Life Begins At …? Psychological Reflections on Mental Health and Adulthood

Abstract

Last year a friend of mine turned 40. He had a pub party and in time-honoured fashion this was followed up with after party drinks and dancing. We all got home too late, missed our buses and taxis and woke up slightly worse for wear, with that vague notion that we really ought to know better at our age. As we briefly caught up on the details of our now geographically distant lives, he remarked that certain aspects of my life were sorted out and settled, with an ironic and self-deprecating ‘but look at me’ gesture. I was married with a child, in a stable job and with a nice home. He also had a stable job, a girlfriend and his own home, but, at that time, he wasn’t married and did not have children. His social position was perhaps presented as one of failed adulthood, particularly around the social markers of marriage and parenthood. I, by contrast, had made it into the category of normal adulthood, without knowing beyond these social markers if I could claim to be a legitimate grown-up.