"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence."
— C. S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”
A young character—usually a child or teenager—who wants to be more grown up, or at least to appear more grown up than they really are, because they think that being an adult would be better than being a child or adolescent.
This mentality can also apply to a younger child who admires and wants to emulate the "bigger kids" (e.g. a toddler wanting to be more like their elementary school-aged sibling), and/or an older kid who views themselves as superior to their younger siblings or peers. The point is, in these characters' minds, the closer to adulthood one is, the better.
Think about it: adults have much more freedom than prepubescent folks. They get to access age-restricted content with no consequence, they can stay up late as much as they like, they can go wherever they want without needing an adult's permission or supervision, they can get a job and earn money for themselves without having to beg for allowances from their parents, and they will never get babied, looked down on or dismissed by others for being "Just a Kid". In fact, they'd be the ones bossing around the young'uns.
As a result, these characters might go out of their way to adopt superficially grown-up traits (e.g. deepening their voices, speaking in impressive-sounding words, wearing "adult" fashion or hairdo, padding out their chests, listening to classical music, reading the newspaper, acting cynical, etc.) and/or hide their "childish" interests in order to appear more mature than they really are. In extreme cases, this may lead to Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, although more light-hearted attempts might be seen as an Adorably Precocious Child instead.
Sometimes, the character might get an Applied Phlebotinum that allows them to immediately transform into a grown-up—only for them to realize that being an adult has a lot of drawbacks and responsibilities that they are not prepared to handle. In such cases, expect the story/episode to end with An Aesop that adulthood is not necessarily better than childhood, and that maturity is not something one can rush or fake.
May overlap with Height Angst for a young child of any gender who views their short stature as "too childish", or A-Cup Angst particularly for a girl who considers their underdeveloped chest as a mark of immaturity. If the character is a boy, it might overlap with I Want to Be a Real Man instead.
See also The Growing Up Speech, in which an adult imparts advice to younger folks about what it means to be an adult and Kiddie Angst, which is someone's reaction towards being treated as a kid.
Also related to the Dreaded Kids' Table.
Not to be confused with Not Growing Up Sucks—which is about immortal characters who are mentally adult but are stuck in childlike bodies.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Hello Flo: In one ad, a young girl wishes she could get her period because two of her friends already have theirs. She tries faking it, but it backfires when her mother doesn't fall for it and deliberately embarrasses her daughter by throwing a "First Moon party" as punishment.
Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: Saki is a die-hard believer in age-based seniority to the point where she insists on being addressed as "senpai" by the girlfriends who are younger than her, and will invariably suck up to all the girlfriends who are older than her whether they ask her to or not. She also intentionally got herself Held Back in School for the sole purpose of being able to boast about being the oldest student at the school.
- Family Complex: As a high-schooler, Nanami used to envy her good friend Yuu for being taller, bustier, and overall more adult-like. Even though Yuu points out that Nanami herself is very popular among guys and has a very cute appearance (which Yuu considers more desirable than her own appearance), Nanami insists that she'd prefer to look like a beautiful "woman" than a cute "girl". She's gotten over this mindset as a married adult with four children though.
- FLCL: Protagonist Naota, who's 12, is fixated on being mature, so he tries to act nonchalant about the madness around him, and hide the fact that he has a sweet tooth. This is ironic in light of the fact that nearly all of the adults in the series are ridiculous manchildren, and possibly motivated by his need to be more mature than them. His classmates also show signs of this: Masashi acts apathetic and actually drives a kei truck as a delivery boy, Gaku is obsessed with kissing, and Eri, similar to Naota, projects a stoic and proper personality to cover up her troubles. The whole situation with Haruko makes him realize he is far from ready for the rigors of understanding adulthood and that he should enjoy his childhood while he can.
- Mamotte! Lollipop: 5-year-old Rokka is in love with the 15-year-old Ichi, so she uses her magic to transform her appearance into a sexy-looking woman and forces herself to act like an "adult" (such as ordering black coffee at a cafe) to become a suitable, mature girlfriend for Ichi.
- Sailor Moon: In the Super S season episode "Pegasus's Secret: The Boy Who Protects the Dream World", Chibi-Usa and Usagi both wish to be older and younger respectively; the former due to her crush on Pegasus and the latter because math was easier as a kid. When they argue over it in front of Palla-Palla, she decides to grant their wishes and swap their ages. Chibi-Usa is ecstatic, only to learn she can't summon Pegasus. Once Pegasus is able to contact her, she finds out that having her wish granted meant that he couldn't find her anymore. Between that and the revelation of the disaster brought about by the Dead Moon Circus' attack on his home convinces Chibi-Usa she doesn't want to be an adult so she can help save Pegasus and his home, undoing Palla-Palla's magic.
Comic Books
- Green Lantern: Done rather creepily with Arisia Rrab, an alien who was 13 when she joined the Green Lantern corps. After developing a crush on Hal Jordan, she used her Power Ring to age herself up to physically being 18 so the two of them could be in a romantic relationship. This was eventually retconned so that her species was extremely long-lived and had a very slow solar orbit so that 13 of her years was the equivalent of more than 200 Earth years, to keep Hal from looking like a child predator.
- Superboy: The clone Superboy, Conner Kent, once dreamed of growing up as he wanted to take over as Superman one day. However, when a genetic malady affected his body, it was fixed but locked him at physically sixteen years old. During the "Sins of Youth" event, Klarion's age spell wrecked with this genetic lock before the lock was undone, allowing Conner to be an adult at last. He wouldn't get to enjoy it as a vengeful villain murders his old Love Interest soon after.
- Teen Titans: During the "Sins of Youth" event, Damage was overjoyed about being magically aged-up, as his level of control over his powers was tied to his maturity, and thus being older gave him far more control.
Comic Strips
- The Far Side: In one strip, a young male gorilla checks every day to see if he's becoming a silverback.
Fan Works
- The Joys and Sorrows of Young Charles Finster: One story is a Whole-Plot Reference to the Arthur episode "Arthur's Tooth", in which a young Didi Pickles is desperate to lose her first tooth because she sees it as a sign of growing up.
- Pride in Her Chest: When Lynn mistakes her pecs for breast buds and then realises her mistake, she fears she will never grow breasts, envying a girl in her class who already has large breasts.
- The Queen's Return
, a Narnia fanfic, explains how Susan's "falling away" from Narnia really stems from her desire to fit in the popular, "grown-up" crowd at school. She considers her parents' disapproval of her wearing make-up to be painfully old-fashioned, and increasingly disdains her family's fixation on Narnia as nothing but a "childish fantasy" that the others are refusing to outgrow.
- In The Noise (a fanfic based on The Amazing World of Gumball), set three and a half years before the events of the show, Anais (who is six months old at the time but can talk due to being a Brainy Baby) wants to go to bed late like her parents and brothers.
Film — Animation
- The Lion King (1994): When Simba is a cub, he sings a song called "I Just Can't Wait to Be King", about how he can't wait until he's grown and is King, since he thinks he'll be able to do what he wants without being bossed around, and he’ll be famous.
Film — Live-Action
- 13 Going on 30: Jenna wants to become thirty years old, to escape her teenage life of being unpopular, bullied, and flat-chested. Her wish is granted, and she suddenly undergoes Mental Time Travel to the future where she is thirty.
- Big: After 13-year-old Josh is barred from a ride because he is too short, he makes a wish on a Fortune Teller machine to be "bigger". He wakes up in an adult body, forcing him to leave his parents' house (since they don't recognize him and think he kidnapped the real Josh) and get an apartment and job while he and his friend, Billy, try to find the machine to reverse his wish. He cries for his mom his first night alone, but as he becomes more successful in his toy marketing job and falls for his coworker, Susan, he starts to consider staying an adult.
Literature
- Adrian Mole believes he is the greatest intellectual that ever lived, and as a teenager, he cannot wait until he is "mature enough to make urban conversation with fellow intellectuals", especially when he receives a letter from an agony aunt telling him to enjoy his precious teenage years. Throughout the series, he prefers the company of older people, and his mother says that he was born old.
- Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.: Margaret and her friends are preteen girls, who are all eagerly anticipating starting periods and growing breasts.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
- In "The Ugly Truth", Rowley gets a pimple, and Greg is surprised that, rather than getting embarrassed, Rowley enjoys having a pimple, seeing it as a sign he's growing up.
- In "The Last Straw", Manny tries to give up his pacifier so that he can be a "big boy", only to fold after only a few moments.
- Gangsta Granny: Ben can't wait to be a teenager, because he wants to be allowed to leave the house on his own and stay home alone. He even thinks being hairy and spotty would be cool.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Fred and George drink an ageing potion to cross Dumbledore's age line, so they can submit their names for the Triwizard Tournament. This plan fails, they are thrown backwards over the line, and they grow long white beards.
- The Legend of Drizzt: Thanks to an Illithid manipulating her mother Minolin Fey's pregnancy, Yvonnel Baenre II was born with the memories of her grandmother Yvonnel Baenre. She became tired of being a baby soon enough and used an old variant of the Haste spell to artificially age herself to an adult.
- Malory Towers: 15-year-old Zerelda Brass fancies herself as mature and sophisticated. She wears make-up and put on snobby airs to be like the adult Hollywood actresses (which she aspires to be), and dismisses the other English girls as childish and silly.
- Mary Mary: Mary-Mary's neighbour Mrs Summers tells her that she is going away, because she's an adult who can do this, and girls can't. Mary-Mary then puts on adult clothes, and asks everyone "do I look like a grown-up lady?".
- Midnight (Jacqueline Wilson): Violet is disappointed that, at age thirteen, she has not grown a bust yet.
- Ramona Quimby: The eponymous young girl sometimes wishes she were older, since she feels that older kids and adults always get things right and are taken seriously, whereas she always gets things wrong and is thought of by the older people as funny, cute, or annoying.
- The Thief Lord: The titular Thief Lord, Scipio, is a Satisfied Street Rat who desperately wants to be seen as a grown up, despite the fact that he's not much older than the other orphans he leads. Eventually it is revealed that he's not an orphan at all, but the son of the wealthy Dottore Massimo. His desire to grow up is shown to be the result of wanting to escape his father's emotional abuse. He eventually gets his wish thanks to a magic carousel, which was actually meant to be used as a Fountain of Youth by its owners.
Live-Action TV
- Journey to the West (1996): In an early season 1 episode, Tang Sanzhang and his disciples spend a day in a village and Sun Wukong, being restless as always, decides to grant wishes to the locals at random — including fulfilling a kid's request to "grow up straightaway" by aging him twenty-odd years. Unfortunately, Sanzhang caught what his disciple was doing and orders Wukong to undo all his wishes, which Wukong reluctantly complies.
- Neighbours: Amy and Lance disguise themselves as 18-year-olds, so they can take part in a table soccer competition in Lou's pub. Unfortunately, Lou recognises them.
Music
- "Birthday Wish", a Hong Kong changed-meaning cover of Taeno Ōnuki's "Kuro no Clair", is about the singer and her mother's disagreement on whether growing up is a good thing.
Why would old albums made Mother to sigh
and said "You should remember every moment of childhood"?
However, I can't resist the temptation of growing up
since I know I like making up new thoughts - Junior Giscombe's "Mama Used to Say" centers around a young boy (implied to have been a younger Junior) who keeps acting older in an effort to be seen as a man, despite his mother trying to encourage him to enjoy his childhood. Come the second verse, the boy, now grown, openly regrets not listening to his mother's advice, and wishes he could go back and enjoy his youth.
Said a small boy once asked
"When will I grow up?
When will I see what grown-ups do see?"
In his fight to come of age, he would act an older age
To be recognized as one, and not a mass
And mama used to say, "Take your time, young man!"
And mama used to say, "Don't you rush to get old!"
And mama used to say, "Take it in your stride!"
And mama used to say, "Live your life!"
Puppet Shows
- Bear in the Big Blue House: In "If at First You Don't Succeed", Ojo (an anthropomorphic bear cub) wants to be a "big bear", and thus when she gets scared of Rabbit in the bushes (mistaking him for a monster), she fears that she'll never be "big" if she scares so easily before Bear assures her that Fear Is Normal.
- The Pajanimals: In "I Was a Baby?", Squacky is frustrated with being the youngest sibling, because he feels all his siblings are good at things he's either bad at or straight-up can't do. Granny assures him that he'll get more competent as he ages, since when he was a baby, he couldn't even walk, speak, or eat proper food.
Theatre
- Matilda: At one point, the kids sing a song called "When I Grow Up", where they sing about what they're looking forward to when they grow up, like being tall enough to pick chestnuts and having jobs.
Video Games
- Hidden City: In the "Last Dance of the Blizzard" case, Talisa the Blizzard Witch exploits young children's wish to grow up faster by promising them to grant their wish, and then sucking up all their youth through a mirror. We meet one of her victims, a ten-year-old boy named Milad who had been turned into an old man after being tricked by Talisa. He admits that he had written to Santa asking to grow up more quickly, and got into his current predicament after following the instructions from someone claiming to be Santa's helper.
- Umamusume: Pretty Derby: Mayano Top Gun's primary character trait is her desire to become a "mature, grown-up lady". This primarily manifests as her acting like a Fille Fatale, blowing her trainer kisses and insisting they take her on "dates" because she thinks that's what grown-ups do, while not really understanding how romantic relationships actually work — when she sees a couple making out in one of her character stories, she blushes so heavily that she develops a fever.
Web Animation
- Starters: In Rare Candy, Fennekin feels insecure about her appearance and age, and expresses a desire to evolve into a Braixen, who would be seen as a teenager in her society, so that she can do things such as watch movies made for a more mature audience. Hence, when she discovers that Rare Candies can make her evolve, she is willing to take them.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Mustache," Gumball and Darwin wish they were grown-ups so they didn't have to go to school, then they suddenly start going through puberty and transform into big, hairy, muscular men. They are very happy about it, but soon have to deal with the realities of adulthood like getting a job, getting fired, having to live in a tiny apartment, and rent being overdue. It turns out they didn't actually become grown-ups, and they and Anais accidentally ate Richard's muscle supplements instead of their Daisy Flakes cereal.
- Arthur:
- In "D.W.'s Time Trouble", D.W. feels that her older brother Arthur gets more say than her, so she wishes she were the older sibling instead.
- In "Arthur's New Year's Eve", D.W. wants to be able to stay up until midnight for New Year's Eve the way Arthur is doing.
- In "Is That Kosher?", Francine tries to fast on Yom Kippur even though eight-year-olds don't usually fast, to prove herself as mature.
- In "Muffy Gets Mature", Muffy tries to seem more grown-up than she is by hanging out with teenagers and doing what they do.
- In "D.W. Gets Lost", D.W. tries to be grown up by doing things like wearing her mother's clothes, trying to help her parents, and not asking for assistance when she needs it, but it keeps backfiring.
- In "D.W. and Dr. Whosit", D.W. is frustrated with being too young to watch a Doctor Whomage that the adults and older kids like.
- In "Arthur's Tooth", Arthur is dissatisfied with being eight years old and still having all his baby teeth, making him feel babyish. His dentist assures him that he didn't lose his first baby tooth until he was almost nine.
- In "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", Binky is embarrassed because he still holds hands with his mother, and he tries wearing a tie and a dress suit to school to try to look grown up. He ends up getting the tie caught in his locker.
- Bluey: In "Sleepytime", Bingo wants to have a "big girl sleep", i.e. give up crawling into her parents' bed at night.
- The Fairly OddParents!:
- The very first episode, "The Big Problem!", has Timmy wish himself into an adult, believing he'll then be free of issues like Vicky and Francis. This quickly transitions into Growing Up Sucks as he realizes all the pitfalls of adulthood, including getting kicked out of his home (as his parents and Vicky don't recognize him), having to pay for his own meals, getting arrested for harassing Francis, and facing the loss of his fairy godparents, as only kids are allowed to have them.
- "Beddy Bye" has Timmy repeatedly express jealousy at the fact that adults can stay up late and enjoy all the cool things that happen at night, while his "small-boy metabolism" causes him to fall asleep at 8pm like clockwork. Rather than wishing to be older, however, Timmy wishes for a world without sleep, which causes problems for everyone.
- Gravity Falls: 12-year-old Dipper constantly wants to be seen as older and more mature than he actually is, especially since he’s in love with a 15-year-old girl and wants his theories about the town's anomalies to be taken seriously. This tendency causes conflict with his Kiddie Kid twin sister, Mabel, such as in "Summerween" when Dipper lies to get out of trick-or-treating with her, only to break her heart when she realizes he was going to ditch her on their favorite holiday to go to a teen party with Wendy.
- Jackie Chan Adventures: The title characters of "Little Valmont, Big Jade" both go through their own version of this trope. Jade plays the trope straight, as she's sick of being told to stay home because she's too young to go with Jackie on his missions. Valmont, on the other hand, is an adult who suffers a curse that regresses him to his childhood body. He spends the episode trying to turn back into his original age.
- Zigzagged in Johnny Test. In "Runaway Johnny", Johnny runs away due to his family's double-standard of calling him a kid or adult whenever the situation suited them. He's told he's old enough to handle more responsibilities while also being told that he's too young for the benefits that come with being older. His dad confirms this by calling him a "too small-big boy" to watch a PG-13 movie, which Johnny tries to compromise on by pointing out that the movie's rating means he can watch it so long as the parents were accompanying him. They disapprove and leave him to clean the dining room and kitchen while they watch the movie, which ends up being the final straw for Johnny.
- Little Princess: A common occurrence for the Princess, since she's four years old:
- In "I Want to Be Queen", Princess wants to swap roles with her mother, the Queen, because the Queen is allowed to have pancakes for breakfast and eat chocolate.
- In "I Want to Be a Policeman", the Princess is jealous of the adults because they get to bathe whenever they want, choose how they dress, and eat more than just porridge for breakfast.
- In "I Don't Want to Go to Bed", the Princess is salty that her parents are "big" and get to share a bed, whereas she's little and has to sleep alone.
- In "I Want to Be Tall", the Princess is sick of being shorter than the grown-ups.
- In "Old", the Princess wants to be old so that she can stay up late, so she dresses as an old lady.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Growing Up is Hard to Do", Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle are sick of being kids, especially with having to rely on grown-ups to take them places. When their wish to be adults is granted with magic, they go to a fair, but have trouble acting like adults without any of the actual experience of adults.
- Peppa Pig:
- In "In the Future", Peppa and Suzy are babysat by Suzy's 17-year-old cousin, which makes them wish to be teens themselves, since Charlotte can drive and stay up late.
- In "Swimming", Peppa and Rebecca brag about how, unlike their little brothers George and Richard, they're "big girls" and thus can swim without floaties.
- Chloe is Peppa and George's cousin. Since she's so much older than they are (about ten years old), she is very proud of being "almost grown up" compared to them, often calling the games they like babyish.
- Rugrats:
- Exaggerated in "Early Retirement", when the babies think it would be cool to retire because Grandpa Lou is retired, so they start behaving like senior citizens.
- In "What the Big People Do", Tommy and Chuckie get in trouble for playing with Didi's lipstick (having mistaken it for a crayon), with Didi saying that it's only for big people to use. The two toddlers wish they could be adults so that they could do whatever they want. A lengthy Imagine Spot occurs where they are adults (with baby heads) who do such things as eat endless Reptar cereal, drive recklessly to get tickets for Reptar on Ice, ride up and down the elevator, and push paper at work, highlighting their naive views of adult responsibilities being fun.
- In "Chuckie vs. the Potty", Angelica boasts about being the only kid in the group who's toilet-trained, and says that "everybody who's anybody is potty-trained". When Chuckie learns to use his kids' potty, he references her line by saying that he's an "anybody" now.
- In "Uneasy Rider", Chuckie gets his first bicycle and sees himself as mature for it. He starts hanging out with some older kids on bikes, who call themselves "big bike kids".
- In "Angelica for a Day", Angelica boasts about being the only one old enough to play on a particular hill, even referring to the hill as "Big Kid Mountain".
- Zigzagged in "Angelica's Birthday". Angelica is afraid of having more responsibilities as she gets older, so she dresses and acts like a baby since babies have no responsibilities. However, she comes to regret it when she finds out that babies can't play piñata. When she decides she doesn't want to be a baby anymore and joins her friends in playing piñata, the babies witness this and realize that getting older has its advantages, such as getting bigger and stronger, getting to eat candy, and hitting things with sticks. Chuckie even says he can't wait to get older.
- Teen Titans:
- Beast Boy seems to feel this way. At the end of "The Beast Within", he asks Raven if she thinks he could call himself "Beast Man" from now on (which she immediately shoots down).
- The teenage villain, Jinx, seems like she's in a hurry to grow up. In "Mother Mae-Eye", while stealing clothes from a store in a mall, she asks an employee if an outfit makes her look more grown-up. In "Lightspeed", it's shown that she's desperate to join the Brotherhood of Evil, a team of adult supervillains.
Real Life
- Geri Halliwell from The Spice Girls describes how when she was twelve, she dressed older, and used her brother's football socks to pad out her chest, so that she could go into the cinema to see Desperately Seeking Susan.
