When you think about it, the ages at which we decide a human being has crossed the threshold from childhood to adulthood are as strange as they are arbitrary.
The first accepted turning point in British culture comes at 16, when you can get a full-time job, leave school, buy a lottery ticket and consent to have sex. Then there’s the legal transformation into an adult at 18: you can live alone, buy alcohol and cigarettes, vote, gamble and get tattoos and piercings without anyone else’s say so. And finally, 21, when nothing much happens at all – unless you’re particularly keen on adopting a child, holding a minibus or pilot’s licence and getting pissed in North America – but which has, nevertheless, been deemed a final step into maturity.
