A Day in the Life of a 20 year old

Being a 20 year old now has changed over the past twenty to forty years. Our societal values, expectations, goals, actions, attitudes, and what is considered appropriate and inappropriate have also changed over the past few generations as well.

When I talked to a woman who is 20 years older than me she mentioned when she was twenty years old, she was expected to be responsible, polite, to go to school, get a job, to help out with her family, to respect her elders, to take care of her financial needs so if she wanted a car, she had to buy it herself. What was considered inappropriate for males and females was that girls don't dress provocatively, had to act and dress lady like and males were expected to act like gentlemen no matter where they were or who they were with. When I talked to a male that is 20 years older than me he mentioned that the main thing males and females were expected to be like was independent meaning having a job to make enough money to move out and be on their own. Males were looked down upon if they were still living at home when they were twenty. He stated what was considered inappropriate for males and females was the dress code. Such as tattoos and piercings were looked down upon.

When I talked to a woman who is 40 years older than me she mentioned when she was twenty years old she was expected to go to school, to get a job, to be responsible, to be polite, to respect her elders, to not get pregnant at a young age, or to not drink alcohol or do drugs since those were considered inappropriate behaviors for males and females to engage in. When I talked to a male that is 40 years older than me, he mentioned what was expected of males and females when he was twenty was to go to college, to do something with your life, to get a job, get married and to have kids and to stay out of trouble. What was considered inappropriate for males and females was to do drugs and have sexual encounters however although since there were not as many "new" drugs and all the viruses 40 years ago as there are now, if people engaged in drugs, alcohol, and sexual encounters, it was not as looked down upon as it is today. What was also considered inappropriate was to be a criminal, and to dodge the draft.

Compared to today, at twenty years old, males and females are expected to go to college, work, earn a degree to get a even better job, to not get married at a young age and have kids when you are financially stable, to not do drugs and drink alcohol excessively. Drugs are especially looked down upon and considered inappropriate today because there are so many more and new drugs that cause people to engage in illegal activity and so many young adults are sexually active and we're in the era where AIDS is becoming more common, in comparison to forty years ago, AIDS was not as common, and was just being discovered. Today females and males are still expected to be polite, and responsible for their actions, however parents are more lenient on being independent meaning they don't all plan to kick their kids out when they turn 18 because they don't want their kids to suffer like they did. At twenty tears old, we are considered an adult by paper, and are expected to act like one, however what is expected of a twenty year old today, has changed from what was expected from a twenty year old twenty to forty years ago. I felt when I was interviewing/asking each individual these questions, hearing what they said, made me appreciate my life and my parents even more.