We’re living through the end of comparable adulthood.
Whenever we meet someone new, most of us default to the same old questions. “Do you have kids?” If the answer is yes, there are easy follow-ups: “How old are they?” “Boys or girls?” “Where do they go to school?” There are stories waiting to be told.
If the answer is no, we tend to move onto the next question in the sequence. “Are you married?” A yes opens things up: “How long?” “How did you meet?” “Where did you honeymoon?”
A no, I’m not married can make the conversation shift again. We move on from yes/no questions to “Where do you live?” “What do you do?”
These questions trigger small talk, but they also serve another purpose. The answers offer one of the quickest ways to work out where someone is in adult life.
We Used to Have Mirror Lives
If you had asked me at 18 what my life would look like at 47, I would probably have given you the same answer as most people around me. I’d be married with kids living in a nice home with a dog and garden. I didn’t have a plan for how I would get there, like most people, I assumed that was what adulthood would eventually look like.
My life didn’t turn out that way. And over the past twenty-five years of talking to people across the globe, I’ve realised I wasn’t alone.
Throughout my career, I’ve asked lots of people versions of the same question. “What do you imagine your life looking like in ten years?” “What does a good life look like to you?” The answers are surprisingly similar, we repeat the same milestones back almost like cultural muscle memory, even when our actual lives are becoming much less alike.
I’ve learned that different cultures have always had different versions of adulthood. But there are usually shared expectations about what should happen, and roughly when, for people to benchmark what successful adult life looks like.
In the UK and much of the West, that meant university, work, partnership, marriage, home and children. Enough people around you were moving through the same milestones that you could ask questions and work out roughly where you were in comparison. Ahead, behind or on track.
I’ve been calling these “mirror lives”. We’d look at the people around us and expect to see a version of our own life reflected back at us.
Then the Mirror Turned
Today, that singular version of adulthood has broken down. But the mirror hasn’t shattered, it’s been turned.
A kaleidoscope is made with mirrors too. It starts with the same set of pieces. Turn it, and those pieces fall into a different pattern. Every turn changes how they come together. That increasingly looks and feels like adulthood to me.
We begin with many of the same pieces: relationships, work, home, family, friendship, care, purpose. But how they come together can change over a lifetime.
Sometimes that’s because of choices we make. Sometimes it’s the consequence of earlier decisions, or things we didn’t choose at all. Accidents, losses or surprises. And sometimes we drift into a life we never expected.
I’ve started thinking of these as Kaleidoscope Lives.
Someone aged 38 can have a teenager while her friend the same age is freezing her eggs hoping to have a family in the future. One person can be retiring at sixty, while another person the same age is starting a business. Some people marry at 25, others at 45. Some might buy a home alone, or some rent indefinitely, while others live with parents for far longer than they expected. Careers can pause, restart and even change entirely.
You might argue that our lives have always been different. True. But what’s changed is how far apart the timing has become. Things happen at different ages, in different orders, and some of the old milestones may not happen at all.
We’re living through the end of comparable adulthood.
Kaleidoscope Lives isn’t a new version of how adulthood should look because adulthood is becoming harder to reduce to a single path. It’s about recognising that adult lives are taking many different shapes.
The Data Behind the Pattern
Leaving home used to signal the start of adulthood, but it no longer happens on anything like a common timeline. In the UK, nearly three in ten 20- to 34-year-olds now live with their parents. In South Korea, more than eight in ten people in their twenties live with their parents.
Romantic relationships are changing too. Office for National Statistics data shows the proportion of adults in England and Wales who have never married or entered a civil partnership has continued to rise among people in their 40s, 50s and 60s. In Asia, the average age of first marriage has risen by almost three years since 2005.
EasyJet has seen the number of cabin crew aged over 50 more than double since it began actively recruiting older workers in 2022, while its over-60 crew has quadrupled. Some are starting a completely new career after raising a family or spending decades doing something else.
This isn’t simply about people hitting the same milestones later. Some still want those milestones, but they are happening in different orders and increasingly on top of one another.
Freedom Comes With a Cost
We have more freedom over when we do things. We can travel at 22 or 52, marry late or never, have children later, alone or not at all. Agency matters, but it can leave people feeling like they’re going it alone.
When there’s no obvious age to marry, have kids, buy a home or start again, we’re less likely to be going through the same things at the same time as our friends and peers.
The irony is that although the milestones have weakened, we still haven’t stopped judging people against them.
We still ask if someone is married, if they have a family or whether it is a bit too late to change career. The old sequence might have weakened, but the language around it is still everywhere.
That might help explain why a life can feel somehow wrong even when there is nothing particularly wrong with it.
We keep judging Kaleidoscope Lives as though they are badly made, misshaped mirrors. We look at a life that doesn’t reflect the familiar pattern back and assume something has gone wrong.
For a long time, adulthood allowed us to ask: am I on track? That question doesn’t work anymore.
Maybe the first thing we need to do is stop looking for the reflection we expect and start seeing the pattern that is actually there.
Not late. Not behind. Uniquely yours.
This article is the first in a series exploring Kaleidoscope Lives: a framework for thinking about modern adulthood. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at what happens to milestones, relationships and decision-making.