The whole “human brains aren’t fully developed until you’re 25” is such an annoying quote that gets thrown around by people just because they’ve heard it online.
I swear half the time it’s used to infantise young adults. I’m glad people weren’t pedalling this pseudoscience “fact” when I was that age, it’d probably get on my nerves.
It’s based on essentially nothing.
There isn’t an age where your brain is done developing. It constantly changes all throughout your life, affected by a whole load of factors we don’t really understand yet.
It certainly goes through periods of rapid change, but this happens predominantly years before you’re 25, or after life-changing events that alter how you think - things like moving out and having to manage your own life more, moving country to a very different culture/language, entering a LTR, having children, using drugs, getting a job, losing family members, even learning to drive can have a profound effect on your brain, evidenced by MRI scans.
Much of that stuff happens in your early-mid twenties, so I see why people would erroneously think that it’s the turning 25 part that does it.
I actually learned it in university studying biology. Which was some time ago and I didn’t follow up on research. But if I remember correctly there is rather large deviation on individual level.
I’ll preface that my dad is a good dad, not perfect, and I love him, but some of this article was painful to read.
It’s ironic, but independence isn’t something you can learn all by yourself. Boys need tolerant, empathetic adults in their lives in order to become self-reliant. They need to know that we care about and value them, even when we don’t agree with their desires and decisions.
This hurt to read. My dad was brutal if you were going against his wishes. He would really pressure you and it killed my older brother’s relationship with him for over a decade after a major falling out. There were many years where my dad didn’t get to see his own grandson except once a year, all over things which in hindsight turned out perfectly fine.
Why do they do this? Mostly because they simply aren’t aware of boys’ greater need for what Tronick calls “emotional scaffolding.” In fact, many of them still operate from a dusty playbook on masculinity that tells them to toughen up their sons
My dad, very explicitly, had the position that if you didn’t do manly things you would turn out gay. Gay was bad, and so was going effeminate things. He wasn’t alone back then either, he got that pressure from his whole family. There was a lot of those old fashioned ideas of masculinity growing up, which my mom rightfully called stupid.
I like my relationship with my dad a lot now, he’s changed a lot, and he’s a much better dad than when I was younger. When I was a kid he was intimidating, but could also be very fun, and you really wanted to make him happy.
I don’t know what changed, but over the years he’s really chilled out, he’s a great listener, and he’s got a bunch of creative hobbies that frankly he would have made judged himself about if he were the same as 30 years ago.
Ask that to say, some wounds still hurt, but also people can change for the better. This information is getting out there and hopefully we can all kill off our toxic masculinity biases.
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