argonautweakend posted... I'll be generous and say that early 20s is kind of a mess, but mid 20s and higher, yeah you are an adult in every sense so you cannot say you're just a kid when you do immature or awful shit.
I feel like anybody old enough to think about using "I'm just a kid" as a defense usually isn't going to be a kid. And anybody with with the capacity to recognize an action is immature is mature enough to not use immaturity as a defense for their own actions.
While we tend to hold people to different standards on the basis of age, gender, etc, a lot of unacceptable conduct is still unacceptable conduct. Even when the underlying maturity isn't there, there can still be an understanding of right and wrong.
The only arguable difference with age is impulse control, although physical and emotional maturation happens at different rates.As for the rest of maturity, it's experience-driven. People generally learn to manage budgets by fucking up their budgeting a little bit and get better at it (although individuals from good backgrounds with stronger parental/guardianship aren't always going to make those same mistakes). They may lose jobs before learning how to hold one. For guys, they'll strike out before learning what women respond to. When something goes wrong the first time, they might panic, but the more often they deal with problems, the more confident they'll feel and the better their solutions will be. Of course, a lot of this can kinda peak depending on the person. Some people never learn enough from their experiences to find ways to truly make their lives better. Many will keep making the same mistakes, even after they're pointed out. And a lot of people won't follow paths that can lead to the better potential outcomes (although, in some cases, they might not also be cut out for it -- a person who succeeds in one arena may not be able to succeed in others; and the paths aren't necessarily linear or can have roadblocks.)