Adulthood Becomes a Verb

Millennials—people born between about 1981 and 1995—gave us side parts, skinny jeans, and “adulting”. This term transformed adulthood into a verb, something you do (often with great effort) rather than something you simply are. Whether going to bed early, scheduling a dentist appointment, or buying a vacuum cleaner, describing your actions as “adulting” implies you are just role-playing as a grown-up. Consider with your team: is being an adult a specific feeling or just a collection of habits and responsibilities? When do you think you will feel like an adult?

Four hundred and sixty-eight steps to becoming a grown-up, says the book. A rite of passage was one step, and somebody else certified it.

Key concepts

Verbing: Turning a noun into something you do, the way 'google' and 'friend' became verbs. Every verbing smuggles in a claim — that the thing is an activity you perform, not a state you are in.

Every work — at a glance

'Adulting' (the Term) — — (term)

A millennial-era verb, widespread by the mid-2010s, that turns 'adult' from something you are into something you do. Calling a chore 'adulting' quietly confesses you are performing the role rather than holding it.

+ 5 more works explained inside

What to know

01
The joke has a real mechanism under it. The word spread in the mid-2010s, exactly as the old proofs of adulthood — a career for life, a mortgage, an early marriage — became slower and less certain, so a generation was handed the tasks of adult life without the evidence that would once have come with them.

Across subjects

The novel promised the opposite. A Bildungsroman — Pip in *Great Expectations*, Jane Eyre — runs a young person through the world and hands them a finished self

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

Is being an adult a feeling, or just a collection of habits and responsibilities? One side says feeling: there is a moment when you stop waiting for a grown-up to handle it. The other says there is no feeling to wait for — the habits are all adulthood ever was, and 'adulting' is a generation admitting it.

Practice — a sample

LITA millennial expects to feel grown once the mortgage is signed. Someone who knows the arrival fallacy would LEAST likely endorse —

A Asking what changed
B Naming the habits instead
C Marking the day anyway
D Letting the day pass
E Waiting for the feeling

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