An almost-four-year-old asked his mom on the way to church, “How many times until I grow up?”

            It’s interesting that from such a young age, most kids begin to dream about what life will be like as a grown-up. It is not easy being a little person in this world, going through the entire day being told what to do and when to do it. Get up. Get dressed. Go to school. Eat dinner. Take a bath. Go to bed.

            Just imagine if adults were told when and how their days would unfold. Revolt! The particularly intense desire for independence would rise-up within us and demand freedom and justice for all — well, at least for adults.

            Returning to the four-year-old’s question, there is a bit of a crisis in our society today around this idea of what makes a person an adult.

Grown up yet?

            Different cultures hold different answers. Author Katherine S. Newman, in her book Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents, and the Private Toll of Global Competition, highlights how Americans see adulthood as a “process of self-discovery” and Europeans see it as “a station defined by the way one relates to others.”

            Perhaps the measurements for granting status as an adul

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