Young adults often feel pressured to engage in vaginal intercourse to demonstrate they have achieved adulthood. We have "sex" to prove we are men and women, that we are no longer children. We keep having sex because that is what adults do. This is what society tells and expects of us, as adults. On a personal level, we may come to realize after having intercourse for the first time that nothing has changed. We may not feel differently about our partner or ourselves. We may be left wondering what the big deal was. Participating in intercourse for the first time at the age of twenty or thirty may not cause us to feel more "adult" than if we had done so at the age of twelve. Intercourse may not fulfill our lofty expectations. Couples should not engage in intercourse for the sole reason of achieving or demonstrating adulthood, as it is unlikely to fulfill their expectations.
As many adults discover, adulthood is something we are always striving to achieve but find is always just out of reach. We may engage in sex with a partner, graduate from school, vote, serve in the military, start a career, marry, have children, and buy a home, and in the case of women, start wearing a bra and menstruating, but find these events leave us wanting more. Adulthood is achieved not so much by what we do but by how others judge us. Unfortunately in our modern society, seldom does anyone ever tell us when we have achieved adulthood. We are left forever in a state of perpetual limbo, clearly no longer a child but not quite an adult either.
Adulthood is a social status that no physical accomplishment can guarantee without social recognition of that event. Many cultures have public ceremonies to provide a clear demarcation between childhood and adulthood so a person is not left wondering when they have achieved adulthood. It should be noted that the concept of "adolescence" came into existence only recently in Western culture and leaves young people in limbo for ever increasing amounts of time. When loss of virginity was closely linked with a public marriage ceremony, it was a clear indicator of passage into adulthood, and usually took place when couples were in their early to mid teens. Since a person may have partner sex for the first time at any stage of their life, it is no longer a clear indicator of adulthood in today's society. Since we all live such varied lives, there is no common indicator of adulthood that applies to everyone.
