Wir sind bettler. Hoc est verum.

So I have been thinking and this is my theory about what level’s of male maturity there are out there. My theory is that males (and probably females too) have experience certain life events, in order to mature into the next stage of maturity. Now this doesn’t mean that every male who hits that stage is going to be as mature as he possibly could, it just means that his potential to mature has increased.

Let me explain it this way. Let’s say that maturity is a scale from 0-100, 100 being as mature as one could ever get, and 0 being an infant. So when a man get’s married lets say he now has unlocked the potential to mature to 80 on the scale, although he may only be scoring 50. Does this mean he will hit 80? Nope, it just means that before getting married, he couldn’t hit 80 if he wanted to.
You see the assumption is that I believe maturity is partially based on how accurately one sees the world especially themselves. The more you “mature” in life, the more you are aware of yourself, others, and the world, and the more realistic (how close to reality) your view becomes. I think there are probably 5 major maturity stages, although many smaller ones within these larger stages. Let me call them: Childhood, Adolescents, Underdeveloped Adult, Adult, and Well Developed Adult. If we use the 0-100 scale this would mean that one hits Childhood after a score of 20, Adolescents after 40, Adult after 60 and Mature Adult after 80. This even scale is just for simplicity, I would argue that certain stages actually are longer than others, but that would make this all too complicated. Note that I do not have infancy on the chart, infancy is basically a 0 level of maturity, when one moves from infancy to childhood they enter the number scale, again this is mainly for simplicity sake and keeping the scale nice round numbers.

My thinking is that when someone hits certain life events they unlock their ability to proceed into the next maturity stage, now if they choose to enter that stage it is up to them, but they couldn’t enter it until they hit that life event. This is because people grow when certain things happen to them good or bad. I am going to focus on the effects of good things and I am not going to discuss how bad things mature us.

I think the life events that cause the shifts into maturity are, in very simple terms: being able to fully take care of one’s self through verbal and physical actions  -i.e being able to go to the bathroom, feed, dress, and clean ones self- (move from Infant to Childhood), taking on more serious responsibility like one’s first job (Childhood to Adolescent), moving out of one’s guardian’s (parents) house and fully on one’s own -this stage doesn’t happen when your living at college but parents are still paying for things (Adolescent to Underdeveloped Adult), getting married (Underdeveloped Adult to Adult), and finally having children (Adult to Well Developed Adult). Now of course a person can have unlocked the final stage by being married and having children, but still only actually be at the level of an Adolescent or maybe an Underdeveloped Adult. The opposite is not true, however, that one could mature pass their life stage without having experienced the key life event. That is no person who hasn’t had children can reach, potentially, the maturity of a person who has had children. Following this thinking I would also argue that the stages themselves are reliant upon the other stages. That is someone who has a child at 15 isn’t immediately opened to the level 80 maturity scale, because they still haven’t moved out, or gotten married, their maturity scale potential is probably closer to the numbers of a person who has their own job and lives apart from their parents support.

It is important to note that I care more about the philosophy here than the details. If I was going to go into more details I would argue that each stage is weighted a certain amount, and is additive based upon the other stages. So for a quick argument’s sake lets just say that getting married is worth 25 points of maturity by itself, but if the person has moved out and is working on their own before getting married it actually is worth 30 points of growth potential. But likewise having a child is worth different points depending on what stage you are currently at. A married couple having a child might have another 35 points opened up to them, while a teenager having a child will only have 20. Just to explain how this can get complicated real fast, these numbers I am just making up to make a point.

Now before you all dismiss me, think about it closely. Just because someone hasn’t had children doesn’t mean they cannot be mature, nor does it mean that just because someone has had children they are automatically more mature. That is not the case, rather it is that when we have children we open for ourselves the availability for life (aka children) to so mold us and pressure us to become more mature, it is up to us what we do with this new opportunity. This is not a dis on people who haven’t had children nor am I saying that they are automatically less mature, but what I am saying is that they (the single or the childless) will lack certain things in life that those who are married and have children have available to them, namely the spouse or child who reveals the immaturity and selfishness innate in us, a vision that cannot happen outside of these things happening too us.

That is, no childless person is given the option and test, like people with children, to care for another person in spite of themselves. These things seem self evident to me – that those who gain both more responsibility along with their own hidden self (motives, desires, dreams, sin, gifts, fears etc) being more exposed to others – will be able to mature farther along the scale of maturity than those who go without those key life experiences. When I get married and I am naked spiritually, emotionally, and physically before my wife I open myself to external and internal critiques and exposure of my sin; when these things are exposed I am given opportunities to correctly identify and respond to them, opportunities that those who are not in my position (single) are not given, thus I am able to mature (if I so desire and work towards) to a greater degree than those single. Does this mean I will mature? No, it doesn’t, just as we can see people who are married and have children but act like children themselves, they have been given more opportunities to mature than actual children, but they have chosen to not take the opportunity to do the hard work and mature to the potential open to them.

Also it should be noted that this doesn’t include what tragedies do to people’s maturity as there are many other things that affect our maturity potential and the subject is vastly complex. It just seems to me that there are certain life events, that after being experienced, allow people to mature to greater levels than those who don’t experience them.

As a side note I would love to do research on this, and see if I am actually right on this, this makes sense to me, but perhaps it doesn’t work out in reality, PhD project?

What do you think?