Now I'm young and free, but how will it be when I grow up to be a man?

While doing laundry this evening, I heard a small verbal tussle. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Trine trying to brush Tobias' teeth with an electric toothbrush. Dentistry is not covered by the Danes' socialized health care system, so I can understand her desperation to get her kid some pearly whites.



I kind of smiled to myself, thinking "I could brush my teeth when I was 8. And look at me now! I'm living in a foreign country! And doing my own laundry!"



But then another thought crossed my mind: when I got into a bit of a bike accident the other day(cuts and bruises, I'm fine now), all I wanted was for my mommy to give me a hug and make it all better. 20 years old, and I still call my mom for every little thing. In fact, I was just talking to her. Seriously.



All this made me wonder, when do we truly become adults? Some kids, like my cousin Jay, seem to have been born possessing a level of character rarely seen in your average 50 year old man. Some grown men and woman remain in a woefully childlike state until death. You become a Jewish adult at either 12 or 13, a full American citizen at 18, and a senior citizen at 65. Do these ages mean anything? Or is it some other milestone: high school graduation? Having a job? A house? A pet rock?



Let me make one thing clear: adulthood is not maturity. I think the cliché goes, "you are only young once, but you can be immature indefinately." I like that.



After thinking about it for a bit, I think a person becomes an adult when ze assumes responsibility of caretaker for another human being (or sole responsibility for themselves). This explains why parents (good ones, anyway) are adults, and why young people who are required to "be strong" in the face of some difficulty develop 'grown-up' characteristics. Conversely, a child is someone who knows they are being taken care of by someone else. This explains the relation between parent-offspring, as well as romantic relationships in which one partner consistently leans on the other to make decisions.



I do not think the state of "adulthood" is static, either. It depends on context. For instance, a young person can be a child when ze depends on hir parents to make hir lunch, but an adult when ze holds hir younger sibling's hand while crossing the street. On a small scale, shifts can occur moment-by-moment. On the larger scale, however, I think you just wake up one morning and realize that you have been a grown-up for the past 15 years... what happened??

This burst of philosophizing isn't completely unprecedented, by the way. In my "children in a multicultural context class," we have discussed that the primary responsibility of Danish children is, well, to be children. But what does that mean? I hope these thoughts provide me with a better working definition.

In the meantime, I have to get ready for our study tour to Odense and Skanderborg in western Denmark. These locations probably mean nothing to you until I mention our plan for Saturday:

LEGOLAND!!!!

Screw responsibility: I'm gonna make a giant tower to Mars!!!!!!

***EDIT***
a shortened version of this post is on the DIS student blogs website as "post of the week" as of 9.19.08! holler.