When Does a Child Become an Adult?

Ask this question of any teen, parent or grandparent and you will get a variety of answers. Some say when you’re old enough to vote or join the military. Some say when you get your driver’s license. Some say when you get married. Still others say when you reach the legal drinking age of twenty-one. So, which is it?

Truthfully, there is little consensus in America about when a child becomes an adult. The Jewish community celebrates Bar Mitzvah for boys at age thirteen and Bat Mitzvah for girls at age twelve. The Hispanic community celebrates Quinceañera when a girl reaches fifteen. There is no such rite of passage for young Hispanic men. Confirmation is a kind of rite of passage in some churches. Many African tribes also have their own initiation or rite of passage ceremonies for coming of age.

In our society few, if any, rite of passage ceremonies are practiced. The transition to adulthood is left to chance via individual subjective evaluation. As a result, a very critical piece of life is missing leading to confusion about when adulthood begins. The modern notion of ‘adolescence’ has further added to the confusion, but that’s a topic for another time.

Obviously, God has established a natural, physical process as a sign of ‘coming of age’. We call it puberty. While there is some variation in age for individual males and females, the average age is around thirteen. God designed us with a built-in mechanism for determining the transition point from childhood to adulthood. Yet, in America, when our kids reach puberty, we do little to prepare them for adulthood and help them put away childish things to enter the world of responsible adulthood.

My good friend, Dr. Chuck Stecker, and President of A Chosen Generation, has been tirelessly spreading this message for years. His ministry is focused around the importance of an inter-generational celebration of rite of passage. The lack of such a ceremony and the preparation for it may explain why the ill-conceived notion of adolescence has produced a generation of adults who still act like children.

Chuck writes in his book, Men of Honor/Women of Virtue, “The lack of adult connection has left our own sons and daughters without a road map to adulthood…If we don’t give our young people rites of passage that convey their value, they’ll create their own rites of passage—or others will do so for them.” Unfortunately, these self-determined rites fail to establish a true standard for adulthood and maturity.

I believe that an appropriate rite of passage process for moving into adulthood is a powerful tool for clarifying this childhood-adulthood transition, and for strengthening meaningful inter-generational relationships. In fact, such initiations will only work, I believe, in the context of a strong inter-generational community.

Consider taking these steps toward building such a process in your family:

1. Read Men of Honor/Women of Virtue by Chuck Stecker. I urge you to use it as a study guide with some other families.
2. Talk to your pastoral leadership about hosting a rite of passage seminar and study in your church.
3. Sit down with all the generations of your family present and talk about what it means to move from childhood to adulthood. Ask them when they think a child becomes an adult. Explore and discuss ways to clarify when that transition occurs, and how we should celebrate it.

What are your doing in your family or church to establish a purposeful ceremony of rites of passage for your children? How important do you think it is to have such a ceremony?