One thing is clear: It’s time for doctors who study eating disorders to stop wishing theconversation about calorie restriction would go away. Instead they need to join it, addingtheir crucial perspective on the eects of starvation.

Deciding whether they’re good or bad is a little like deciding whether totake a drug that has advantages but also changes your personality: It calms you, but it alsodramatically narrows the scope of your interests and attention

Right now, the NationalInstitute on Aging, a division of the NIH, is spending millions of dollars on a human studycalled the Comprehensive Assessment of Long-Term Eects of Reduced Intake of Energy.

No, not exactly—except in rare cases like Al’s, where fear of eatinghas progressed to such a lethal stage that it would be hard to label it as anything else. But inmany cases, CR rises to the level of a dierent eating disorder—a new one, in which talk ofbetter health and longevity cloaks other unspoken, and possibly unconscious, motives.

Many CRONies take it too far, she said—particularly the men, who are the ones who usuallylose their libido. But she said these men often make the same comments as men in theprocess of transitioning into women: that they’re relieved to be freed from ixating on sex.

Nerissa, the transsexual.She started practicing her version of the diet—which involves eating normally one day andrestrictively the next—when she began her gender-transitioning ive years ago. She’s 5’8”and then weighed 194 pounds, which she knew wouldn’t look good on a woman’s frame. Shedoesn’t believe that CR will make her live longer, nor does she think most people whopractice CR really do it for that reason. Instead, she said, they’re motivated by other desires:wanting to change their bodies, to be more energetic, or even to lower their sex drive.

In the middle of one of these episodes, he collapsed from lowblood sugar and went into a coma. Al acknowledged that his CR has turned into anorexia.Nonetheless, he refused to criticize the theory behind it, and he spoke sharply about thedamage Americans do to themselves by eating too much.

somewhat dificult to hear. I asked how many calories a day he ate (1,950, he said) and howmuch he weighed.“Ninety-two,” he answered. I hoped I’d heard wrong. “How tall are you?” I asked. “Five-four,”he said. “But I used to be 5-feet-11.” He paused. “Osteoporosis.” His spine had compressed afull 7 inches—or perhaps he was bent over. I was glad we were on the phone and I couldn’tsee him.Al, who is 59, said he began CR in 1989 after reading about it in a textbook co-written by CRguru Roy Walford. Though he was never overweight, Al was concerned about his dietbecause there is a history of cardiovascular disease in his family.

nd when I was on that side, if I hadknown CR was going to take that direction, I would have said, ‘No way in hell.’ But [now] Idon’t want to go back.”

He came to enjoy havingmore time and attention for things other than sex. Dean connects his loss of libido to adecline in other instincts that he identiies as conventionally masculine: He feels lessaggressive and selish, and has less of an urge to use people for his own ends. He hasbecome very interested in Buddhism and in the teachings of Ghandi (who, of course, alsostarved himself).

side eect of CR in men: loss of libido.

Dean qualiies as an extremist. Before I talked to him, I followed a link from theCR Society Web site to a PowerPoint presentation that he put together on thepsychological eects of CR. In it, Dean acknowledges that calorie restriction has severeconsequences. These include obsessiveness, particularly about food; he adopted behaviorsthat are also common among anorexics, such as watching food shows on TV and seasoningfood with salt or spices to a degree that most people would ind unpleasant. He alsodescribes experiencing a kind of emotional “smoothness” or placidity, which at a certainpoint morphed into a kind of deadening.

I read archived e-mail exchanges of the Calorie Restriction Society and found ive people to interview: Dean, asoftware engineer; Paul and Meredith, a couple who practice CR together; Al, a retiredscientist; and Nerissa, a preoperative male-to-female transsexual. It was a limited surveybut a revealing one.

calorie restriction, while not anorexia,constitutes its own new kind of eating disorder.

My starvation triggered the release ofendorphins. In evolutionary terms, this is designed to give humans heightened copingpowers in an emergency. In my case, it gave me a sense of well-being and made me feelsharp and energetic. This feeling became an addiction, so that I pursued it even as mytolerance level rose and the same amount of endorphins no longer produced the sameeect, at which point I became quite depressed.

In my case, there were several noticeable pluses. Beinghungry gave me energy. It helped me focus on my work. It made me feel emotional andcreative in a way that I enjoyed. At the time, in fact, I believed I was eating as I did muchmore for the intellectual and creative edge it gave me than to look thin.

After this point, the anorexic is motivated by a cost-beneit analysis thatsounds very much like the calorie restrictor’s: “This is worth the eort/pain/ighting withmy parents, because of X beneit.”

It states, “Anorexia: It’sAll About Appearance. Calorie Restriction: It’s All About Health.”

Doctors I’ve interviewed say they’reconcerned about the message that semistarvation is healthy. But, when pressed to saywhether reducing one’s metabolism is overall healthful or harmful, they admit that wesimply don’t know. One doctor admitted that there may be beneits to anorexia, assumingyou survive it: There is evidence, for instance, that women who recover from anorexia are atlower risk for cardiovascular disease later in life. On the other hand, one risk of long-termcalorie restriction (and anorexia) is bone loss, which if severe enough causes osteoporosis.(When your metabolism slows down, the levels of hormones that trigger your body to addcalcium to your bones also decrease.)

Like anorexics, CRONies discover in starvation an apparentsolution to their problems: a source of energy (at least at irst), a sense of purpose, andrelief from stress.

They refer to their regimen asCR (calorie restriction) or CRON (calorie restriction with optimal nutrition), and they callthemselves CRONies. They eat obsessively, measure every calorie, and lose huge amountsof weight. Except for the fact that most of them are men, they look a lot like anorexics.

My low heart rate, amenorrhea (the loss of my period), and the goose bumps I got in70-degree weather were all signs of illness.

When you eat less than you need, your metabolism slows down. Your heart rateebbs, your temperature drops. It’s an evolutionary response meant to help us survive duringfamines (and it explains why some dieters have such dificulty losing weight)

about calorierestriction, which studies have shown to extend the lives of animals like monkeys and miceand which is now being tested with humans.

It turns out starving yourself ishealthy.

Studies of hip, knee, or aortic va lvereplacement in the very old, for example, assess length of hospital stay andmortality, whe n most old people are at least as interested in staying out ofnursing homes a nd retaining the ability to think and walk.

an exception or outlier, even in manage-ment of diseases like cancer where the majority of patients are old.

Human diversity reaches its apex in old age. There is no set age whenwe transition from adult to elder, and both the speed and extent of agingvary widely. As geriatricians are fond of saying: "When you've seen one eighty-year-old, you've seen one eighty-year-old.

These include "priming"immune systems of younger adults to stimulate responses that will endureinto advanced old age, developing vaccines for infections that preferentiallyaffect old people, use of adjuvants to boost the response of older adults tocurrent vaccines, and not just vaccinating against individual diseases butenhancing the aging immune system itself.

As a result, older adultsare more susce ptible to infections-more likely to get sick from them, morelikely to require hospitalization, and more likely to die.

There were fi ve subgroups for adults. All Americans age sixty-five and overare lumped in a single subgroup, as if our bodies and behaviors don't changein any meaningful ways over the half century of life from the mid-sixtiesforward.

Doctors determine which shots patients shouldget, and when, b ased on the Centers for Disease Control's recommendations.The CDC guide lin es are presented in two "schedules": one for children. theother for ad ults , both divided into age subgroups based on developmentalbiology and social behaviors common at different stages of the life span.

Later, she told me she nowneeded an aisle seat with a wall nearby to prop her walker and that I shoulddefinitely go see the movie. The aging body matters in what people can andcannot do, but identity, additions and modifications to how a person seesthemselves, and social context are no less important in determining a person'swell-being.

She also discussesthat people are best able to maintain a sense of meaningful self when theycontinuously restructure their identity to unify who they were with whothey now are.

found the two groups ag r ee d on personal goals in old age: having indepen-dence, social adaptabi lit y, adequa te personal resources, and the ability tocope with ext ernal threats of changes; maintaining significant and mean-ingful goals; and ha\ ing ability to cope with changes in self. Where the twogroups differed ,.,,as in how they thought they would achieve those goals.

When someone with Emanuel's authority and influence makes state-ments without also acknowledging his cultural vantage point or the socialdisparities and policy failures that have created the circumstances in whichsuch sentiments seem reasoned and reasonable, he then constructs, allows,and enables the old age he wants to avoid-and not just for himself but forall the rest of us, especially those who aren't in a position to judge or shapethe lives of tens and ultimately hundreds of millions of their fellow citizens.

t judges others in ways that deprive them of what he isasserting for himself: the right to assign value to their own lives. It alsodiscounts the daily reality for the majority of humans of all ages who areless economically and socially fortunate than he and the millions who takepleasure in such lives

o Emanuel,"meaningful work" implies a paycheck and perhaps even an influence onthe world. The sort of work he does, in other words, though not the sortdone by most women and men

After decades spent caring almost exclu-sively fo r very o ld , frail people, I know three things: lives can have meaningdespite significa nt decline an d disability; different people draw the linein very different places as far as where they would like to die; and becauseof medicine's shortsighted approach to "progress," too many aged people areforced to go on once they've passed their natural and preferred thresholds asa result of medical "care."

He cares so deeply abo ut his legacy of public achievements that he denies thepossibility of meaningful relationships with people who are or have becomeenfeebled and further devalues th e majority of human lives , ones in whichhis notion of "legacy" is irrelevant.

We are no longer remembered asvibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.

"Why I H ope to Die at Seventy-Five," Emanuel said he would stop mo st medical care at age seventy-five. Hewould do things like get a hearing aid and take pa in medications but wou ldnot try to prolong his life with pre ventative or heroic medic al treatments.

By definition, the rest of us (mostpeople) are all inferior, regardless of what attribute or scale we choose. Couldwe say that older adults are, as a group, inferior at generating income andmaintaining the economy than middle-aged adults? Perhaps, if you countearned income, not wea lth, and if you ignore the years they already put ingenerating income and maintaining the economy. Can it really be thatentire generations earn no credit whatsoever for services rendered?

As for "ugly," one person's ugly is another's cute, if not handsome orpretty. Other time s, ugly is an accurate descriptor. Some categories of peopleare more famous for their looks than others-Ethiopians, Scandinavians,Southeast Asians-but in all peoples and all age groups, some people arebetter looking than others. Many babies are ugly. Ditto many teenagers. In

So that version of "useles s" can't be right. Ideally,families take care of whichever members need care at a given time, and whothat is varies throughout most lives. Some people argue that children aredifferent because we are investing in their future. But all children grow intoadults, and many adults don't meet the expectations implied by this rhetoric.

Perhaps the average ninety -year-old isn'tdesigning the latest technolog y, but neither is the average twenty- or forty- orsixty-year-old. Most people aren't in tech, even if they regularly use it , whichb h . . . . f l t of us are irrelevant.means y t e prevailing tech1e logic o re evance, mos

Here are words often used for old people today: Irrelevant. Useless . Burdensome.Ugly. Inferior. The sa me has b ee n said of babies, disabled people, variousraces and nationalities-for mo st people at some point or other and for somenearly constantly

Aroun d the same time in San Francisco, Lillien J. l\lartin,the child psychologist, r ea lized that disturbed behavior in children was oftenthe result of the presence of an older person at home who was upset andunhappy, not because of physical discomforts or ailments, but by a loss ofpurpose and self-worth.

In 1627 the physician Frarn;ois Ranchin argued thatmedicine needed to pay more attention to the health and care of old people.He admitted it was a hard sell, since "not only physicians, but everybody elseattending old I " " dpeop e were accustomed to their constant complaints an[knew of] their ill-tempered and difficult manners."

Many work fewer hours than they did in middle age. This is often bychoice-one of the benefits of being old-but sometimes it's enforced by aculture that simultaneously laments the "burden" of old people's unemploy-ment and prevents them from working

Recent studiesshow an increased risk of death in the two years after retirem ent for men intheir sixties and that over 40 percent of older people, fitter th an those ofprevious generations in their age group, are "unretiring."

Modern life is so focused on time and speed and doing multiple thingsf h" "b hindsimultaneously that old people often are called "out o touc or

I worry the knife w ill slip and she will cut herself. I consider that I coulddispense with the rind more quickly, easily, and cleanly. Then I remind myselfthat I am more often absent from than present in her kitchen, and she isneither st arving nor covered in cuts and bandages.

Attitude helps

A few years ago, a video of a 103-year-old playing the piano went viral.Some of this was the usual exceptional elder fascination: She's ancient! Sh e'sst ill playing! She 's really good! But of equal note was Alice Herz-Sommer'slife story: a fortunate childhood, stud yi ng piano with Franz Liszt, marriage,a son. T hen came Adolf Hitler. Her husband and most of both their familieswere killed. Her son survived but died suddenly at age sixty-five. She remainedalive, li ving in a one-room flat in a country to which he had moved her whenshe was already quite old. Look closely at her expressions. Watch her play.She looks happy, relaxed.

any older adults who earnthe "exceptional" and "successful" labels look ve ry much like the people whoearn those labels at other ages: born into privilege, bred in safe neighbor-hoods with access to healt hy foods, able to lead lives absent many of thestressors known to accelerate agin g

Although some of how we age is determined by personal choices, muchof the agi ng process is the result of genetics, social situation, and the publicpolicies that shape our day-to-day world.

First, they were born into privilege: white, citizens of developedcountries, wealthy (far more so in the queen's case than my moth er's, but ,from a global perspective, both qualify), and educated. Second, womenlive longer than men almost everywhere, and since each has at least onerelative who lived into their nineties or hundreds, th ey may be geneticallyadvantaged for longevity. Finally, both have had the good fortune of nothaving been assaulted, abused, felled by an advanced cancer, or in a debil-itating car accident, to name just a few of the random insults that canderail a life.

Planning a dinner party for ayounger friend's eightieth birthday and acknowledging that she was slowerthan she used to be and tired more easily, she spread her preparation over aweek, doing one key task eac h day. The next year, recognizing that at somepoint she would need to stop driving, she often took buses, walked, and gotrides to her activities. Sh e told me her friends said that the worS t thingabout giving up their cars was the sudden loss of the easiest way of gettingplaces. She was practicing so she'd be ready when the time came, as it in evi-tably did.

She only took up exercise at age sixty when, in thespan of just a few months, s he found herself struggling to open jars andunable to make it back up the Grand Canyon without help on a family hike

My octogenarian mother is also an exceptional senior. She exercises sixor seven days a week, volunteers as a docent at a science museum, takesseveral classes in every enrollment period at a university lifelong learningprogram, and has a social schedule of meals, movies, theater, and group walksthat makes me feel like a recluse. She became "exceptional" in equal partsby inclination, effort, and good luck.

By any measure, Britain's Queen Elizabeth is an "exceptional senior." Aroundthe time of her ninetieth birthday, the palace announced that she had had341 engagements in the previous year, a record for a British monarch of anyage. But wh ile that accomplishment may make her exceptional among Englishroyalty, it isn't what puts her in the exceptional senior category, the labelcommonly used to describe a healthy, active, and engaged old person.

Aristotle used the word eugeria to mean a good old age-eu means in a good manner, and geria refers to the treatment of old age.

This view implies that life span is preordained by God-not amenable tohuman tampering. It promises the possibility of longer health and life by spi r-itual redemption through Christ.

If the only way to describe older adults who are active, engaged, accom-plished, or attractive is either to say they don't look or act their age or to addwords like successful or exceptional to the word aging, then we are implyingthat being old, by definition, means a person is none of those things-anobvious falsehood.

The "successful aging" movement celebrates true stories about incred-ible resilience and accomplishments in old age

He didn't check my mother's ID, presumably because,like many, he saw old age as so undesirable that a person would never claimto be older than she actually was.

"Ma 'am ," he reprimanded, "yo u need to take off your shoes."" No , I don't," replied my mother with a smile.He insisted. Shoe removal was required for security purposes. Noexceptions."But I'm old," my mother argued." Ma'am ," he said, "you have to be seventy-five or older to keep on you rshoes."She matter -of-factly informed him of her age.He stared, muttered, "T hat's incredible," and waved her toward the bodyscanner, shoes still firmly on her feet.

Seventy-�ve years is all I want to live. I want to celebrate my life while I am still in myprime. My daughters and dear friends will continue to try to convince me that I amwrong and can live a valuable life much longer. And I retain the right to change mymind and offer a vigorous and reasoned defense of living as long as possible. at,after all, would mean still being creative after 75.

Its speci�city forces us to think about the end of our livesand engage with the deepest existential questions and ponder what we want to leaveour children and grandchildren, our community, our fellow Americans, the world.

What I am trying to do is delineate my views for a goodlife and make my friends and others think about how they want to live as they growolder.

I’m not even trying to convinceanyone I’m right. Indeed, I often advise people in this age group on how to get thebest medical care available in the United States for their ailments. at is their choice,and I want to support them.

where the U.S. lags,and shamefully: in preterm deliveries before 37 weeks (currently one in eight U.S.births), which are correlated with poor outcomes in vision, with cerebral palsy, andwith various problems related to brain development; in infant mortality (the U.S. is at6.17 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, while Japan is at 2.13 and Norway is at 2.48);

apan has the third-highest life expectancy, at 84.4 years(behind Monaco and Macau), while the United States is a disappointing No. 42, at79.5 years. But we should not care about catching up with—or measure ourselvesagainst—Japan. Once a country has a life expectancy past 75 for both men andwomen, this measure should be ignored.

Obviously, a do-not-resuscitate order and a complete advance directive indicating noventilators, dialysis, surgery, antibiotics, or any other medication—nothing exceptpalliative care even if I am conscious but not mentally competent—have been writtenand recorded.

IfI were diagnosed with cancer now, at 57, I would probably be treated, unless theprognosis was very poor. But 65 will be my last colonoscopy. No screening forprostate cancer at any age

I will accept onlypalliative—not curative—treatments if I am suffering pain or other disability.

Once I have lived to 75, my approach to my health care will completely change. Iwon’t actively end my life. But I won’t try to prolong it, either.

Yes, with effort our children will be able to recall that greatfamily vacation, that funny scene at anksgiving, that embarrassing faux pas at awedding. But the most-recent years—the years with progressing disabilities and theneed to make caregiving arrangements—will inevitably become the predominant andsalient memories. e old joys have to be actively conjured up.

But there is something even more important than parental shadowing: memories.How do we want to be remembered by our children and grandchildren? We wish ourchildren to remember us in our prime.

Living parents also occupy the role of head of the family. ey make it hard for grownchildren to become the patriarch or matriarch. When parents routinely live to 95,children must caretake into their own retirement. at doesn’t leave them much timeon their own—and it is all old age. When parents live to 75, children have had thejoys of a rich relationship with their parents, but also have enough time for their ownlives, out of their parents’ shadows.

ere is posterity: children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

One university professor told me that as he has aged (he is 70) he has published lessfrequently, but he now contributes in other ways. He mentors students, helping themtranslate their passions into research projects and advising them on the balance of

We are subject to who we have been. It is difficult, if not impossible,to generate new, creative thoughts, because we don’t develop a new set of neuralconnections that can supersede the existing network

Moreover, we need to ask how much of what “Oldinkers,” as Harvey C. Lehman called them in his 1953 Age and Achievement,produce is novel rather than reiterative and repetitive of previous ideas. e age-creativity curve—especially the decline—endures across cultures and throughouthistory, suggesting some deep underlying biological determinism probably related tobrain plasticity.

Currently, the average age at which Nobel Prize–winning physicists make their discovery—not get the prize—is 48.

Einstein famously said, “A person who hasnot made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.”

As wemove slower with age, we also think slower.

many are warning of a tsunami of dementia—a nearly 300 percent increase inthe number of older Americans with dementia by 2050.

Rightnow approximately 5 million Americans over 65 have Alzheimer’s; one in threeAmericans 85 and older has Alzheimer’s

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of deaths fromstroke declined by more than 20 percent. e bad news is that many of the roughly6.8 million Americans who have survived a stroke suffer from paralysis or an inabilityto speak. And many of the estimated 13 million more Americans who have survived a“silent” stroke suffer from more-subtle brain dysfunction such as aberrations inthought processes, mood regulation, and cognitive functioning.

As Crimmins puts it, over the past 50 years, health care hasn’t slowed the agingprocess so much as it has slowed the dying process

bout a decade ago, just shyof his 77th birthday, he began having pain in his abdomen. Like every good doctor,he kept denying that it was anything important. But after three weeks with noimprovement, he was persuaded to see his physician. He had in fact had a heartattack, which led to a cardiac catheterization and ultimately a bypass. Since then, hehas not been the same

For instance, using data from the National Health InterviewSurvey, Eileen Crimmins, a researcher at the University of Southern California, and acolleague assessed physical functioning in adults, analyzing whether people could walka quarter of a mile; climb 10 stairs; stand or sit for two hours; and stand up, bend, orkneel without using special equipment. e results show that as people age, there is aprogressive erosion of physical functioning. More important, Crimmins found thatbetween 1998 and 2006, the loss of functional mobility in the elderly increased.

eveloped in 1980 by James F.Fries, now a professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford, this theory postulates that aswe extend our life spans into the 80s and 90s, we will be living healthier lives—moretime before we have disabilities, and fewer disabilities overall.

In the early part of the 20th century, lifeexpectancy increased as vaccines,antibiotics, and better medical care savedmore children from premature death andeffectively treated infections. Once cured,people who had been sick largelyreturned to their normal, healthy liveswithout residual disabilities. Since 1960,however, increases in longevity have beenachieved mainly by extending the lives ofpeople over 60. Rather than saving moreyoung people, we are stretching out oldage.

n 1900, the life expectancy of an average American at birth wasapproximately 47 years. By 1930, it was 59.7; by 1960, 69.7; by 1990, 75.4. Today, anewborn can expect to live about 79 years

mericans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mentalpuzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, andpopping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolonglife as long as possible. is has become so pervasive that it now de�nes a culturaltype: what I call the American immortal.

Nor am I talking about waking up one morning 18 years from now and ending mylife through euthanasia or suicide. Since the 1990s, I have actively opposed legalizingeuthanasia and physician-assisted suicide

I just climbed Kilimanjaro with two of my nephews. So I amnot talking about bargaining with God to live to 75 because I have a terminal illness.

reach 75, I will have lived a complete life. I will have loved and beenloved. My children will be grown and in the midst of their own rich lives. I will haveseen my grandchildren born and beginning their lives. I will have pursued my life’sprojects and made whatever contributions, important or not, I am going to make.

living too long is also a loss.It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that maynot be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived

In short, it deprives us of allthe things we value.

ey think that I can’t mean what I say; that I haven’tthought clearly about this, because there is so much in the world to see and do

Adulthoodaltogether is an Impressionist painting—if you stand far enough away, you can see ablurry picture, but if you press your nose to it, it’s millions of tiny strokes. Imperfect,irregular, but indubitably part of a greater whole.

. “What I do mean is it’s better to be knowing than unknowing. It’sbetter to be experienced than inexperienced. It’s better to be sophisticated thancallow.”at’s what adulthood means for Mintz. For Williams Brown, it’s that “I am reallyand truly only in charge of myself. I am not in charge of trying to make life otherthan what it is.”

Williams Brown breaks down the lessons she’s learned about adulthood into threecategories: “taking care of people, taking care of things, and taking care of yourself.

ndependence can become loneliness.Responsibility can become stress

My knees hurt, I worryabout retirement, my parents are elderly and frail,

“You never really grew up, did you?” Iwas shocked; I am 56, married, well-traveled with a masters degree and astable career. What �eld did THAT comment come from? I wondered. Ihad to consider for quite a while before I understood his train of thought;I have never had children (by choice), therefore I must still be one myself.

seems most seebeing an adult as behaving in a more reserved way and as St. Paul says,putting “away childish things;” losing our passion

eprivilege at play here is not only who can afford to go to college, and haveinstitutionalized exploratory time, but also in who has the luxury to decide whenthey’ll take on different adult roles, and the time to think about it.

Looking back, I think I was asking the wrong question. I don’t think Ispent a lot of time as a child or teenager. I have worked since I was 13and I worked with other kids my age. Our parents were immigrants whomade little more than us. We were our families’ translators sincechildhood. Utilities and banks have heard my prepubescent voice as mymother/father/etc

Most change is gradual

Several readers mentioned their newfound responsibility for someone else as thede�ning factor, the next step up from the Big ree’s “taking responsibility foryourself.”

. I think we bothcouldn’t believe that we were now in charge, by ourselves, of this teeny,tiny human. Armed with our What to Expect the First Year bible, wewere totally responsible for this baby’s existence, and it felt enormouslyoverwhelming, and so grownup.

“I really thought it would feel mostly the same, because my husband and I have beentogether for almost four years now, and we’ve lived together for a good portion ofthat,” she says. “Emotionally ... it just feels a little more permanent. He said the otherday that it makes him feel both young and old. Young in that it’s a new chapter, andold in that for a lot of people, the question of who you want to spend your life with isa pretty central question for your 20s and 30s, and having settled that does feel reallybig and momentous.

e golden age of easy adulthood didn’t last long. Starting in the 1960s, the marriageage began to rise again and secondary education became more and more necessary fora middle-class income.

. Young men would seek their fortunes, fail, andcome back home; young women migrated to cities looking for work at even higherrates than men did in the 19th century. And in order to get married, some men usedto have to wait for their fathers to die �rst, so they could get their inheritance. At leasttoday’s delayed marriages are for less morbid reasons.

Finding a mate, learning to live with a partner, starting a family,raising children, beginning an occupation, running a home. ese are the traditionaladult roles, the components of what I’ve been calling “Leave it to Beaver adulthood,”the things Millennials are all-too-often criticized for not doing and not valuing.

So that’s when I felt like an adult. e question of when a tree becomes atree and no longer a sapling is obviously impossible to determine. Samewith any slow and gradual process. All I can say is that the adultpotential was there, ready to grow up and be responsible and accountable.

e late teen years and early 20s are probably the best time to explore, because lifetends to �ll up with commitments as you age. “In midlife, because of family demands,because of work demands, not only are people likely exploring who they are less, [but]if they do it may come at a bigger cost,” Burrow says

In China, for example, people highly valued being able to �nancially supporttheir parents, and in India people valued the ability to keep their family physicallysafe.

grown-up: taking responsibility for yourself, making independentdecisions, and becoming �nancially independent.

What’s really important is that the transition into adultroles is taking longer and longer.” ere are now, for many people, several years whenthey are free of their parents, out of school, but not tied to spouses or children.

In his book Age of Opportunity,he de�nes adolescence as starting at puberty and ending at the taking on of adultroles. He writes that in the 19th century, for girls, the time between their �rst periodand their wedding was around �ve years

Isuspect that if I leave, then I will feel like an adult, because then I didsomething for ME.

y spouse cheated onme—that was a wake up call. I started asking myself, “What do YOUwant?”, “What makes YOU happy?” I think like many people I had gonealong [in] life not questioning many things along the way. As a 40-year-old woman, I feel like this is the time I’m becoming an adult—it’s now,but it hasn’t completely happened ye

teinberg sees no reason 16-year-olds shouldn’t be able to vote, even if other aspects of their brain are stillmaturing. “You don’t need to be six feet tall to reach a shelf that’s �ve feet off theground,” he says.

as well as biological drives you could call “the four Fs—�ght, �ight,feeding, and ffff ... fooling around,”

“It’s like the difference between remodeling your house and redecorating it,” Steinbergsays.

At about age 22 or 23, the brain is pretty much done developing, according toSteinberg, who studies adolescence and brain development.

And by 1918, every state had compulsoryattendance laws. According to Mintz, these reforms were intended “to construct aninstitutional ladder for all youth that would allow them to attain adulthood throughinstructed steps.”

e idea of a coming-of-age ceremonysuggests there’s a switch that can be �ipped with the right momentous occasion totrigger it.

I feel that only when I’m able to support myself �nancially willI be a true “adult.” Some of the traditional markers of adulthood(turning 18, turning 21) have come and gone without me feeling anymore adult-y, and I don’t think that marriage would make me feel grownup unless it was accompanied by �nancial independence.

Skeletal maturity depends on what part of the skeleton you’re examining. Forexample, wisdom teeth typically emerge between 17 and 21, and Noel Cameron, aprofessor of human biology at Loughborough University, in the U.K., says the bonesof the hand and wrist, often used to determine age, mature at different rates. ecarpals of the hand are fully developed at 13 or 14, and the other bones—radius,ulna, metacarpals, and phalanges—complete development from 15 to 18. e �nalbone in the body to mature—the collarbone—does so between 25 and 35.

Humans are sexually matureafter puberty, but puberty can start anywhere between ages 8 and 13 for girls andbetween ages 9 and 14 for boys

“We all knowpeople who are 21 or 22 years old who are very wise and mature, but we also knowpeople who are very immature and very reckless. We’re not going to start givingpeople maturity tests to decide whether they can buy alcohol or not.”

In the United States, you can’t drink until you are 21, but legal adulthood, along withvoting and the ability to join the military, comes at age 18. Or does it? You’re allowedto watch adult movies at 17. And kids can hold a job as young as 14, depending onstate restrictions, and can often deliver newspapers, babysit, or work for their parentseven younger than that

Sometimes because I simply desire those things for myself, andsometimes because Instagram

en, if I hold myself to the traditional ideal of what itmeans to be an adult, I’m also not nailing it. I am unmarried, and notsettled into a long term, �nancially stable career.

just assumed you’d get to a certain ageand everything would make sense. Bless my young little heart, I had noidea!

All of a sudden you’re out in the world, and you have thisinsane array of options, but you don’t know which you should take. ere’s all thesethings your mom and dad told you, presumably, and yet you’re living like a feral wolfwho doesn’t have toilet paper, who’s using Arby’s napkins instead.

for most of history, with theexception of the 1950s and ’60s, peopledid not become adults any kind ofpredictable way.

not atypical of the 19th century, at least for a white man in theUnited States. Young people often went through periods of independence interspersedwith periods of dependence. If that seems surprising, it’s only because of the “myththat the transition to adulthood was more seamless and smoother in the past,”

Henry published his �rst book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, when hewas 31 years old, after 12 years of changing jobs and bouncing back and forthbetween his parents’ home, living on his own, and crashing with a buddy, whobelieved in his potential.

Henry managed to land a teaching job, but twoweeks in, he decided it wasn’t for him and quit

. I had just informed my parenrsthat I was not going to med school. Mom and Dad reaffirmed, inno uncertain terms, that I was a failure who had wasted the pasttwenty-three years of their lives and rhousands of dollars of theirhard-earned money, not to mention the enormous sacrifice of emi-gration.

was finally able to smile back at her