The book of life

Hannah Harte 

Patreon: HRMNZ @hannah_harte_ 

Milestones represent a significant event, the beginning of a new page in the Book of Life. The word literally refers to roadside markers that inform just how much distance exists between one place and another. Childhood milestones are used as a guide to ensure an infant is growing and developing as expected, a period covering the cognitive, physical, verbal, social, and emotional skills that technically end when a juvenile first enters the school system. In the 1950s, sociologists identified the following milestones: completing education, leaving the parental home, attaining financial independence, marrying, and having children. If these expectations were not met by age 30, you would be considered a failure as an adult. 

Despite enormous societal, technological, and financial changes in the last 70 years, these milestones are still considered the gold standard. It has become increasingly difficult for people to attain a qualification, a well-paid job, and a home of their own before the age of 30. As a run-on effect, the average age of having a child in Aotearoa has risen to 30, with one in a hundred children being born to a mother aged 40 or over. Homeownership begins at a median of 35 years, and marriage sits around 30 for both men and women. 

We hold these standards as a shining beacon of achievement, which go hand in hand with financial, educational, and social norms. We can feel the looming spectre of inadequacy if we don’t fulfil what the general public considers standard milestones, which creates an intense amount of expectation on the individual. Perhaps it is time to evolve our understanding and perspective of milestones. Who says you have to do these things in a certain order, by a certain age, to live a full and justified life? Many people who don’t have the specific brand of intellect, financial stability, or disposition required to get a degree still manage to create successful careers for themselves. Offspring who live with their parents beyond their 20s by necessity or choice have become much more common and accepted, as is not living in a traditional marriage or having children before a degree of financial stability and life experience is attained. 

I would expand our concept of important milestones to those that indicate we have become well-developed, thoughtful, and mature humans, encompassing the ability to care for and empathise with others, to take action when wrongdoing occurs, and to make true connections with citizens outside our ethnic, religious, or financial groups. Challenging prejudice that we may have with people of sexual or gender orientations different to our own, re-evaluating how we perceive and treat others with disabilities, and expanding our ideas of ‘success’ to include achievements not based on parenthood, education, home ownership, money, or power. Each individual and their milestones are valid and worthy in their own unique ways.