now that I've gone back to college, I'm amazed by how easily I grasp concepts. I've recently taken on challenges that I always thought were exclusive to "smart people," like systems programming in Rust and Zig or building compilers.
This study seems like finding a way to quantify the well known and then twisting it to make a good headline.
People don't grow up until they need to. Of course you're gonna see college educated rich westerners delay whatever mental markers you're looking at. And likewise people who "stay active" seem to stave off the mental decline of old age.
Exactly this. With a comfy life, you can mature later. The more hardships and adversity one must overcome the faster that maturation happens. Particularly so when the hardships put one on an abnormal path.
Losing a close relative or a job is normal adversity that everyone will go through but not everyone has. Going through those other things while having a different philosophy or life ethos than those around you, thus also causing you to prioritize and pursue different things in life adds a different layer of challenge. That causes you to have to figure stuff out on your own and thus contributes to maturing in a different manner and at a different rate.
I am 55 but my brain tells me I am 35 or 40. This is not a "crisis of the 50s'", I did not change anything in the way I behave, it is just that I somehow stopped changing my behavior when I was around 35-40. This was not intended and it is only now that I realized it.
When I look at pictures from this time, I am very similar. I aged of course but the clothes and behavior is the same. The interests are the same. My opinions and overall maturity is the same. It does not mean that they are great, just that they do not change.
I wonder when the next change will be, when I will look at the past and say "I changed"
So a while back, I was interviewing business people still active in their 80s and 90s -- as part of a very intriguing project that got cut short but did produce some fascinating notes. I remember asking one 95-year-old guy still serving (competently) on a bank board if there was anything that he did better now than when he was in his 60s.
His answer: "I'm a better writer."
The Cambridge research cited in this study categorizes late-life changes in brain function as nothing but declining capability, all the way down. My guess is they are mostly right. But I'm intrigued by the notion that some of that elder erosion might lead to new clarity about how everything fits together.
I’m in my early 40s and went through a really intense, almost midlife crisis type period at the start of this year that turned out to be surprisingly transformative. I have come out of it feeling more patient, focused, confident, kind, and much better at honest self‑reflection. It’s just one anecdote, but my working theory is that people hit these developmental turning points at different times; some earlier, some later. studies like this make me wonder how much of that is brain wiring catching up with the lives we have lived so far
I definitely felt older back in my early thirties, but I feel like I got younger now in my mid 40s. I think it's because my kid is in college and doesn't need me as much as they used to. Plus, I'm debt free and make enough money to not worry about the cost of going out.
In my late 20s/early 30s I was under water on my house, not getting paid enough, and had a small child. It was clear that I had to step up and "be a man." Which, I intuitively think had a bigger effect on me than simply getting older.
At age 58, going on 59, I'm feeling an alarming decline in physical (luckily not mental at this point) ability. Sure enough, men have relatively abrupt aging events at about 44 and 60. I hope that's what it is and it's not still coming and making things even more pathetic.
So I have, on average, another 7 years until I'm officially a typical old man? Great, just great.
But I can vouch for the earlier milestone. I grew up as a socially challenged geek with nobody to tell me that I'm just wired differently and it's not my fault, I didn't somehow not do my homework, that I'm not like the cool kids. Right around age 30 I had this epiphany... this is how I am! Instead of always looking for someone or something to teach me how I think I should be... just embrace what, in fact, I am. If I'm a geek, then just live my life best as a geek. The resulting increase in self-confidence did help socially. So just another prerogrammed "adulting" threshold? Maybe.
Support for part of this from another source. I've read through the collected letters of many famous intellectuals (just for hobby), and I've noticed a common dramatic shift in personality starting around age 28-30. People become more attentive to the needs of others and their own role in a network of social responsibilities. It's no longer "me, me, me".
Anecdotally I’ve felt this shift over the past few years. I am 33 and have always been a huge proponent of personal growth, change, pushing yourself to be better. In the past few years Ive felt the opposite urge, an urge to accept myself, flaws and all, as the hand I’ve been dealt and I must merely play that hand, not focus so much on what-ifs, etc. Perhaps this is my brain solidifying.
There is wisdom both in trying to change what you can, and realizing that you maybe can't change everything. If you've been trying to change things, by 33 you may have a fair idea of what you in fact cannot change.
29 and feeling the same. It's kind frustrating and freeing at the same time. I feel like I'm making less progress, but at the same time don't feel the pressure to make progress.
I'd also like to add anecdotally that a lot of people develop burnout at that age, probably because they keep pushing themselves and/or get sucked into their own enthusiasm / passion instead of set limits and the like. But then, I also think people get less resilient to stress and the like after 30, less able to compartimentalize or bounce back quickly.
What you end up getting is people ~10 years into an exciting career where suddenly they can't perform or cope as well as they used to. But they can also be in a pretty senior position by then and be pushed out of their comfort zone.
True, I think this happened to my partner, she had to face the hard limits on her working style and therefore had to shift careers. Thankfully I changed careers 6 years ago preemptive of burnout, etc so I'm still growing skills-wise and motivated by that challenge
> based on the brain scans of nearly 4,000 people aged under one to 90, mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives.
That is an absurdly small sample size to make such a conclusion.
It seems this age range could at least partly be culturally attributed. In modern industrialized life, many people don't have to "grow up" until a later age. At the risk of generalizing, people have more support from family, friends, and society at large.
Is the forming of those neurons based on some natural law, or is that people just haven't had to live the experiences that do so until their 30's nowadays?
As far as I know, forming neurons isn't something that "just happens". It happens due to catalysts in life. In pre-modern society, and indeed most likely in under-industrialized nations today, those catalysts, those experiences, would happen earlier. As others mentioned, there is a clear correlation with the typical age in which modern society gets married, settles down, and has kids.
I wonder what that era age would have been 200+ years ago.
You require "statistical calculations" to support the notion that a sample size of 4000 people in two countries, two of the most modernized and affluent nations on the planet at that, is too small for a study to conclude how the human brain works across billions of people alive today across the world, Much less in human history? How about common sense?
Ok, let's do some math.
Approximately 108 to 117 billion humans are estimated to have lived in human history. Let's take 110 billion (the low end) for our purposes.
4,000 / 110,000,000,000 = 0.000003636%
Let's just go with people living today, which is approximately 8 billion (the low end).
4000 / 8 billion = 0.00005%
Not sure if that covers the "statistical" part of your requirement, but it covers the "calculations" part.
I myself would be hesitant to make claims about knowing how neurons and brains and ages work based on a sample size of pessimistically 0.000003636% or even optimistically 0.00005% of the human population and their brains.
Not sure why this is downvoted.
The authors themselves note that parenthood could be a catalyst for the change at 30-- in previous centuries, when parenthood happened much earlier, why could it not affect the brain's timeline? This study is simply descriptive of a particular dataset, a collection of snapshots at a particular time and place. Certainly the brain is elastic and responsive to external conditions.
What I noticed is that the 4000 samples are all from England and the U.S. Replicating this study with a greater geographical and socio-cultural diversity would be very useful in supporting or expanding these results.
I do have felt similar shift around that age, but I wonder if it is due to reaching certain points in career where you are put into more leading position and have more confidence in what you do even if you don't have children? Easy to go into horoscope style confirmation bias here though.
Nonetheless I am never going to stop saying I still feel like I am 16. Just more confident 16.
at some point when i was 32 it hit me: "ive accepted the idea of giving up perceived freedom and having a kid" (adoption or old-fashioned-style)
my spouse is 3 years younger and when i told her my conclusion i added that i feel no urgency, only that something shifted
this was 3 years ago and now my spouse is 32 and said the same thing to me, someone who previously had NEVER wanted to go through the process of childbirth[0]. had to remind her that we had the same convo when i was her age
incredible that shift has been pinned down with research
[0] 10 years of big hospital nursing can be like "scared straight" for pregnancy
This is interesting and alarming to me because judging by the changes in my life I appear to have entered the age-66 phase more than a decade and a half early despite remaining intellectually curious and physically fit enough.
In the last year or so I have begun to adjust my life expectations. My father was in his nineties when he died, but I no longer believe I will reach my seventies.
Things like this only tend to confirm my sense that I am neurologically ageing at a rate that is unusual.
Bizarre. This says that most children are had by adolescents. And that they’ve always been mostly had by adolescents. Maybe this is an example of culturally-driven development? Or does this explain why there’s so many bad parents?
I think that environment is probably also a factor. My only parent died when I was a teen and I had to grow up really fast. I got a lot of things wrong but my brain did not have any other options either way.
Then when you're not on the era you're supposed to be it's called a "regression" or "skipping stages". People are very stubborn to classify development in terms of age or time.
People really miss the point about why military recruiting occurs so early at 18. The brain is not fully developed yet. At 18, people have not learned right from wrong, love, death, loss, true responsibility to someone else. Sure, someone at 18 have gone through these things and it hopefully helps guide them in life, but it may not penetrate the brain as a life lesson yet. The brain is basically a blur up until your thirties, because you don't have any of these experiences to compare to until you encounter them again.
That's why as you get older you start to understand what the heck is happening in your life, because you finally have multiple experiences to compare to. Then you can finally understand what is meant to be traumatic and what is right and wrong. The first time you went through something you were basically numb to the experience.
Wasn't it 25 that the prefrontal cortex matured and people could be considered adults? We will have to infantilize people until their 30s now?
The problem with such reports (the studies themselves method-wise etc are in general fine I guess, but how the results are interpreted and disseminated is the issue) is that unless we find some specific correlations with behavioural and such measures, it makes no sense to give these kind of meanings such as "adolescence", adult mode", behavioural/mental/cognitive matureness or whatever cultural or other norms one may think a "mature/adult person" should abide to. Especially since these abstract topological measures, while interesting, are not that trivially linked with real outcomes in a causal sense, and instead of eg simply reflecting rather environmental or other changes in a person's life.
I haven't read this paper, but for the "25" paper, it was a longitudinal study that stopped observing people at 25. The result "brain continues to develop up to at least age 25" was misinterpreted as "stops developing at age 25" by media & social media.
I have similar concerns about reporting on this paper - feels ripe for pop-sci misunderstandings.
I've always found it interesting that laws are set by politics to allow privileges at certain ages (16, 18, 21), but car rental companies - whose motives are more purely data-driven - won't rent to anyone under 25.
I'm certainly not advocating withholding suffrage until 25, but driving... the data is very strong that it would save lives.
> We will have to infantilize people until their 30s now?
People already pick and choose who they feel sympathy for and give a pass to on the basis of their personal experiences, belief system, and social proximity. Think of how many, for instance, ridicule politicians for being too saintly and enabling or mean and without empathy then give their friends and family a pass for the exact same behavior. They'll get angry with celebrities for things that they allegedly did then shrug off a driver running a red light and nearly killing them because they "don't take things personally". Addicts are a blight on society until it's somebody's child or brother or sister in which case they just need help. Et cetera ad infinitum.
People (you and I included) are fickle. This changes nothing.
I had kids and finally settled into a career at 33. It certainly forced me into adult mode after this.
I just met up with my Brother-in-law and his friends for our yearly gathering. All of them are in their 30s and none of them are in what I would consider 'adult mode'.
They are all un-married/no kids, barely scraping by, partying every weekend/wasting money on weed and booze. Certainly no careers (mostly retail, some unemployed and still living with parents).
I wonder if these numbers will change with the new generation, because so many are not having kids or getting married.
There's definitely a transition associated with becoming a parent - that is well documented.
When I think about my friends and friends of my relatives, what GP described appears to be the norm - also among the educated and in the upper-middle class. They often identify themselves as "dog parents".
I know plenty of people that had kids in their 20's - still didn't 'grow up' until their 30's. Just because they're not partying anymore doesn't mean they still don't act like adolescents when navigating complicated situations they're in (because they're had kids before they were necessarily 'ready') compared with someone in their 30's. I would argue that taking away that time in your late 20's where you can more easily make mistakes and try new things (while also having a bit of stability in terms of money) before having kids will lead to less maturity rather than more long term.
>Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
It's just the popular wisdom these days. Companies tend to deprioritize hiring engineers in their 40s, especially if their overspecialized. At face value, Companies want high-energy 20-somethings that they can mold into their specialty. More likely, they know that 20-somethings expect a far smaller salary.
Semantics sure. But adult mode starts most likely at 13.
Early 30s is mid-life mode.
Why? Because time and time again research shows we should treat people 13 and up as adults. Even when they get some extra years of youth-judgement in court, and we put 18/21 in place as lawful adult...
Once again armchair evolutionary psychologists are ahead of science. Science dismisses the amateur sociologists online who share anecdotes and observations, but they should really try to test these theories.
There is nothing to engage with. I think tersely. Some researchers could learn.
I find it annoying that a large part of research is the obsession of taking a perfectly smooth, gradual phenomenon and introducing artificial boundaries, sometimes even with formal labels. And then we spend the next few decades rolling it back as we inevitably find out that reality is nuanced, and the arbitrary categorization is more of a distraction than a meaningful tool. But I'm sure this fantastical finding was great for somebody's career.
Meaningful categorization is a necessary and foundational aspect of science and understanding in general. We categorize matter into categories such a solid, liquid, and gas, because this has meaningful consequences beyond merely temperature.
If you think the categories in this article are useless, you're going to need to justify that. Aging is well-known to encompass phases with nonlinear transformations, such as puberty or menopause.
So what you find "annoying" is actually a building block of science. And while disagreeing in a particular case is certainly valid, you're going to have to either present evidence to the contrary, or else find weaknesses in the particular methodology used.
So there's plenty to engage with. But you're not doing it, so your comments are just snark with no value.
Except the five eras in the article are based scientific observations of how the brain changes overtime where’s yours are based on having a snide attitude.
It took me until my mid-30s to feel like I had crossed a threshold in processing grief and trauma from my late teen years. I was capable of adult behavior long before then, but my concept of the world and how I fit into it (or don't) was still childlike in many ways on a fundamental level.
Like most such things, I'd expect this to be a spectrum, and I may be somewhat of a late bloomer. Regardless, I have a theory that there is somewhat of a protective effect operating here. Believing in a simpler reality which involved future wish fulfillment for me - however unrealistic it was - may have helped me survive. Coming to acceptance of what I see as a more accurate but far bleaker perspective required me to grow strong enough to sustain my will to live despite that perspective.
Biggest lesson learned: I could not do it without at least one other person (or more) who I trust almost 100% with all of myself. Realizing that going it alone is futile is definitely part of what I consider becoming an adult, and it can take a long time to fully accept that.
> Biggest lesson learned: I could not do it without at least one other person (or more) who I trust almost 100% with all of myself.
Its strange. The biggest lesson I learned was almost the opposite: I learned that the meaning of life has nothing to do with other people or their estimation of me. It has more to do with who you are when there is nobody else around. Other people often act as a sort of fun house mirror that distort and reflect back a false image.
Learning to be happy alone and seeing through the pleasant lies is absolutely vital to becoming an adult.
On the contrary, developing a deep relationship with someone very different than myself (different religions, native languages and countries, socioeconomic class, race, gender) has shown me the lies I've been telling myself all my life.
It's easy to identity lies and hypocrisy in others. But the brain has all sorts of tricks to prevent it from looking inwards; at least for me it prefers feeling rewarded to deep self-criticism. Finding someone who sees me and will happily call me on my assumptions, conditioning, and BS has been a great gift.
I'm not sure I'd have phrased it as "lies I've been telling myself", but I have a similar experience from a cross-cultural relationship, from mid 20s to early 50s. We had to work through conflicts more explicitly, with a lot more communication. Many things may be misunderstanding due to divergent assumptions, expectations, and even different body language signals.
I guess the "lie" exposed here is the way people can automatically believe they're seeing the truth of a social situation. It is easy to project false experience and motivation onto others. A more truthful approach recognizes windows of uncertainty around many encounters.
I think this applies to basic single-culture contexts too. Even in the same culture or the same family, we don't really know exactly what another person is experiencing.
Many seem cocksure that their social read is correct, and any grief is the other party's deliberate action. It takes a certain detachment to realize that your misreading of a situation may well be the genesis of a negative spiral, rather than a justified response...
The social aspect is a part of it, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. So much of how we fundamentally see the world- the role of the individual vs society, luck vs skill vs determination as being important for success, what defines a 'happy' life- is determined by our own conditioning. By seeing someone else's perspective you start to appreciate that there aren't many 'first principles' in life.
Take a simple example, marriage. If you're a Millennial you were probably brought up to think marriage is for love, and should produce kids. Depending on your orientation and enculturation, the wife is 'supposed' to stay at home or 'supposed' to have a career. We don't question the basic outlines of what a marriage looks like, unless you happen to be a part of the polyamory or fundamental religious communities, in which case you probably take those standards as being the ideal.
My husband's entire family had arranged marriages. Seeing their relationships gave me a new perspective on what a marriage can be, and forced us to be intentional about what parts of our culture we bring along. It's not that we're doing marriage 'better' than anyone else, but when you can't assume anything about what a marriage looks like you have to really examine it in detail.
From an evolutionary standpoint what would be the benefit of the brain looking inwards and constantly questioning itself? Certainly lower animals mostly just go with what instinct tells them, maybe with memory of prior experience in the larger-brained ones. Most people also seem to operate on their feeling of "common sense" without much reflection, at least in my observation.
> what would be the benefit of the brain looking inwards and constantly questioning itself?
When what you think matters. An animal that questions its belief "there is no tiger behind that bush" and finds a tiger lives longer than one that doesn't.
I feel like we need both. There are mental/emotional experiences I have on the regular which there is no point in trying to communicate to someone else but still bring me great benefit. We need to value our alone time, absolutely.
We also ultimately derive pretty much everything we most value in life from our interactions with other lives, which is why I think it's so important to develop high-trust relationships with at least one or two other people so we can continue to grapple with the fact that we all have different perspectives, weaknesses and strengths and can usually learn more and get significantly more things done when we cooperate than when we're running solo. Which requires trust.
YMMV, of course. Some people can go build a cabin in the woods and live off the land and spend all their free time meditating and be perfectly happy. But that's not most of us. And even those people eventually get too old to keep taking care of themselves.
> We also ultimately derive pretty much everything we most value in life from our interactions with other lives
This implies that almost everything you value is something transient that can, and one day will, be taken away. If not willingly, then by death. Doesn't it make more sense to have a few core values that don't depend on others and then build relationships and all the rest upon that foundation?
To steal from Alan Watts, lets use an example. Imagine a whirlpool in a clear stream. It has great beauty and takes intricate forms as it dances a whirls. You sit beside it and enjoy watching it for hours.
Now ask yourself is it the particular group a H2O molecules that make up the whirlpool that you love? If so it will be gone in an instant, and each moment for you will become another in a series of great losses as the molecules are swept away by new ones. Is it the pattern the water makes that you love? No, the pattern itself changes every moment as well. The change itself is part of what mesmerizes you.
What you love about the whirlpool is something deeper, and more fundamental, something that change can't take from you. That's the thing you have to build your appreciation of life from. Other people are just the molecules and ripples.
> Some people can go build a cabin in the woods and live off the land and spend all their free time meditating and be perfectly happy.
I would argue that a man who can't stand to be alone with himself is either a bad man who is a good judge of character, or an incomplete person.
I don't mean that everyone should go live alone, just that everyone should be able to. You're probably right that most people can't do it, but the majority is often wrong.
It depends on how you view life. In my view, the purpose of life is to build relationships, love, and understanding. I can be alone, but loneliness forever is, in my mind, indistinguishable from me not existing. Tree and the forest and all that.
Yes, relationships die because everything changes constantly. Nothing is stagnant. But then again everything dies. Ultimately, I want to impact others and be impacted.
[dead]
This is an interesting perspective but I think both are necessary. At different times in my life (perhaps correlated to the "brain eras," though I'm still a bit skeptical of the details here) I've needed others for development and contentment, and at other times, I've needed to focus on self-love and solo happiness as you describe.
Whatever your "meaning of life" may be, it's not the estimation of you that other people have that is important, but we are incredibly social creatures. Life is really not possible for individuals of our species without some level of society and community. Even Christopher Knight - the North Pond Hermit in Main who lived alone without human contact for 27 years - survived by burglarizing cabins and camps and was eventually reintegrated into society.
I guess my point is this is a dialectic. Both can be true, and both are true. The "trust almost 100% with all of myself" might be debatable, but "I could not do it with at least one other person" seems kind of obvious, as does "Learning to be happy alone is vital to becoming an adult."
We're a social species. It's not a funhouse mirror, it's just another side of your personality. No human can even survive in isolation, so the solitary side of you is an exceptionally small part of who you are.
Both of you are right - OP is right that life does become weary when you have to do everything yourself, with no help or support from others - and that includes emotional support. We are social creatures, after all. You are right that we as adults also need to learn to be comfortable / content with our thoughts when we are alone with them, and not define our happiness through our relations. We all need both solitude and company, to introspect and grow.
The danger with self reinforcement is you can convince yourself of almost anything.
There are many selves, and you will never know your true self. Because you can only process yourself through your own mind, which will perform transforms, regardless of how hard you try not to. And maybe there isn't even a true self, only perceptions.
>I learned that the meaning of life has nothing to do with other people or their estimation of me.
i think of this as the 'no longer caring if my socks match' era.
why:
You can't see them, my jeans cover my ankles
why are you looking at my socks?
both socks have the same texture that's all that matters
who has time to sort socks?
I buy my socks in "generations", alternating white and black. I ruthlessly purge individuals when they develop holes and I purge the entire n-2 generation whenever I buy a new batch.
I've been buying socks from Sketchers for years now. It's the only brand I buy. They're not amazing, but I get holes in my socks so fast I don't really care. At the very least, all my socks match, even though I probably have some that are 8 years old and some that are 2 weeks old.
> who has time to sort socks
It takes a minute
Who doesn't have time? Trying to hyper optimize your time so aggressively that you can't bother with tiny chores is crazy
Consider the opportunity cost. It's not that we literally don't have time, its that we have better things to do with that time.
When we say we don't have time, it's usually just another way to say that we find other things to be of greater inportance.
This sort of hyper optimization of a persons life is a sickness
If you are at the point of cutting out "folding socks" because of the opportunity cost of that two minutes a week, you're fucked in the head
folding/sorting socks seems like a form of hyper optimization. Who cares, they're socks.
Can you elaborate on the last point? As someone going through a very hard time with my wife at the moment I’d love any words of wisdom.
I’m going to go against the grain here.
The parent’s advice is toxic and mistaken. It’s a road to codependency. I’ve been with my wife 20 years, married 15. I would have said the same thing they said — I can’t do it all on my own, I need someone else.
Rubbish. And also dangerous rubbish. I’ve been weak for a long time simply because I hadn’t taken myself seriosuly. I literally believed that I couldn’t do it alone, which was wrong.
It was unfair to my wife to use her as an emotional support when she didn’t want to be. She’s been there for me a lot over the years. But when you tell someone that you can’t do it without them, it’s no longer their decision, and that’s unfair. Both to her and to me.
Please read Codependent No More, and especially Lost in the Shuffle by Subby. (I’ve identified a lot more with the latter.)
The point is, it’s okay to be having a rough time with your wife. Let go. Let her do her own thing. Stop caring so much. It’s okay for her to be upset and not want to help/have sex/go to an event/involve you/whatever the problem may be. The reason it feels rough is because you personally let it feel rough. Once I adopted that mindset, it became so much easier. And ironically my marriage improved.
Meds are also important. Make sure you’re on a good dosage of antidepressants if you need them, and a mood stabilizer. I recently started Latuda and dropped Seroquel per my psychiatrist, and it’s been night and day.
Lastly, keep trying to talk to people about your problems. I ended up reaching out to a random person on Twitter. They were kind and to my surprise happy to listen. It was one of the main reasons I was able to get through it all. The best person to talk to is a therapist, though I’d be happy to listen till you can find one.
You’re strong. You need to believe that. And you’re strong independently of your family or anyone else. Give yourself credit for getting as far as you have; that part has been important too.
Apparently “codependency” means something significantly different to what I guessed (which was interdependency, depending on each other). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency:
> In psychology, codependency is a theory that attempts to explain imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's self-destructive behavior,[1] such as addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.[2]
> Definitions of codependency vary, but typically include high self-sacrifice, a focus on others' needs, suppression of one's own emotions, and attempts to control or fix other people's problems.[3]
I've heard codependency described as being dependent on others being dependent on you.
It probably has some rational basis in child rearing, it will benefit survival for the parents to be deeply dedicated to supporting their children, to the point where they receive a psychological reward from that dependency. But unhealthy when it comes to adult relationships, at least beyond a certain point.
There is a huge difference between acknowledging that humans are an inherently social species that usually needs comfort and psychologically benefits from an intimate relationship and straight up codependency, where you violate the boundaries of each other and thereby take away psychological safety.
I agree! The point is, don’t use your wife for your comfort and psychology benefits. Use the other people in your life. Especially when you’re having marital problems.
Just want to point out codependency--especially if you read Codependent No More--is not about being dependent on another person. That is dependent personality disorder perhaps.
Codependency is better described IMO as secondhand addiction. It was coined to describe the symptoms of people who live with alcoholics and other substance abusers and the destructive coping patterns they use to survive in the addict's wake. The codependent does not depend on the addict. In fact closer to the opposite.
Upvoted just for mentioning the book though. It was life changing for me.
Yes exactly. I came to the same realization. After 5 years, I've realized I can do it alone (but it's more fun to do it with someone else).
Make sure the other person adds to the fun, so to speak.
I get what you're saying. A therapist is one of the types of people I had in mind, although that obviously isn't an option for everyone.
I agree that it's important to be able to have your own independent autonomy to properly function in a healthy relationship, especially a romantic one.
The point I was trying to make is perhaps more subtle than it came across, namely that webs of trust between humans (e.g. 'community') are, in my view, essential to being a fully actualized adult. If you aren't close to anyone, I think that means something is wrong which deserves further inspection, particularly within yourself.
Sorry for the somewhat harsh words. You have a point. The problem is that it’s way too easy to fall down the codependency rabbit hole when you start thinking of it as “I can’t do X unless someone else Y’s”. It was true for me, and I just wanted to make sure it wouldn’t be true for the poor fella going through marriage problems.
The trick and the trouble is that it’s easy to acknowledge the importance of being independent, especially in a romantic relationship, vs actually doing that in practice. After your 30’s your friends start to fade away, and one day I woke up without any except my wife. That was clearly a degenerate situation unfair to her, and expanding your social circle is something that should be done independent of whatever relationship you happen to be in. In fact, needs to be done.
Another complication / nuance is that, of course you should be serving and supporting your partner (and vice versa)! Its part of what makes relationships rewarding. They're not always 50/50 in all aspects.
The trick, as you say, is to know when that is crossing into something unfair. When it goes beyond something like who does the dishes or makes the most money into supporting the other person's core identity. Or when it becomes unsustainable / exhausting for other person. Identifying these issues can be difficult. It requires both partners to be in touch with their feelings and able to communicate openly.
Sorry I don’t know your circumstances but “Walking on Eggshells” by Langford has literally saved me.
The only wisdom I can offer: other people emotions don’t have to control yours (despite what they tell you). The best take on this that I know: be like a goose - they don’t get wet, just shake it off.
And take care of yourself!
I recommend the book The Road Less Travelled - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254865.The_Road_Less_Tra... ... It's an easy read with a mix of psychology and traditional wisdom that still holds much relevance.
A novel? You sure you're talking about the right book?
Fiction can reveal a lot of real wisdom if you’re open to receiving it.
I made a mistake. Stop Walking On Eggshells by Mason & Kreger is the one I meant.
Not sure where I was looking. Sibling comments are right.
The correct title is “Stop walking on eggshells” by mason & kreger.
I have had many difficult times with my current S.O. over 15+ years.
Everyone's situation is different, but I can say that in even a semi-healthy relationship, time heals many wounds, greater mutual understanding grows, hard edges can soften and people will often surprise you. You can also learn things you could improve about yourself which you were previously blind to. The sense of stability this reinforces is immensely helpful.
On the other hand, I also have an ex-- and while I wish I would have ended that differently in hindsight, it did need to end for my mental health to improve. If you are with someone who abuses you, cannot be reasoned with and never admits fault, it is wise to plan several exit strategies.
I'd hit up a solo therapist. I went through a hard time with my wife and turns out she just sucks. Be warned that she sucked a lot worse in the divorce and states differ wildly in how biased they are against fathers if you have kids.
It was helpful to figure out some of my stuff and deal with a bunch of trauma.
Glad you got through it. Or, if you're going through it, glad the worst of the days are behind you.
Congratulations.
Thanks unfortunately neither of those are the case. Things are quite bad (haven't spoken with the kid since Christmas) and probably have not yet hit the nadir.
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Or else books / online communities. I can't recommend using ChatGPT for this kind of help but it can be used to validate your experiences, provide a different experience, and if you ask it, point you in the right direction.
For example, if you explain it (or Reddit) an interpersonal situation it can break it down and e.g. point out certain behaviours or boundary crossings.
But I would be careful, as these chatbots will by default put you in the right, even when you aren't.
Even therapists are a mixed bag - and some are legitimately dangerous - but in my experience at least 100x safer than a chatbot or just books.
If for no other reason than a chatbot can’t call you out on your bullshit, because it has no hope of telling what is or is not bullshit. And that is key. And has no actual feelings, remorse, license to lose, etc. etc.
I found a chatbot helpful when I explicitly requested it, in detail, to argue the other person's side with me. I basically approached it as "I want advice on this particular conflict," I explained who the other party was, I explained my best summary of the situation as a whole, and I went back and forth.
I found it cathartic because I could basically argue with that person about it, without asking that person to do emotional labor or be subjected to my criticisms of where I felt they were wrong. Ultimately I landed on several points I did eventually go to that person with, I dropped several others that the chatbot pointed out weren't really something it was fair to criticize them for, and I think our friendship is overall better for it.
I don't think there was anything revolutionary there, it's basically journaling with an LLM, but it was more efficient if nothing else.
Edit: I would also caveat that I've attended a lot of therapy, individual and couples, so numerous concepts that some people may not know, things like emotional labor, boundaries, healthy communication, etc. are already very familiar concepts to me. So, I wouldn't recommend a chatbot as a FIRST stop? But if you've attended a lot of therapy and already know a fair bit about how your own feelings work, I think it can help, as long as you explicitly request that it doesn't just glaze you continuously.
Yeah I like LLMs to dump feelings/stuff and explore different angles of viewing it. It’s like CBT by tons of angles of attack
etc. etc. responsibility.
may also be lacking in therapist. is certainly lacking in LLM
Consider posting on https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/ . Note however that they don't allow posts about identifying problems - e.g. Why am I having a hard time with my wife?. Rather, you are expected to know what is your specific problem and seek solution to that. Don't go to Reddit - the standard advice there will be "your wife / husband is a toxic partner, run and get a divorce".
Every person is different. Some people don't need a stable relation, some people *can't have* a stable relation, some people thrive with it.
Every relation is different. A successful relation is built when both side are compatible.
What does compatible mean, though? Some relations are swingers. Some relations follow strict religious rules. Some people need taking a beating, and I don't mean an erotic one. In None of this cases I am meaning they are codependent, and then there are successful codependent relations.
The only constant I have seen is that every successful relation has discussions, fights, momments when they considered separating. And there is compromise, in every case.
I am sorry I don't have any specific advice. Good luck
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That’s not a woman thing, that’s a person thing. Your advice is good but it would equally apply to me, and I’m a man.
> Please note this is n=1.
Then why use the plural terms “women” and “they”?
Because: bigotry.
> Realizing that going it alone is futile is definitely part of what I consider becoming an adult
Weird, for me its the complete opposite. I accepted to live alone for the rest of my life because a) I am undesired and I wont make a move. b) I barely met people I would even consider it being worth talking to, I need to feel equal on a cognitive level and not a lot of people match that requirement. I either feel lesser or above.
You certainly don't need to have someone in your life -- as someone who married late and has two kids now I sometimes look back on my long period of begin single with fondness -- but I would also recommend being very honest with yourself. Very few people are totally undesirable and expecting others to meet some predetermined standard is very common among people that don't interact socially very often (I speak from experience). While I'm lucky that my wife is very bright (and in many ways much smarter than me) the most important thing that she has given me is new perspectives on life and seeing that it's more important to be kind and helpful than smart.
It's very hard to see outside of our early conditioning without outside perspectives. We may have a vague sense that we might not have been given the best tools for social development (we may even be brutally aware of it), but having someone that has the skills that we are missing is often more important than that they have equal skills in areas we are strong in. Having a good partner can make you realize things about yourself and open you up to things that you never even realized were there.
Yea I get that. A partner would be nice but in 30 years of my life I met 2 women I liked. I am extremely self aware in that regard. I am repulsed by modern dating and dating apps and I dont get myself "out there". I also have way too high standards but I cant just ignore them. Also being chronically depressed does not really help either...
So I just accept my situation and I don't want to change my ways as I am content with how my life currently is.
It's good you are so self aware and can accept your situation to find a level of contentment.
No partner is perfect so being in a relationship requires evaluating tradeoffs and deciding where you can compromise compared to your ideal. To do otherwise or expect someone (or yourself) to change is unfair to them. Unfortunately sometimes we think we can deal with something but ultimately can't - that's part of the self discovery and vulnerability/heartbreak of relationships (because we can of course be on the receiving end too). Really you have to be willing to embrace a person's flaws and take long term joy in doing so, and also have gratitude for them doing the same.
So if you know all that's not really for you, then good move on your part.
> I need to feel equal on a cognitive level and not a lot of people match that requirement. I either feel lesser or above.
Expecting perfection out of life is definitely a road to unhappiness.
Absolutely but so is settling for compromises that make you unhappy... its not easy to find balance.
Roll with it, and change as necessary. Compromises don't need to be permanent; you can just leave.
What makes someone worth talking to?
If you're less [intellectual? experienced?] then you can learn and grow.
If you're above, you can foster them, teach, inspire.
These are all worthwhile. But maybe not things you want or find fulfilling?
I often talk indirect because lots of things are obvious to me and dont need to be explicitly verbalized in a conversation so I am expecting my conversation partner to keep up with my pace. I know its possible because I met people that are able to do so. Although most are not. I dont talk to teach or to be taught. I value teaching and learning but regular conversations are not a place I learn from or I teach at. I've grown up with a lot of trauma and a lot of topics simply have no meaning to me, that's why I regard a lot of conversations as pointless.
For me to regard a person as worth talking to it requires them to either have lived through similar trauma, be a master at some craft, have some (to me) interesting hobby or a lot of life experience to talk about. I simply dont want to talk about someone's favorite sports team or some trash tv stuff. A lot of topics are also above my head so I zone out easily.
The term intellect is toxic. People have, and trade, experiences
Why are you so arrogant that you feel most others aren't on your cognitive level? Most likely you're not actually as smart as you think you are.
They said that they either feel lesser or above. (Though this might point at a different problem; I'd hope one could enjoy the company, really enjoy it, of both sets of people.)
He said that can feel either lesser or above so there's nothing arrogant about that.
Not to sound like a complete asshole, but saying your special is arrogant. Imagine everyone feels like that.
> Why are you so arrogant
Assuming they are, just for the sake of the discussion: what kind of answer do you expect to this question? You think someone who is arrogant has a theory of why they are so and are willing to share it? I would expect they are mostly blind to their own arrogance. Can be useful to point it out.
I guess it was just a rhetorical question. But it feels weird. Do you think it can possibly do anything else than create hostility?
Did you read until the end? I wrote I either feel lesser or above. It works both ways. Arrogance is lived experience, I met a lot of people in my lifetime.
Your A) is a fallacy. Carefully consider that one. Fore B) You're mad projecting onto other people. I used to do this and frankly, I came across as a complete ass a lot of the time. People are super complicated and no other person can figure them out completely, let alone as quickly as you think you are.
I know that people are complicated, but to me 90% of complications do not, and will never matter.
People having people problems bores me so much. I am the type of person ready to irrationally throw their life away in the blink of an eye, I guess I am looking for people like that.
As an example I started tattooing myself without ever having done it before. My arms look like shit but it doesn't really matter to me, I wouldn't change a thing.
Additionally, my social energy is drained very quickly. Having people around me would make me feel trapped. I am nice to every person I meet irl, it would surprise me a lot if people considered me an ass. I am the silent type.
Also no. A) is not a fallacy. In 30 years I was approached once. Whenever I used dating apps I wouldn't get any matches. All I had were some charming talks with friendly women that I initiated when having a night out, but thats about it. I sit in my room all day doing stuff on my computer. Also not the most tidy person. Definitely not desirable and also not willing to change my ways.
I did not feel fully adult until my parents passed on. I was in my early 40s at that point. Then I knew that there was no fallback; it was all up to me.
Don't you still have close friends to lean on when the going gets tough, and your friends, you?
A person becomes an adult once they take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences thereof. Many people never reach that status, regardless of age.
It's not so tersely defined as that, I don't think. It's kinda like wax in a lava lamp of information. Some gloops, the others glop, until eventually you gloop and glop and feel confident. Rigid labels and markers on the spectrum don't really hold universally true, I'm finding.
It's not helpful to redefine terms separately from the article.
Quite similar experience here. Actually it took me few more events to be able to reflect and understand that looking from another perspective.
Sounds like you cannot bear making yourself the sole person responsible and need to involve more people in your decision making cope. Not sure if that’s healthy tbh, just sounds like you don’t like shouldering blame for responsibilities.
So if you were childlike before in your thinking I guess at least you’re a college student now.
The parent comment was talking about having trauma. They were probably once in a position where they very much weren’t healthy, and through the gradual gaining of awareness came to the realization that they needed help.
If I had a broken leg, it’s obviously not going to help trying to fix it myself. Why would it be a stretch that unhealthy thought patterns, which by their nature are self reinforcing, not require an external influence to help break the feedback loops?
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It's kind of interesting to compare this to Ptolemy's eras. In the Tetrabiblios, Ptolemy argued that man went through seven ages in his life, each associated with a different celestial object.
1. Infancy --- The Moon. Since the Moon waxes and wanes more rapidly than any other celestial object, this period is characterized by the fastest development.
2. Childhood --- Mercury. As Mercury is the fastest of the planets, at this age children have the short attention spans and flit from one thing to the next.
3. Youth --- Venus. Starting around puberty, a man's mind starts to become focused on love.
4. Young Adulthood --- The Sun. A man comes of age, he starts to think about his work and people begin to take him seriously.
5. Middle Adulthood --- Mars. In his mid 30s a man's demeanor becomes more severe. He realizes he has certain goals he would like to accomplish and there is not much time left to achieve them.
6. Maturity --- Jupiter. By his mid 50s, having achieved what he can in his life, he has arrived at a position of authority in the community. He has gravitas and respect.
7. Old Age --- Saturn. By his late 60s, he starts to decline physically and mentally.
It is worth noting that this exact sequence (the Chaldean sequence) of the seven classical celestial objects follows the same paths as the Serpent of Wisdom coiled about the Tree of Life in the Hermetic Qabalah. This is the western analogue to the Hindu notion of Kundalini, which shares the same serpentine symbolism; both of which represent the process of the psychological maturation of man.
See Liber 777 Col. VII [0], Key Scales 3 through 9 inclusive. Also note that Key Scales 4 through 9 in Col. XCVII, excluding Saturn in old age, correspond to the "Ruach," "soul," "mind," or (one could say) "post-bicameral ego" of man.
[0] https://ia902906.us.archive.org/22/items/Liber777Revised/Lib...
I sat down and divided my own life into thematic epochs not long ago. Mine are split differently and more specifically to my own lived experience but I, too, arrived at the fact that I'm entering #5 in my mid-30s. Interesting coincidence!
I suppose that constantly changing and revising the language we use to refer to everything at least has the upside of allowing us to use the latest frontend frameworks every year.
I think you meant to reply to a different comment. I talked about dividing one's life up into periods based on experience and themes, not about linguistic revisionism or Javascript frameworks.
I've always thought that I'm just extremely late to mature. I'm 36 now and haven't really felt like I sort of "get" things until my early 30s. My 20s were full of learning experiences, failures, and addiction to doing whatever the hell I wanted. I got a puppy with my wife at 29 and it felt like my life was over. This all really makes a lot of sense to me. It also makes me wonder why the human body rewards young parents when their brains are just simply not fully finished cooking. I couldn't have imagined raising a child at 22 with the way I acted and how important freedom was to me. I would've simply been a miserable father.
Thousands of generations of parents had children much younger than today. I think we’re too worried about having everything perfect and de-risked these days. Also realize that parenting is what grew me up. I don’t think people are ever “ready”
It’s a lot more complicated financially for people. You used to not have to rely on dual incomes just to survive. Wealth inequity, housing affordability, and healthcare have all changed. This is why many are choosing to have kids later in life or not even at all because of those reasons and even the environment with climate change it’s a hard decision to make to bring new life into this world to suffer in it.
It's always been financially complicated for most people. The notion of a nuclear family prospering with a single income was mostly only possible for a limited slice of the US population during a few decades post-WWII. If you take a broader historical view that was a brief anomaly.
And it's really weird that anyone would think of something amorphous and uncertain like climate change as a reason not to have children. Even the unlikely worst case scenarios are still going to have less impact than the major wars and plagues that our species has lived through. Some people just lack a sense of perspective.
...and all this is only true for the last few hundred years of "belongingship" / capitalism etc.
Dense population creates all this, in reverse without dense civi you wouldnt have all the gadgets we have today :-D
More complicated than when? You used to have kids because you needed more hands to work the farm and a good number of them died young.
Yes that model has been inverted.
The family used to tax the grown or mostly-grown children in the form of farm labor. The government in many prior centuries taxed like 2-5% total and the rest was intrafamilial support.
Now it is flipped on its head. Everyone else's families tax your child for their social security, socializing the benefits while still you retain most the costs privately.
Thus tragedy of the commons situation. Why make that investment when you can just tax everyone else's kids and rest assured of your own social security, if they don't pay it you can just have them tossed in a cage or their assets seized, no need to have children yourself.
What you write is the mathematical fact of societies with flattened and upside down population pyramids and wealth transfers from young to old, not sure why you are downvoted.
I don’t know about that. My great grandmas and grandmas didn’t have lots of kids for the labor, they had them because they didn’t have a way to not have them. The grandpas might have though.
Coincidentally, my aunts did not have to have more than 2, and almost every single one had 2 kids.
Exactly, so that made having children a financial benefit. I'm confused that you said it but don't get it.
It feels more like people [used to] have kids because they fucked and hadn't made the connection between that and having children. Them working at whatever you worked at was just necessary so you can help them grow, keep an eye on them, and pay for their upbringing.
> It feels more like people [used to] have kids because they fucked and hadn't made the connection between that and having children.
Why on earth would you believe that? People have bred animals for millennia. You think they didn’t understand that sex was a required step?
I imagine people have understood that sex led to pregnancy since before Homo sapiens.
I think you underestimate human intelligence. People have made that connection for a very long time.
People didn't have options besides "not having sex" that worked very well.
It’s amazing that the need for more hands on the farm declined at precisely the same time birth control became widely available.
> It’s a lot more complicated financially for. You used to not have to rely on dual incomes just to survive.
This is a toxic myth and acts as excuse to blame extrinsic factors that won't see change by the time you'll need them to, even if they can be fixed. Economic life today can be a lot more complicated for middle class professionals and skilled laborers, but they were only ever a fraction of the population in the first place, and families in tougher circumstances than today's middle class folk figured out how to navigate the cards they were dealt.
Emotionally, it legitimately sucks if you come from a comfy middle class background, and have a career that you believed should have been good enough to deliver the life you remember your parents or grandparents having and now doesn't seem to be. It feels unfair and disorienting, maybe. But the fact is that middle class lifestyle is gone for now, and if it does manage to get restored, that restoration will take a generation or two to come.
In the meantime, you have to figure out how to adapt and live that more modest and "more complicated financially" lifestyle. It can be done. Lots of people have been doing it for a long time. Along the way, you'll probably discover that lower class folk who never had the luxuries of your parents and grandparents in the first place were not seeing the world as something they had to "suffer in": they lived in homes, but often with more people in them. They traveled, but more infrequently, less glamorously, and with more pragmatic rationale like "visiting family" than "seeing the world". They had parties, but served simpler dishes on less fancy platters. They had "child care" when two parents worked, but got it by exchanging favors with family or neighbors instead of sending half a paycheck to a prestigious daycare. They laughed, they drank, they had kids. It's not a world of suffering to just not have some luxuries.
Yes and I think many of us remember childhood with rose-colored glasses. My 1970s "middle-class" parents had one car. My mom had to drive my dad to work and pick him up so that she could have a car during the day. When my brother and I were older and in school she worked part time. We lived in a simple ranch-style house. We almost never ate out or went anywhere out of town. Entertainment was going outside and finding something to do. Something like going to a movie was a rare treat. I think of it all fondly today, never with a sense that I had missed out on anything.
Today many young people would consider that life to be stifling, boring, or "suffering" but it was fine. Kids really don't care as long as they feel secure.
> Today many young people would consider that life to be stifling, boring, or "suffering" but it was fine.
There’s major inflation in middle class expectations. People earning median income are expecting a very upper-middle-class lifestyle. A house bigger than their parents owned with nicer finishes, two new cars, frequent travel, eating out constantly, etc.
My parents were on the upper end of middle class when I grew up and we lived in a home with carpet and laminate countertops. Now everyone wants hardwood floors and quartz and more square footage, too. A lot of folks are driving cars that cost a year of their take home pay. Cost of living is too high but expectations seem to have risen even faster.
Capitalists figured out they needed a consumption-driven economy to keep the engine running.
Unfortunately, the music has to stop, and that's where we are now
This comment is harsh, but I think important to remember for a lot of people who don’t realize that yeah maybe the hand we’re dealt sucks, but you can find joy regardless. People dance, sang, drank and found life and love through all of history, it won’t stop now.
Most kids used to work as well as both their parents, school is a middle class and/or modern thing.
I suspect it's a cultural thing as well, with most (all?) wealthy cultures veering towards individualism and working. Whereas with previous generations, the grandparents and environment would be more involved in raising children and educating the new parents.
But I also feel like people grew up or had to grow up earlier back when. My parents were married, bought a house and had kids on the way by their mid 20's, when I was that age I had just about finished my education and started my first fulltime job, it'd take another decade to buy a house. Buying a house / getting a mortgage is a major commitment, and I think you'd get a big boost of adulthood / personal development if you do that in your mid 20's.
Early twenties family formation bring the norm was more of a postwar thing. The guys that came back from the war really did have to grow up fast (seeing your best friends getting blown up at 18 will do that), and they essentially had zero desire to have racous twenties filled with dating around and traveling and soul searching. They'd had enough chaos already, and were all extremely eager to settle down into a peaceful family life immediately upon their return home. The age of family formation has slowly crept back upward since then, and historically, in normal peaceful times it's usually been late twenties.
I agree. Having children does make ones priorities very cut and dry. I found it a lot easier to "adult" once I had children. My Friends, at the time often asked, "Is having children hard?" I often replied, in the beginning at least, "Children are easy, it's everything else that is hard."
Indeed, it is society's expectations that are hard.
I moved to the middle of nowhere after my kids were born. One day I let my child walk home "alone" from school, for the portion that is on our own property, and of course as soon as you do that a fucking Karen will randomly pop out of nowhere, and start interrogating the child. It is like clockwork. You could be 100 miles from civilization and as soon as you do something someone somewhere disagrees with, a fucking Karen (and even in a minivan, down rugged rural dirt roads, how the fuck did she get there?) will magically be there that exact second with a cell phone at the ready to call CPS. Thankfully I was able to stop her before that happened, as I was actually watching from behind the bushes, which in itself is shameful but saved my ass.
also its a lot easier to have kids at 20 if the kids grandparents are only 40 instead of 70
Exactly that. It's not an arbitrary dated threshold that lead to "growing up". It was the event of having kids. I'm still able to look at my current life through the lenses of a 25 year old me and hell, that looks bleak. But I can say with confidence that I'm content. Of course there are little things here and there but mostly everything is fine.
I only wonder if there is going to be a next stage, the magical "midlife crisis", where I'm going to question all my decisions up to that point and I'm curious how I'm going to handle that.
Maybe also because the life spent leading up to the child having was much different earlier - I mean society, jobs, distractions... I'm sure this has an important role as well in setting up expectations and kicking up responsibilities.
People that tell you you need to be ready are lying. The only thing you need to be able to sustain is feeding them, and the rest mostly works itself out. As it has for millennia.
The only reason this would not be the case is if you have specific requirements for the life of your child.
I would encourage you to look at the medical costs of children in the US. My children's braces alone will cost ~$7k-10k over the life of each of them, with insurance, and to do without will cause irreparable oral damage into adulthood. Certainly, this doesn't apply to other developed or developing countries, but to say "you just need to feed them" wildly differs from reality. You're just ignoring suffering at scale by saying "it'll work itself out." It doesn't, and I can provide pages of citations, grounded in data, to support this assertion. Also, having served a short stint as a Guardian ad Litem to advocate for children going through family court, I have anecdotal observations as to failure scenarios of failures to adequately provide for children, both materially and emotionally.
Your whole message is the literal definition of:
> The only reason this would not be the case is if you have specific requirements for the life of your child.
If humans could do without 2000 years ago, if the kids in africa can do without now, then clearly the same is true for your own children. God knows they don’t need $7000 braces, which are unaffordable to 99% of the US population too.
Feed them, and love them.
Maybe the "rewarding the young" in the top comment is from the genes of savanna humans when they collected fruit, hunted and didn't care about expensive medical procedures because the latter simply didn't exist?
Perhaps. Genetics doesn't reward rationality, empathy, suffering reduction desire and self awareness, etc, only biological line go up and reproduction fitness. A bug to patch.
> I've always thought that I'm just extremely late to mature. I'm 36 now and haven't really felt like I sort of "get" things until my early 30s.
I'm 43 and I'm still not convinced that I'm not three kids stacked in a trench coat.
I remember being 33 and buying a house and thinking "Someone call the cops, this banker is letting a child sign mortgage papers".
When I put on nice clothes for a fancy dinner, I feel like I'm cosplaying as a functional and responsible adult, despite having a great career (Staff-level engineer that will likely be promoted to Principal in a few months). I fly First Class and feel out of place, like First Class is reserved for people that have their shit together.
Someone said that this feeling goes away when your same-gendered parent dies, but my dad passed in 2019 and it's still pervasive.
"Everything before 40 is research" I once heard, and every day, I find it to be more true.
I'm a great parent because it is what is necessary and my children had no choice or consent in existing, but I also tell anyone younger that unless they are absolutely sure they want kids and are ready for decades of suck, don't do it [1] [2] [3]. Live your best life, be true to yourself, find your passion and joy exploring and being curious; one can do this without children. If one needs kids to mature or become a better human, find a therapist first. Also, maturity is optional. You have to grow old, you don't have to grow up (take on responsibility unnecessary to take care of yourself, broadly speaking). Religious beliefs aside (potential reincarnation and whatnot), enjoy life, you only get one run through your part of the timeline. Don't waste it on the expectations or belief systems of others.
[1] (lack of support systems, both social and familial, ~$380k in 2025 dollars to raise a child 0-18 in the US not including daycare and college, etc; n=1, ymmv)
[2] Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Mental Health & Well-Being of Parents - https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressu... - 2024
[3] The American dream will cost you $5 million, report finds - https://www.axios.com/2025/09/22/the-american-dream-will-cos... - September 22nd, 2025
I would describe the age of 40 as the time when my brain truly started to function but unfortunately, I feel ashamed of that.
If it makes you feel any better, that's about the age I started functioning mostly like an adult. It started around 30 but took a good decade to take hold.
Same.
I always felt like I'm 10 years behind.
Do you consume marijuana on a regular base? :-D
I tried it a few times, but smoking in general was very unpleasant, so I never started smoking anything.
Just because people can physically, biologically have children does not automatically imply that they can - or should - be the only ones to raise the children. Children used to be a community effort; the US strayed from this a long time ago. Of course it would be much harder to raise a kid at 22 (or 16, or) than 40!
Yet our physiology is tuned to become parents at 16 rather than 40.
I think nature doesn't care whether it's easier or better or whatever. It only cares for _more_ children to survive until their own time to have children.
you just restated what i said. perhaps i could have been more clear.
by whatever mechanism, humans can breed at a much younger age than they can feasibly take care of their offspring. Up until maybe 75-100 years ago, "it takes a village" wasn't just a trite canard, it was actually how you raised children. I just finished watching a youtuber explain that raising children after having had to move away from your extended family because of affordability is suck and "maybe that's why young people are waiting to have kids, because there's no village anymore."
> It also makes me wonder why the human body rewards young parents when their brains are just simply not fully finished cooking.
Probably so that they can grow with their children.
We used to have grandparents around and extended family. Think about how different life was 50,100 or, 500 years ago. Not enough time for evolution to respond
> Not enough time for evolution to respond
And we have to guess that evolution didn't "respond".
Sooooo, we have some lack of fit, evolved over 10s of thousands of years for life as it was then and for the last ~5000 years in selected cultures faced with something quite different, powerful governments and armies, metals, weapons, tools, sailing ships, agriculture, domestic animals, ....
Supposedly for those 10s of thousands of years in parts of Europe people formed tribes and had some communal living, that is, in a long house, maybe 50-100 yards long 10-20 yards wide, with walls and roof forming a semi-circle. So, women and children got their socialization, security, lessons, skills, not merely from a couple, a bonded husband and wife living just as a couple, but from the tribe as a whole. I.e., now, for a lot for a person to learn and have, including shelter, we are depending heavily just on the mother and father.
100 years ago a lot of people (like my grandparents) left their extended family in Europe and emigrated to the USA.
>At around the age of 32 the strongest overall shift in trajectory is seen. Life events such as parenthood may play a role in some of the changes seen, although the research did not explicitly test this. “We know that women who give birth, their brain changes afterwards,” said Mousley. “It’s reasonable to assume that there could be a relationship between these milestones and what’s happening in the brain.”
>From 32 years, the brain architecture appears to stabilise compared with previous phases, corresponding with a “plateau in intelligence and personality” based on other studies. Brain regions also become more compartmentalised.
--
I felt this 32-year-old shift, but later (now 43). I joke with friends that I was a bone-head like most males until about 30. Joke yes, but feels right.
Prior to 30ish, I was more insecure. Lacking in emotional intelligence. My conclusions from my experience, not projections from what I've read about that time.
My career and relationship history reflect that switch-flip in a way. Only during the second half of my 30s did I begin to feel more secure and more confident in my career, despite not achieving some outrageous senior position or level of income. That career is now in a better and more measured place - in which I recognize what I do well and what I don't do well, and don't beat myself to a pulp for not having "it"
Only in my 30s did I robustly embrace the power of compromise in friendships and relationships. Now I'm near 10 years married (and happy, most of it, let's be real) with two wonderful kids.
And now I'm much capable of reasoning with my anxities, emotions, and insecurities. Do I still ruminate? Yes. Do I still react? Yes. But I know how to redraw situations to reset my in-moment feelings and/or avoid unecessary negative action.
I don’t know about any of this “era” stuff but I do know and believe in just how much becoming a parent has changed me. It completely overhauled the calculus on what’s important in life. It’s given me a very clear main quest line, relegating all kinds of things I used to think were important to the “side quests” category.
And it has had positive side effects too. It’s incredibly useful to be uninterested in promotions and raises. To want to work less, not be paid more. It makes it easy to say and do the right thing rather than the self-preserving thing or self-promoting thing. It’s kind of ironic because I think that makes me better at my job.
It’s quite calming to have such a clear identity. There really is a peacefulness to knowing, at all times, where my compass points.
With you 100%
Kids rewired my brain too. Definitely not a perfect operator at all times, but I have - as you stated - a clear intention on how I'm spending my day.
Contrast to 20s and even some of 30s - definitely pre-kids but also pre-marriage - when I worked a lot more and thought that work was my most important north star.
> and don't beat myself to a pulp for not having "it"
Sounds like a stage of brain development I haven’t reached yet :)
[sent from my steady state of pulp]
The work never ends, friend.
Try this. Think hard about what you think "it" is. Is it CEO? Making $1M a year? Making $5M a year? Healthy family? Etc.
I think what you realize in the brainstorm is you have some of "it" already. But something's missing.
So, then ask this question: can you change your situation to attain that missing thing? If so, how? And if you aren't doing that, why? Ask why again. A third time.
Inaction is a very easy way to get stuck overthinking "it" when you might get that thing just by changing/trying your situation to the best of your ability.
I am articulating what seems linear but in reality its messy and not very linear. It's work and it's trial and error.
But more than ever, I'm ok and comfortable with the construct of my life. I don't make anywhere near what I hoped to make. I'm not an executive. I don't now think that I NEED (and am missing) those two things to fufill my life. (those are examples, I have others)
Thank you for sharing your work!
Years ago, at a mindfulness meditation retreat, I heard the word "skilful" used in a very specific way.
Since then, I've tried to become more skilful, and your reply above really evinces the "ongoing journey" nature of that work.
I wish you the very best in your journey!
I like that. Appreciate your words and likewise.
Great way to put it: "skill"
Learned/experience/must practice the skill of getting comfortable!
Tell me more about retreat? In overall terms? Worth it? Worth doing again?
Also - did it include any substances? Not judging one way or another but I know that some psychedelic concepts align with some retreats.
It was a week-long silent meditation (Vipassana), focusing on "Mindful Awareness".
It was at a point in my life where I was able to do it (and I'm grateful), but I have a kid in kindergarten now, so it'd be hard to convince my wife that it's important enough that she should single-handedly manage for a week.
Overall, I think the major benefit for me, was that it bootstrapped this mental model:
* Our minds are constantly spawning processes, and "learning how to start + keep running a debug process" is an invaluable tool for gathering data.
* Once you've gathered a reasonable amount of data, you will start to spot patterns. One of the teachers at this retreat expressed it as "wisdom will arise"
I have a long way to go, but I'm grateful every day that I have this foundation.
In an ideal world, it'd be nice to do this again, to compare where I am today (IIRC, it's been ~8 years).
P.S. there were no substances included :)
Fascinating, thank you.
For what it's worth, I think recognizing patterns and then stepping away to say "execute this way, or choose another way" is a huge huge skill. Not all past patterns make sense for current/future situations!
As the authors mentioned, ~30 years is the age many people have kids, and it is already well known that female brain changes after giving birth, for example. The authors didn't research if being a parent can explain a part of the difference (and also if parent brains are any different than childless people brains).
I'm personally curious about this: I'm slightly above 30, I observed significant changes in my behavior recently... and I became a parent this year.
Just a heads up, the female brain changes are reverted 1 year after giving birth (that's what the health professionals told us). They also discovered that the male brain changes too.
I felt way more empathetic during the first year my son and my daughter were born, but I feel like I lost that part of me. I kinda miss it
Just practice it.
I realize that sounds silly but it really does work. A lot of emotional behavior is muscle like and setting aside intentional practice will lead to longterm change.
1. Set a trigger to engage in the practice like "When I hang out with my kids immediately after the work day"
2. Do the practice. Try to be empathetic to your kids small daily issues. At first, like all newish things this will feel silly but over time it will feel natural.
Obviously try to be genuine. If your kids plight of someone snatching their favorite toy or whatever doesn't move you, don't force it. Just try to practice visualizing yourself in their place. Don't go "fake empathetic kid tone".
I agree, it makes sense. The thing that changed is my initial emotion: frustration because of expectations, then I think about it and realize my expectation is wrong and usually apologize.
While during their first year, my initial reaction was usually the correct one. I felt I could "read" them better.
Your kids are also growing, espressing much more complex emotions.
You have the right goal in your focus, you'll get it with time and practice.
Are you insinuating that childless people never fully mature? Because as a childless person I've noticed that a lot of the distance I felt with my friends with kids disappeared as soon as their kids were grown. Essentially we're all childless now, and think of the world in the same terms.
It's not a given, but a personal anecdote is that there simply hasn't been a situation in my life prior to kids that required such a sustained focus on the happiness and wellbeing of another person before kids. It really is a type of growth that would be dare say impossible to duplicate without kids. But of course, I could say that I've never had to live through war and don't think that I could really say that I've built the fortitude that that experience gives you, so the point might be moot. Just to say, kids really give you a perspective, that choosing to be childless does not, while being childless is a perspective that all people with kids got.
> It really is a type of growth that would be dare say impossible to duplicate without kids.
Perhaps, but as a childless adult who had to take over my parents' affairs as their physical and cognitive health declined, I marvel at the wonderful hits of dopamine parents get as they watch their children grow. It's an adorable perspective on life that I didn't get to share as my mother gradually forgot who she was.
> while being childless is a perspective that all people with kids got
This is a naive view of the world. Being childless is a qualitatively different experience for those in different walks of life. A childless financially unstable young adult will have a very different experience than that of a childless financially stable middle-aged adult.
I mean, yeah at the end we're all individuals living qualitatively different lives. However, you can get a very close approximation by say dropping your kids off at their grandparents. Even during babysitting, you get nothing close to the experience of having to constantly reprioritize towards another that depends on you and giving them the tools to become independent adults capable of doing it themselves and going into the world, at least by default you don't. I feel like caveating that the human experience will be different and there are a thousand ways to add nuance to the conversation but the generalization definitely holds.
i think its incredibly difficult for a male to truly become a man without children. it is very easy and seductive to be a manchild forever, whereas society seems to force women to grow up. And its certainly possible for a father to remain a manchild, but i think without that kind of responsibility and focus of having to mentor and keep another human alive its difficult to fully mature.
edit: I am a man
I don't think it's as-different-as-it-used-to-be for men and women now but I agree with the sentiment.
Becoming an engaged father shifted my perspective on who I am, changed opinions on societal matters, and made me feel like the person I was -- despite, from a young age, spending non-trivial amounts of time on contemplating morality and society and considering myself as a youth to be "mature for my age" -- was a selfish git.
I went from "c'mon what's the harm"-ing naysayers to "HEY think big picture! LONG term!" on SO many aspects of life.
The man I was would not get along with the father I am.
Your statement won't be popular, but I agree that, statistically-speaking, it's an overt intellectual "next stage".
Can you clarify what does it mean to "become a man"?
Seriously can't tell if this is satire.
I don't think it's satire. It makes some kind of sense even if I don't agree with it
This has to be satire right?
You don't need to have kids to nut up and take responsibility for yourself and others.
notice how I didn't say that
I can accept that the brain changes after becoming a parent.
I'm not convinced it's automatically, or even usually, for the better. Many of the parents I know are deeply and profoundly unhappy.
> Many of the parents I know are deeply and profoundly unhappy.
As a childless person, I believe this is a societal problem, not a biological one. We've broken apart the tribe and made just two people (at most) responsible for most of child rearing. And worse, we pretend the parents are directly responsible for a child's safety and development at all times, even though we all know some kids are just way easier or harder to raise, right out of the box.
Smart take. Parenting used to be more communal in some ways. Now it's up to two (maybe) working parents to deal with kids.
43-yr-old parent of 2. I love them. They're amazing. But there are so many challenging moments. So many.
In those deep/profound moments of stress, I try to remind myself that the only thing I really need to do is stay calm. Allowed to have emotions, course.
But to execute some level of calm really helps resolve so much of what you experience.
Maybe they are unhappy but on the flip side, most people with children will tell you that if you haven't been a parent you don't know what happiness is. The happiness of being a parent is just unimaginable, cannot compare with anything else.
Strangely enough, I think I do understand. As near as I can tell, life's two greatest pleasures are 1. Love (both loving and being loved) 2. Voluntary hardship
I mean, what is parenthood if not love and voluntary hardship?
On the other hand, I think you are describing your subjective experience. I've talked with some "one-and-done" parents who deeply love their child, but wouldn't want another one if you paid them.
Parenthood being the most intense happiness possible is not my subjective experience. It is probably the most obvious fact in the world, literally if it wasn't true human societies would be radically different.
Interesting, given the decline in birth rate that seems to be the inevitable consequence of widespread prosperity.
"Happiness" is one of those words that has thousands of different definitions, so I would frame it this way: Parents almost always describe their children as the greatest joy in their lives, but (in America at least) they also generally express more dissatisfaction and frustration with their lives than childless people.
With the amount of sleep new parents aren't getting, I'd be shocked if there weren't changes to the brain.
I think it's not about maturity just about socio- and bio-logically induced re-prioritisation.
Nobody can answer this, because nobody can have the full experience of both being a parent and being childless.
No, I'm not insinuating anything.
The authors charted human brain and divided it into "eras" where they saw significant changes based on age. Major life events can affect brain structure, and becoming a parent is one of the most important adult life events. Becoming a parent in early 30s is common. Just these facts combined mean that being in early 30s correlates with brain changes somehow. The authors explicitly mention that they know about this, and that they didn't control for this it yet.
Back to your question, I never said anything about maturing. It is a well-known fact, that female brain changes after childbirth. There is also research that suggests that first-time fathers brain changes too. This doesn't necessarily mean becoming more mature.
>Becoming a parent in early 30s is common.
Retiring in late 60s. If you make it, becoming too infirm in body to get around in 80s.
These seem like brain changes at these transitions are more likely to be effects rather than causes.
Anecdote: I became a parent at 25 and didn't feel these shifts until 30/31.
So .. the thing is, this is a descriptive account of the biology of the brain. However, I sometimes see the "discourse machine" building narratives around pushing the age of majority later, and I suspect this will get used in ammunition for normative purposes.
Just when the "brain doesn't finish developing until 25" nonsense has finally waned from the zeitgeist, here comes a new pile of rubbish for people to latch onto. Not that the research itself is rubbish, but how they name/describe the phases certainly is. The "adolescent" and "adult" phases don't have any correspondence to what we normally think of as those developmental periods. That certainly wont stop anyone from using this as justification for whatever normative claim they want to make though. It's just irresponsible.
Seems a stretch to use this as the basis of any radical change like raising the voting age to 32 (although maybe it supports reducing the minimum presidential age from 35 to 32!), but it does perhaps suggest looking at what kind of soft-paternalistic structures might help “adolescents” make better life choices. It is a little absurd that we expect an 18 year old to navigate the world with the same competence as a 40 year old.
I think it's weird having an arbitrary minimum age to be president. I would probably never vote for someone in their 20s anyway, but I don't think there should be a legal barrier. In my country (Brazil) it's the same age, but we usually just copy US in think kind of policy. I wonder how common it's in the rest of the world.
I'm more bothered by the geriatric politicians in various democracies than I am that you're missing out on some amazing politician in their twenties.
The UK has a practical minimum of 18 for Prime Minister (technically there is no minimum but practically there is) but realistically never elects a PM under 40.
For British Sovereign there is also no limit, any particularly young Sovereign has effectively delegated to a council of regents historically. In practice this is also unlikely - although in theory of course we are two untimely deaths from a 12 year old taking the throne.
The US could really do with a maximum age for Presidents, and a retirement schedule for the permanent government on the Supreme Court.
There should absolutely be a minimum and maximum age. Preferably an IQ test as well.
Between 35-60 at start of term, IQ above 130.
> It is a little absurd that we expect an 18 year old to navigate the world with the same competence as a 40 year old.
I don't think it is. 18 year olds are smarter than most people give them credit for. They probably know math better than most 40 year olds just given their adjacency to math practice in school.
Knowing math specifically and intelligence generally are orthogonal to the skill of wise decision making.
Some of the smartest people I’ve ever known at any age have been among the worst at “life skills”.
Life skills and wise decision making are very hard to judge and most people will disagree on them though. I don't think 18 year olds make all the worst life choices and 40 year olds make far better ones, but I also can't really prove my statement, nor could you prove a counterfactual statement. It's hard to prove what life skills are valuable and who is good at them.
Math is at least important in many life skills most would consider important imo. Like budgeting, financial planning, retirement planning, investing, etc.
I've become an advocate of restricting the voting age to 25-54. It's basically a reversion to the property holder rule, but shifted to production. The people paying for everything would get to make the decisions.
I'm not in favor of restricting at all the people they can vote for. Let them elect an Iraqi toddler to be US president for all I care; if they're the ones taking care of us, they probably have a good reason.
> The people paying for everything would get to make the decisions.
Just as a thought experiment: what if the threshold for having a vote was tied to paying a positive amount of personal income tax, and the weight of each vote was proportional to the amount paid? How skewed might such a system be? My first reaction is that in countries with high inequality, the wealthy would disproportionately influence the outcome. However, on the other hand, if people avoid or minimize paying taxes, they would lose the power of a weighted vote, which theoretically could incentivize paying taxes in full.
I think tying it to pension age would make a very interesting dynamic. I can see a lot of incentives and alignments around the issue would instantly shift around, and I think for the healthier and will incentivize finding the true ideal pension age.
Such a plan would codify an oligarchy into law, rather than the mere de facto oligarchy we have now.
Right now, the top 10% pay about 70% of federal income taxes, so your plan would effectively make 90% of the population's votes effectively worthless.
You're uneasy because you're a frequent advocate for policy positions that most people tend to be weary of once they've accrued some amount of life experiences (although the experiences and speed of acquisition differ from individual to individual) hence anything that casts shade upon the decision making of the youngest adults is a potential threat to your goals, if only a theoretical and circuitous one at that. If such policy positions do not survive life experience are they worth advocating for? 100yr ago people has been treated by the world around them as adults for at least half a decade by the time they got to vote at 21. Why not do the same today?
Regardless, specific policy implications are totally beside the point.
The problem with this "well you're not akshually an adult until X" stuff is that it is basically a re-hash of long out of fashion "women are hysterical, blacks have big muscles and small brains" type crap from 200yr ago that was used as a justification to continue preventing these people from finding their own way in life unbounded, consequences and all. First off, the logic is flawed and self referential, of course housewives and slaves couldn't adult, they never had the opportunity to gain the experience, same with 22yo college kids you're measuring today. Removing the racism and sexism by simply applying it to everyone doesn't change the flawed logic. But that's not even the big problem. The big problem is that at a societal level you're reducing the number of person-years available for full adult capacity work and productivity. You can solve this with coercion (state, social norms, etc), but people are less productive when they're not working for themselves so you're still handicapping your own society. A society that does not encourage people to develop and become adult and achieve and produce at full capacity as quickly as possible (which is likely a different timetable in an agrarian society than an industrial one, details left as exercise for the reader) WILL eventually be outcompeted by one that does, though a head start may buy time.
The older people get, the less they want youngsters to vote, drink, and drive--unless they believe they have something personally to gain from it
I'm not sure about the evidence for that gross generalization but young people are much less likely to vote than older people.
Plenty of data on this: https://theharvardpoliticalreview.com/gen-z-voter-barriers-2...
This is why you've gotta actually think about what you believe morally speaking at an early age and then stick to it. I don't vote, drink, or drive myself, and never will, but I hope I will always defend the rights of the youth to.
How do you plan on defending those rights if you dont vote.
I don't know if it was adulhood, but after 30 I started feeling calmer & more adult than before.
There was no special event in my life that kickstarted this, it was tge beginning of a more mature way to look at things & people. I started to see some repeated events & behaviours that I had already experienced and this also contributed to have a more tempered way to manage things.
As you age of course you still face unknown things, but you star to see that supposed new things rhyme with things you already know.
So midlife crisis has not hit yet.
I'm almost 50 so that train has already passed (right over me)
Not really; midlife crisis is a misnomer because it can start at 50-60 years old.
Fascinating study.
The stats warrant some caution, though. The main finding is based on figure 4 [1] and I wouldn't be surprised if the number and location of these 'eras' varied a lot if the authors use 40,000 people instead of 4,000.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65974-8/figures/4
Especially the last era - over 83 - is suspicious. With 4000 people and ages 1-90, how certain can we be about this? But I don't want to cast unjustified doubt, I'm sure they did the math.
Having seen a lot of research papers lie, or simply use incompetent math, I'm not sure at all.
Thanks for sharing the longitudinal brain-development framework from the Cambridge study. However, I don’t see strong direct practical value for an individual or educator in the life-stage breakdown (~birth–9, ~9–32, ~32–66, ~66–83, ~83+) beyond broad observation.
In contrast, frameworks from learning theorists such as Vygotsky, Piaget, Bloom, Gagné, Maslow, Bruner and Kolb provide more explicit actionable guidance for parents/teachers (e.g., scaffolding learning in the “zone of proximal development”, designing spiral curricula, applying experiential learning cycles).
My perspective guides me to prefer the pragmatic actionable frameworks. That help someone guiding children (or students) set norms, limits and scaffold growth in daily practice.
I do like the conversation that's cropping up here though from this article. A lot of lovely self-reflection.
I question the correlation and causality. I wonder how much of these eras are caused by brain physiology and genetics versus changes in the behavior with age, which can even be caused by external sociological factors, for example. Or a mix of both.
> From 32 years, the brain architecture appears to stabilise compared with previous phases, corresponding with a “plateau in intelligence and personality”.
For example, here - is this *caused* by genetics, or is it because in today's society this is about the age when you have finished your schooling and first working experiences and have simply less to learn?
I know my examples simplify the reasoning, but the question about causality still stands, I think.
I am personally supportive of any research that continues to define my age as having just achieved adulthood.
Yeah I could distinctly feel my brain shifting into its adult era over the last couple of years (I'm 31)
It was kind of odd. I'm more serious now (but at the same time.. less?). I'm way more easily able to focus on what actually matters in this life. (In saying that, I think it's more likely that my brain has finally decided what's important... in a way I feel like a passenger)
I have the exact same feeling. Turning 30 was like flipping a switch for me. Since then, I've even felt like I've become more intelligent, especially in math. It's like everything suddenly clicked. I struggled with math throughout my entire school life, but now that I've gone back to college, I'm amazed by how easily I grasp concepts. I've recently taken on challenges that I always thought were exclusive to "smart people," like systems programming in Rust and Zig or building compilers.
This study seems like finding a way to quantify the well known and then twisting it to make a good headline.
People don't grow up until they need to. Of course you're gonna see college educated rich westerners delay whatever mental markers you're looking at. And likewise people who "stay active" seem to stave off the mental decline of old age.
Exactly this. With a comfy life, you can mature later. The more hardships and adversity one must overcome the faster that maturation happens. Particularly so when the hardships put one on an abnormal path.
Losing a close relative or a job is normal adversity that everyone will go through but not everyone has. Going through those other things while having a different philosophy or life ethos than those around you, thus also causing you to prioritize and pursue different things in life adds a different layer of challenge. That causes you to have to figure stuff out on your own and thus contributes to maturing in a different manner and at a different rate.
I feel that at some point there is stagnation.
I am 55 but my brain tells me I am 35 or 40. This is not a "crisis of the 50s'", I did not change anything in the way I behave, it is just that I somehow stopped changing my behavior when I was around 35-40. This was not intended and it is only now that I realized it.
When I look at pictures from this time, I am very similar. I aged of course but the clothes and behavior is the same. The interests are the same. My opinions and overall maturity is the same. It does not mean that they are great, just that they do not change.
I wonder when the next change will be, when I will look at the past and say "I changed"
So a while back, I was interviewing business people still active in their 80s and 90s -- as part of a very intriguing project that got cut short but did produce some fascinating notes. I remember asking one 95-year-old guy still serving (competently) on a bank board if there was anything that he did better now than when he was in his 60s.
His answer: "I'm a better writer."
The Cambridge research cited in this study categorizes late-life changes in brain function as nothing but declining capability, all the way down. My guess is they are mostly right. But I'm intrigued by the notion that some of that elder erosion might lead to new clarity about how everything fits together.
I’m in my early 40s and went through a really intense, almost midlife crisis type period at the start of this year that turned out to be surprisingly transformative. I have come out of it feeling more patient, focused, confident, kind, and much better at honest self‑reflection. It’s just one anecdote, but my working theory is that people hit these developmental turning points at different times; some earlier, some later. studies like this make me wonder how much of that is brain wiring catching up with the lives we have lived so far
I definitely felt older back in my early thirties, but I feel like I got younger now in my mid 40s. I think it's because my kid is in college and doesn't need me as much as they used to. Plus, I'm debt free and make enough money to not worry about the cost of going out.
In my late 20s/early 30s I was under water on my house, not getting paid enough, and had a small child. It was clear that I had to step up and "be a man." Which, I intuitively think had a bigger effect on me than simply getting older.
At age 58, going on 59, I'm feeling an alarming decline in physical (luckily not mental at this point) ability. Sure enough, men have relatively abrupt aging events at about 44 and 60. I hope that's what it is and it's not still coming and making things even more pathetic.
So I have, on average, another 7 years until I'm officially a typical old man? Great, just great.
But I can vouch for the earlier milestone. I grew up as a socially challenged geek with nobody to tell me that I'm just wired differently and it's not my fault, I didn't somehow not do my homework, that I'm not like the cool kids. Right around age 30 I had this epiphany... this is how I am! Instead of always looking for someone or something to teach me how I think I should be... just embrace what, in fact, I am. If I'm a geek, then just live my life best as a geek. The resulting increase in self-confidence did help socially. So just another prerogrammed "adulting" threshold? Maybe.
Support for part of this from another source. I've read through the collected letters of many famous intellectuals (just for hobby), and I've noticed a common dramatic shift in personality starting around age 28-30. People become more attentive to the needs of others and their own role in a network of social responsibilities. It's no longer "me, me, me".
Anecdotally I’ve felt this shift over the past few years. I am 33 and have always been a huge proponent of personal growth, change, pushing yourself to be better. In the past few years Ive felt the opposite urge, an urge to accept myself, flaws and all, as the hand I’ve been dealt and I must merely play that hand, not focus so much on what-ifs, etc. Perhaps this is my brain solidifying.
There is wisdom both in trying to change what you can, and realizing that you maybe can't change everything. If you've been trying to change things, by 33 you may have a fair idea of what you in fact cannot change.
29 and feeling the same. It's kind frustrating and freeing at the same time. I feel like I'm making less progress, but at the same time don't feel the pressure to make progress.
I'd also like to add anecdotally that a lot of people develop burnout at that age, probably because they keep pushing themselves and/or get sucked into their own enthusiasm / passion instead of set limits and the like. But then, I also think people get less resilient to stress and the like after 30, less able to compartimentalize or bounce back quickly.
What you end up getting is people ~10 years into an exciting career where suddenly they can't perform or cope as well as they used to. But they can also be in a pretty senior position by then and be pushed out of their comfort zone.
True, I think this happened to my partner, she had to face the hard limits on her working style and therefore had to shift careers. Thankfully I changed careers 6 years ago preemptive of burnout, etc so I'm still growing skills-wise and motivated by that challenge
> based on the brain scans of nearly 4,000 people aged under one to 90, mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives.
That is an absurdly small sample size to make such a conclusion.
It seems this age range could at least partly be culturally attributed. In modern industrialized life, many people don't have to "grow up" until a later age. At the risk of generalizing, people have more support from family, friends, and society at large.
Is the forming of those neurons based on some natural law, or is that people just haven't had to live the experiences that do so until their 30's nowadays?
As far as I know, forming neurons isn't something that "just happens". It happens due to catalysts in life. In pre-modern society, and indeed most likely in under-industrialized nations today, those catalysts, those experiences, would happen earlier. As others mentioned, there is a clear correlation with the typical age in which modern society gets married, settles down, and has kids.
I wonder what that era age would have been 200+ years ago.
>That is an absurdly small sample size to make such a conclusion.
Please show the statistical calculations in support of such assertion.
You require "statistical calculations" to support the notion that a sample size of 4000 people in two countries, two of the most modernized and affluent nations on the planet at that, is too small for a study to conclude how the human brain works across billions of people alive today across the world, Much less in human history? How about common sense?
Ok, let's do some math.
Approximately 108 to 117 billion humans are estimated to have lived in human history. Let's take 110 billion (the low end) for our purposes.
4,000 / 110,000,000,000 = 0.000003636%
Let's just go with people living today, which is approximately 8 billion (the low end).
4000 / 8 billion = 0.00005%
Not sure if that covers the "statistical" part of your requirement, but it covers the "calculations" part.
I myself would be hesitant to make claims about knowing how neurons and brains and ages work based on a sample size of pessimistically 0.000003636% or even optimistically 0.00005% of the human population and their brains.
oh man, prepare to have your mind blown:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination
Sample size is a whole chapter in statistics, and it's surprisingly how small the sample can be (if certain conditions are present)
Not sure why this is downvoted. The authors themselves note that parenthood could be a catalyst for the change at 30-- in previous centuries, when parenthood happened much earlier, why could it not affect the brain's timeline? This study is simply descriptive of a particular dataset, a collection of snapshots at a particular time and place. Certainly the brain is elastic and responsive to external conditions.
What I noticed is that the 4000 samples are all from England and the U.S. Replicating this study with a greater geographical and socio-cultural diversity would be very useful in supporting or expanding these results.
I do have felt similar shift around that age, but I wonder if it is due to reaching certain points in career where you are put into more leading position and have more confidence in what you do even if you don't have children? Easy to go into horoscope style confirmation bias here though.
Nonetheless I am never going to stop saying I still feel like I am 16. Just more confident 16.
As some point you're going to stop saying that because you'll realize that sixteen year olds are generally dumbasses.
I will call myself a savant uber mature 16 year old then.
You don't know me!
:oP
at some point when i was 32 it hit me: "ive accepted the idea of giving up perceived freedom and having a kid" (adoption or old-fashioned-style)
my spouse is 3 years younger and when i told her my conclusion i added that i feel no urgency, only that something shifted
this was 3 years ago and now my spouse is 32 and said the same thing to me, someone who previously had NEVER wanted to go through the process of childbirth[0]. had to remind her that we had the same convo when i was her age
incredible that shift has been pinned down with research
[0] 10 years of big hospital nursing can be like "scared straight" for pregnancy
This is interesting and alarming to me because judging by the changes in my life I appear to have entered the age-66 phase more than a decade and a half early despite remaining intellectually curious and physically fit enough.
In the last year or so I have begun to adjust my life expectations. My father was in his nineties when he died, but I no longer believe I will reach my seventies.
Things like this only tend to confirm my sense that I am neurologically ageing at a rate that is unusual.
Seems like the “adult” phase is too suspiciously bookended by the start of parenthood and the start of retirement.
Turns out the Hobbits had it right [0].
[0] https://andreian.com/hobbits-coming-of-age/#:~:text=What%20y...
Bizarre. This says that most children are had by adolescents. And that they’ve always been mostly had by adolescents. Maybe this is an example of culturally-driven development? Or does this explain why there’s so many bad parents?
I think that environment is probably also a factor. My only parent died when I was a teen and I had to grow up really fast. I got a lot of things wrong but my brain did not have any other options either way.
Then when you're not on the era you're supposed to be it's called a "regression" or "skipping stages". People are very stubborn to classify development in terms of age or time.
People really miss the point about why military recruiting occurs so early at 18. The brain is not fully developed yet. At 18, people have not learned right from wrong, love, death, loss, true responsibility to someone else. Sure, someone at 18 have gone through these things and it hopefully helps guide them in life, but it may not penetrate the brain as a life lesson yet. The brain is basically a blur up until your thirties, because you don't have any of these experiences to compare to until you encounter them again.
That's why as you get older you start to understand what the heck is happening in your life, because you finally have multiple experiences to compare to. Then you can finally understand what is meant to be traumatic and what is right and wrong. The first time you went through something you were basically numb to the experience.
> People really miss the point about why military recruiting occurs so early at 18. The brain is not fully developed yet.
I thought it was because if people die in battle at that age, they were statistically unlikely to leave widows and children to collect pensions.
I think that’s fair as well.
I think it’s more about as you get older and wiser you realize war isn’t such a good idea for your future.
Wasn't it 25 that the prefrontal cortex matured and people could be considered adults? We will have to infantilize people until their 30s now?
The problem with such reports (the studies themselves method-wise etc are in general fine I guess, but how the results are interpreted and disseminated is the issue) is that unless we find some specific correlations with behavioural and such measures, it makes no sense to give these kind of meanings such as "adolescence", adult mode", behavioural/mental/cognitive matureness or whatever cultural or other norms one may think a "mature/adult person" should abide to. Especially since these abstract topological measures, while interesting, are not that trivially linked with real outcomes in a causal sense, and instead of eg simply reflecting rather environmental or other changes in a person's life.
I haven't read this paper, but for the "25" paper, it was a longitudinal study that stopped observing people at 25. The result "brain continues to develop up to at least age 25" was misinterpreted as "stops developing at age 25" by media & social media.
I have similar concerns about reporting on this paper - feels ripe for pop-sci misunderstandings.
All research is ripe for pop-sci misunderstandings. Always. But this study at least didn't have a cutoff for ages studied.
"Infantilize" is a needlessly hyperbolic verb.
I've always found it interesting that laws are set by politics to allow privileges at certain ages (16, 18, 21), but car rental companies - whose motives are more purely data-driven - won't rent to anyone under 25.
I'm certainly not advocating withholding suffrage until 25, but driving... the data is very strong that it would save lives.
> We will have to infantilize people until their 30s now?
People already pick and choose who they feel sympathy for and give a pass to on the basis of their personal experiences, belief system, and social proximity. Think of how many, for instance, ridicule politicians for being too saintly and enabling or mean and without empathy then give their friends and family a pass for the exact same behavior. They'll get angry with celebrities for things that they allegedly did then shrug off a driver running a red light and nearly killing them because they "don't take things personally". Addicts are a blight on society until it's somebody's child or brother or sister in which case they just need help. Et cetera ad infinitum.
People (you and I included) are fickle. This changes nothing.
I had kids and finally settled into a career at 33. It certainly forced me into adult mode after this.
I just met up with my Brother-in-law and his friends for our yearly gathering. All of them are in their 30s and none of them are in what I would consider 'adult mode'.
They are all un-married/no kids, barely scraping by, partying every weekend/wasting money on weed and booze. Certainly no careers (mostly retail, some unemployed and still living with parents).
I wonder if these numbers will change with the new generation, because so many are not having kids or getting married.
This sounds more like an anecdote of “my brother-in-law and his friends are losers” more than any indication of a trend.
The median income almost doubles between age 23 and 35.
There's definitely a transition associated with becoming a parent - that is well documented.
When I think about my friends and friends of my relatives, what GP described appears to be the norm - also among the educated and in the upper-middle class. They often identify themselves as "dog parents".
I know plenty of people that had kids in their 20's - still didn't 'grow up' until their 30's. Just because they're not partying anymore doesn't mean they still don't act like adolescents when navigating complicated situations they're in (because they're had kids before they were necessarily 'ready') compared with someone in their 30's. I would argue that taking away that time in your late 20's where you can more easily make mistakes and try new things (while also having a bit of stability in terms of money) before having kids will lead to less maturity rather than more long term.
Probably not, the comment read more as a way to rant, self-boast, and judge others' lifestyles than anything insightful.
Did you read the article (or hell even the title) before commenting...?
>Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Just the headline gels with my experience at age 54.
The feeling is definitely there,but it's hard to say of it was parenthood or aging until 36 that made me more adult. Probably both
So you aren't an adult until your early 30's and you are an old slow guy not worth interviewing less than 10 years later.
Where did you get that from? The article mentions changes at age 9, 32, 66, and 83.
It's just the popular wisdom these days. Companies tend to deprioritize hiring engineers in their 40s, especially if their overspecialized. At face value, Companies want high-energy 20-somethings that they can mold into their specialty. More likely, they know that 20-somethings expect a far smaller salary.
So you aren't discussing the article at all? And you imply mythrwy isn't either?
Semantics sure. But adult mode starts most likely at 13.
Early 30s is mid-life mode.
Why? Because time and time again research shows we should treat people 13 and up as adults. Even when they get some extra years of youth-judgement in court, and we put 18/21 in place as lawful adult...
This is another psychology narrative put forth as a quantifiable scientific finding.
Q: "Is this based on a clearly expressed scientific theory?"
A: "Be serious -- it's just an idea, a narrative."
Q: "What would constitute a basis for either statistical validation or falsification?"
A: "You're confusing psychology with science. That's naive."
Once again armchair evolutionary psychologists are ahead of science. Science dismisses the amateur sociologists online who share anecdotes and observations, but they should really try to test these theories.
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Why would you even bother to post such a shallow dismissal like this, without engaging with the article at all? What are you hoping to achieve?
There is nothing to engage with. I think tersely. Some researchers could learn.
I find it annoying that a large part of research is the obsession of taking a perfectly smooth, gradual phenomenon and introducing artificial boundaries, sometimes even with formal labels. And then we spend the next few decades rolling it back as we inevitably find out that reality is nuanced, and the arbitrary categorization is more of a distraction than a meaningful tool. But I'm sure this fantastical finding was great for somebody's career.
Meaningful categorization is a necessary and foundational aspect of science and understanding in general. We categorize matter into categories such a solid, liquid, and gas, because this has meaningful consequences beyond merely temperature.
If you think the categories in this article are useless, you're going to need to justify that. Aging is well-known to encompass phases with nonlinear transformations, such as puberty or menopause.
So what you find "annoying" is actually a building block of science. And while disagreeing in a particular case is certainly valid, you're going to have to either present evidence to the contrary, or else find weaknesses in the particular methodology used.
So there's plenty to engage with. But you're not doing it, so your comments are just snark with no value.
Except the five eras in the article are based scientific observations of how the brain changes overtime where’s yours are based on having a snide attitude.
33 year olds really should not be allowed to date 28yr olds