How should adulthood be defined?

I really connected with Patricia Cohen’s article “Long Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer” that was published in the New York Times, particularly with the article’s closing quote: “We have not developed and strengthened institutions to serve young adults…because we’re still living with the archaic idea that people enter adulthood in their late teens or early 20s.” While the data was not surprising to me, I was struck by Mr. Furstenberg’s quote. It made me ponder how little transition help is available for adolescents becoming adults. From a financial perspective, graduates only have around 6 months before payments are required for student loans. The stress of high loan payments makes force a graduate to take an ill-suited job or even career. Or, graduates may choose to flood graduate programs and delay the debt, meanwhile procuring more loans. While I agree with Cohen when he states that marriage and children used to be prerequisites for adulthood, I find he still keeps those two life events as standards for adulthood when he analyzes data. I agree with him there is a problem in that institutions are not preparing adolescents for the long journey to adulthood. Yet, I find my peers are, with the exception of financial independence, more adult than adolescent. To me, it seems reasonable to be qualified as an adult, yet still live under the same roof as your parents.