When you were growing up into adulthood, where did you turn for answers to the questions that arose?

My parents pretty much were my compass for becoming an adult. Since the internet and pretty much computers did not yest exist….the rest I learned on the streets of Chicago.

In all honesty, most of my questions were left unanswered until adulthood. After a childhood of responses like, “Because the Bible says it’s so”, and “We don’t do that to humans” (upon asking why Grandmother wasn’t put to ‘sleep’ like our pets if she was suffering so much while dying), and “Don’t worry, it’s natural” when it came to physical changes in my body as a teen, I became conditioned to keeping these types of thoughts to myself.

Thankfully, adulthood and the internet came along.

Parents, teachers, supervisors, and anyone in a mentor role, please take the time to address the questions from the younger generation or point them in the right direction. And please, follow up with them to make sure it was answered to their satisfaction. The future is in their hands.

I’m very tempted to say “Playboy Magazine”.

Mostly friends. Family was OK on some topics, but on many others, they were detached from the real world and the social changes taking place in the 1970s.

I can’t quite get a handle on the question. Are you asking about questions that arise as a consequence of growing up? Otherwise the “questions that arose” were dominated by the requirements of school, where the barrage was heavy and ceaseless. If you think about it, that’s all school is about-the ability to provide those answers on demand. And you grab those answers from whatever source is available. So books, teachers, parents, peers. The times have changed and the internet now provides the world’s reference libraries 24/7 to a hermit living in a cave. Shouldn’t we be getting smarter?

Fred Flintstone. :)

I’d say that it was in early adulthood that I lost my appetite for answers. I’d been fed a steady diet of answers all through my formative years, and I finally rebelled against that as an intrusion, a sort of violence against the beauty of the questions themselves.

The German poet Rilke summed up that sentiment nicely in his advice to a young poet:

“You are so young, all beginning is so far in front of you, and I should like to beg you earnestly to have patience with all unsolved problems in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, or books that are written in a foreign tongue. Do not search now for the answers, which cannot be given you, because you could not live them. That is the point, to live everything. Now you must live your problems. And perhaps gradually, without noticing it, you will live your way into the answer some distant day.”

Books. Reference books, mostly. Let me tell you, it was really hard to get a grip on masturbation from a vintage Encyclopedia Britannica in 1970.
Maybe a little pun intended.

I was pretty much on my own.

@ibstubro were you perhaps gripping too hard?

@stanleybmanly Thinking about how to answer your question I recalled the words from a song:

“When I was a young man I was led to believe
There were organizations to kill my snakes for me
IE, the church, IE, the government, IE, the school
But when I got a little older I learned how to kill them myself.”

This is what I was mainly wondering about; those things that we take for granted as we grow up; things the “adults” handle for us up until that point when become ours to figure out, not excluding school work but not really focused on that particular phase.

Oh! Those answers come through experience.

Thought I knew it all. Though I DID listen to parents and other close adults, I honestly believed I knew better. Boy did those answers come through experience, bad experience. However, I can say I learnt what it was that I had to the hard way.

Trial and error, mostly, with some suggestions from my father. When I went away to school, he said,“open a checking account”. Which I did, but the rest was up to me to figure out.

Women and relationships, my friends didn’t really know any more than me, we were all trying to figure it out at the same time. And that is a life long learning issue.

Work, my first jobs I saw people that messed up and figured out not to do what they did. (Like a friend I worked with who would be a no show and then he wasn’t scheduled very much.)

Star Trek

Television.

Teachers, television, Grandma.

My older brother.

My parents.

I love questions that lead me into new territory (or old territory by a new path, with fresh scenery). GQ—thanks.

By “growing up into adulthood” I take you to mean teens and young twenties. I was a young teen when I concluded that the religion I’d been taught was not the place to go for answers. I went to my parents for some things, but there was a lot I didn’t want to confide to them. I turned to friends to share experiences and commiserate, but I don’t recall taking much in the way of guidance, especially when it came to matters of romance. I didn’t have any handy older female siblings or cousins to talk to. I was really on my own. And of course there was no Google, no Internet. We’re talking the sixties here.

Mostly I turned inward with my questions. I didn’t find answers to many things, but I acted on my own counsel anyway. Can’t say that process resulted in a lot of good decisions. At least there’s no one else I have to blame.

My father taught me that it’s not the answers that matter. The questions are the important thing. That’s great on the philosophical level, and I still believe it: but I was dealing with questions like—should I invite this guy home? should I smoke a joint with him? should I quit school?

When I was growing into adulthood, I knew all the answers, I just sometimes didn’t get the question right.

I was kinda on my own for that. Watching others screw up and then not doing what they did was the line I usually took.

@thorninmud thank you for reminding me about that profound quote from Rilke, it really spoke to me during one period in my life. “And perhaps gradually, without noticing it, you will live your way into the answer some distant day.” I found it was quite true for me.

If it’s common information, google, if it’s relationship, friends or therapist

My dad mostly, except I don’t really remember giving much of a hoot about all the big shit unless it was health related. I was annoying with that.

@Jeruba “At least there’s no one else I have to blame.” is the exact take away message I have worked hard to instill into my sons as they venture into the real world on their own and so far so good.

@Jeruba Good to see you back

My sex-ed teacher in the 11th grade told us that you didn’t have to be 18 to buy condoms. I was unaware of this fact and still wondering where I learned that I needed to be 18 to buy them. I was totally convinced you had to be 18 to buy condoms. I had shoulder tapped them before learning that.

And I also learned that Planned Parenthood had this big condom bucket right by the entrance. You could walk in and grab a few handful’s and it was almost like they were trained to not look at you. I was a randy kid… That bucket prevented a lot of abortions.

My parents and 3 out of four siblings. God, I miss them so very much.
(#4 still needs bonked painfully on the noggin….like, five times, minimum.)