An adult human being has already reached its full development.
Adult is one or something that has already reached its full development . According to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ), it is an adjective that comes from the Latin word adultus .
For example: “When you are an adult, you will make your own decisions: now you are a child and you must obey me because I am your father,” “On the right, you can see an adult leopard,” “A century after our independence , we are a “adult and mature country.”
Children need the presence of an adult for their development , at least within a normal social framework , where the activities and knowledge necessary for subsistence are in the hands of elders. In addition to learning to speak, read and write, they must receive examples of interpersonal relationships, essential for when the time comes to go out into the outside world and deal with other people.
Adults according to biology and justice
For biology , an organism reaches adulthood when it can reproduce . In the case of human beings, the notion is also linked to various legal and cultural issues, transcending the aspect linked to physiology and reproductive capacity.
The first stage of human life is childhood , then adolescence arrives and finally the individual becomes an adult, when his physical development has already been completed, at which time he can make greater use of his faculties. Adulthood, in turn, can be divided into various stages, such as early adulthood , middle adulthood , and late adulthood or old age .
At a legal level, it is common for a person to be considered an adult from the age of 18 or 21 , according to the legal system. It is believed that, from a certain age, the subject already has the necessary physical and psychological maturity to make their own decisions consciously and accept the consequences of their actions.
For society, adults must be productive.
The social view
An adult, in general, must dedicate themselves to some work or productive activity to obtain the resources that allow them to survive and support their children. That is why early and middle adults constitute the active economic group of a society : children and adolescents must attend school, while older adults are already retired.
It should be noted that this is not always true, especially in the current era, characterized by having broken with many of the structures and precepts that were valid in the past. One of the points that is becoming less common is parenthood : although there are many traditionalist people, who believe in the basic family model, and are born prepared to marry and procreate, there are also those who choose to find their own path through the professional and personal development, without the need for a partner.
On the other hand, adulthood is not something that can be defined in the same way for all cases, since it is not a concept necessarily linked to the physical maturity or age of an individual, as can be seen in many artists and free-spirited people who continue to enjoy life as if they were children. This does not mean that before the law they are adults, but from a social point of view they are closer to childhood .
Becoming an adult seems like a natural matter, but there are those who claim that it is possible to voluntarily refuse to take that step, and prefer to keep the inner child alive so as not to lose that intensity typical of the first years . While some people never question the mandates and passively allow their environment to transform them into husbands, fathers and grandparents, others discover in time that there are infinite possibilities.