section_path: Biological adulthood
section_name: Biological adulthood
paragraph_text: Biological adulthood
  
  Historically and cross-culturally, adulthood has been determined primarily by the start of puberty (the appearance of secondary sex characteristics such as menstruation and the developmentj of breasts in women, ejaculation, the development of facial hair, and a deeper voice in men, and pubic hair in both sexes). In the past, a person usually moved from the status of child directly to the status of adult, often with this shift being marked by some type of coming-of-age test or ceremony. During the Industrial Revolution, children went to work as soon as they could in order to help provide for their family. There was not a huge emphasis on school or education in general. Many children could get a job and were not required to have experience as adults are nowadays. Adulthood, in more recent years, as it has been studied has developed a characteristic list, that goes far beyond just ones physical maturity. These markers for a full, mentally developed, adult include traits of personal responsibilities in multiple aspects of life.
  
  Although few or no established dictionaries provide a definition for the two-word term biological adult, the first definition of adult in multiple dictionaries includes "the stage of the life cycle of an animal after reproductive capacity has been attained". Thus, the base definition of the word adult is the period beginning at physical sexual maturity, which occurs sometime after the onset of puberty. Although this is the primary definition of the base word "adult", the term is also frequently used to refer to social adults. The two-word term biological adult stresses or clarifies that the original definition, based on physical maturity (i.e. having reached reproductive competency), is being used.
  
  The time of puberty varies from child to child, but usually begins between 10 and 12 years old. Girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or 12. Girls generally complete puberty by 15–17, and boys by age 16 or 17. Nutrition, genetics and environment also usually play a part in the onset of puberty. Girls will go through a growth spurt and gain weight in several areas of their body. Boys will go through similar spurts in growth, though it is usually not in a similar style or time frame. This is due to the natural processes of puberty, but genetics also plays a part in how much weight they gain or how much taller they get.
  
  One recent area of debate within the science of brain development is the most likely chronological age for full mental maturity, or indeed, if such an age even exists. Common claims repeated in the media since 2005 (based upon interpretations of imaging data) have commonly suggested an "end-point" of 25, referring to the prefrontal cortex as one area that is not yet fully mature at the age of 18. However, this is based on an interpretation of a brain imaging study by Jay Giedd, dating back to 2004 or 2005, where the only participants were aged up to 21 years, and Giedd assumed this maturing process would be done by the age of 25 years, whereas more recent studies show prefrontal cortex maturation continuing well past the age of 30 years, marking this interpretation as incorrect and outdated.