maturity means essay

25 Maturity Examples

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Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Maturity is a trait where a person has the experience and wisdom to behave in a resolved, resolute, and secure way.

Maturity is about wisdom . It usually comes after a lot of introspection , philosophical thinking, failure, and learned humility.

Society has developmental markers for maturity (e.g. age 18 to vote). Nevertheless, it’s a more fluid cultural concept than that. Maturity is not only about age. Many adults are immature—we might say that some adults behave childishly or immaturely.

Below are some examples of maturity, starting with the five indicators of maturity proposed by Todres (2011).

Todres’ Five Indicators of Maturity

• Political participation– If a person is able to cogently participate in political debate then they are considered mature (and therefore should be allowed to vote).
• Independent economic power – A mature person should be able to work to earn a living, so long as they’re not prohibited by factors outside of their control such as a disability.
• Responsibility and accountability – A mature person should be responsible. As a result, they should also be able to be held responsible for their actions in court.
• Bodily integrity – A mature person should be able to care for their own body, and also have the right to control their own body.
• Family rights – A mature person should be able to care for their family, and therefore have the right to start a family if they so desire.

Maturity Examples in Everyday Life

• Controlling your urges
• Having clear priorities in life
• Accepting your faults and failings
• Being trustworthy with valuable things
• Using risk assessment effectively
• Being able to think ethically
• Diffusing rather than escalating conflicts
• Respect for others
• Tolerance of difference
• Taking the high road
• Knowing when to back down for your own good
• Accepting loss gracefully
• Being a graceful winner
• Being pragmatic to gradually move toward your goals
• Accepting some things are out of your control
• Understanding you can’t know everything
• Being able to acknowledge when you’re wrong
• Developing humility
• Being self-reliant
• Developing your own morals rather than following your parents blindly
• Using past experiences to inform present action
• Overcoming egotism of childhood
• Listening to others who you disagree with respectfully
• Exercising patience with others
• Delayed gratification

Detailed Examples

1. being disciplined to control urges.

A mature individual has self-control , and this virtue applies to many circumstances. The ability to control one’s urges means that the person is behaving rationally and with good reason—not based on emotions.

For example, a mature person can control their temper and not engage in meaningless arguments.

Another example is being able to resist buying something on a whim. Children and teenagers typically do not have this self-control—they often take what they want without thinking of the consequences because they lack maturity.

2. Knowing Your Priorities in Life

Mature people know what matters most, and they have the sense to line up things in the proper order of importance. They are good at prioritization because they know what matters.

In addition, mature people understand that resources are finite so they need to forego some things to have the more important things in life.

Since resources are finite, mature individuals know that they must not spend on unimportant things when there are bills that need to get paid. They also know how to use their time wisely. Children, for example, will typically play first before doing their homework—mature individuals do it the other way around. 

3. Being Aware of One’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Self-awareness is an important indicator of maturity. A person who knows his or her strengths and weaknesses can gauge situations and make smart decisions.

Children usually make decisions out of fear—but then they jump and run and get hurt because they do not know what their limitations are.

Mature individuals understand the things they can do well and what they are not good at. As such, they can take appropriate action to learn more before taking on a new job or taking a business risk. 

4. Understanding the Value of Risk Assessment

Children have poor risk assessment skills. For example, they will cross the road and even bother about incoming vehicles. Mature individuals must have already learned from their experiences and use these experiences to assess risks.

As a mature person, you must consider the possible consequences of your actions. The potential negative consequences are the “risks” from certain tasks.

This doesn’t mean not taking risks. Rather, it means taking measured risks and having a good sense of when a risk is worthwhile and when it is not.

It is why mature people walk away from a fight or attempt to de-escalate arguments—they know it is not worth it based on a mature risk assessment.

5. Ability to Bounce Back or Be Resilient

Resiliency is the ability to return to a normal state of mind after a devastating blow. Life is not always favorable, and mature people know this.

Staying down after a disappointment can be an indication that a person is not mature enough to recover from difficulties. Of course, this does not include mental illnesses like depression which need to be considered separately.

Mature individuals can suffer from a setback, like losing in a game or not getting a promotion, and bounce back from this failure to move on and become a stronger person. 

6. The Capacity to Respect Others

Ignorance is a sign of immaturity. Being able to respect anyone despite their ethnicity, gender, religion, or political views is a sign that you have had enough experience to understand the diversity and intrinsic value of all human beings.

Maturity happens because of exposure to a wide range of people in life. It comes from knowing that you cannot control what people believe in, that people are different, and that we should be tolerant of one another if we want peace.

Immature people insist that they are always right. It is always about them—they have a feeling of delusional superiority.

7. Being Able to Take the High Road

Taking the high road means doing the right thing even when there is a temptation not to. Taking the high road is a sign of maturity because you’re standing by your moral code when others may not.

For example, a mature individual knows how to apologize if she makes a mistake.She stays true to her moral code.

Immature people will not do this—how could they when their pride sets aside their morality?

Taking the high road also means not engaging in useless and meaningless arguments. Sometimes, it is better to let things go rather than dig in and cause trouble.

8. The Competence to be Pragmatic

Pragmatism is a thought process where you want to get things done even if the outcome isn’t your ideal. Pragmatists take action. 

A mature individual knows that not everything in life is handed on a silver spoon. Things get tough and unfavorable. Being a pragmatic individual means you try to find ways to make turn things around to make things a little better – step by step.

In youth, we’re often idealists . We want the world to be a certain way and we’re uncompromising in our pursuit of our ideals. But as we gain experience, we realize why the world isn’t the way we want it to be. Instead, we learn that progress toward our ideals is slow and arduous. That’s where pragmatic action comes in.

See Also: Competence Examples

9. The Power to be Self-Reliant

Self-reliance is a sure sign of maturity—even animals are able to fend for themselves eventually. Of course, this example does not include people who have special needs.

Self-reliance means you can manage your own affairs. You no longer need support and guidance for basic needs. A mature person knows how to care for themself, find a job, and solve problems

. It is the self-reliant people who also often solves the problems of other people (and it is why they often get paid a high salary).

10. Acceptance of Things Beyond your Control

Mature individuals resign to the fact that not everything in life is within their control. So, instead of lamenting this, a mature individual has the strength to know what they can change and the wisdom to know what they can’t.

For example, in your early life, you might strive pointlessly to figure out how to live forever. But as you gain knowledge and experience, you realize that this is something outside of your control. Instead, you can make the most of your years by eating healthily, keeping a regular sleep routine, and exercising.

Here, you’ve graduated from an idealistic sense of being able to fix the world into a more mature sense of what you can realistically do for yourself and your community.

Maturity comes with experience. To become mature, one has to be rational—one has to be a thinker. Being emotional about things will not bring about maturity.

Of course, being impatient about achieving maturity is immaturity by itself. You must allow time to take you there—and ensure that you always approach things with a reasonable mind.

Todres, J. (2011). Maturity.  Hous. L. REv. ,  48 , 1107. See: https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/hulr48&section=41

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Definition of maturity

Examples of maturity in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'maturity.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Dictionary Entries Near maturity

maturity of chances

Cite this Entry

“Maturity.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maturity. Accessed 23 Sep. 2024.

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What Is Maturity?

Authentically creating a refuge in an age of anxiety..

Posted June 13, 2019 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

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We’ve long worried deeply about the same basic stuff: health, love, family, work, and money. But like most therapists, I’m seeing more and more anxiety in the people coming in for help.

There’s a sharper edge to what lies beneath common life concerns, as the very foundation of our shared social experiment increasingly feels shaky. We have less and less faith in the basic adult capacity of the people and institutions making the world’s most important decisions. A patient of mine recently summed it up as well as anyone when she said, frantically, “Who the f— is running this place?”

A couple of years ago, when my daughter was maybe 5, she called out to me from her bedroom about 15 minutes after I’d put her down. I sighed deeply when I heard her call me; I was tired and just entering the sweet hour of adult time with my wife that marks the end of the day. I entered her room and did my best to muster patience as I asked her what she needed. She said sweetly, “Dad, I just need an adult in the room for a little bit.” My heart softened and I said sure, and I stayed a little while by her bed.

I’ve thought of that moment often. It’s come to me many times in my conversations with people. She named something that we all experience, some of us only from time to time, some of us more pervasively: that feeling that we need to know, to feel, the presence of someone powerful that we can trust, someone with self-possession who communicates “It’s OK, I’ve got this.” A true adult; a person possessed of maturity.

What do we mean by that? What is that quality of maturity that marks the adult we need in the room?

We certainly know it when we see its absence. This is precisely the experience that is driving much of the underlying anxiety I’m seeing in my practice. So many of us are looking around at the enormous complexity of the problems we face as a society and not seeing an adult anywhere near the rooms in which the most important decisions are made. We see increasingly enormous rewards given to those of us who most entertainingly act out our emotional life; and if the emotions acted out are base and primitive, all the better. For some, this is what passes as authenticity .

And yet this “authenticity” is so untethered to wisdom that it could not possibly be authentic. To be a genuine person means to be connected to the essential truths that bind us; it means being connected to the basic facts of living that promote true well-being for oneself and for others. To see a person acting out their baseness or destructive ambition is to witness someone with no clue about what will lead to their own well-being. To call this person authentic is to hold up as exemplary the thin wispy plant struggling to reach the light. To be truly genuine means being relatively emotionally healthy.

Maturity is the behavioral expression of emotional health and wisdom. It is the capacity to know one’s own emotional experience, to be oriented by this experience to some aspect of the truth, to place this truth within the context of other truths, and finally to act in accordance with one’s values.

We urgently need this from each other. Many people in my practice have a difficult time trusting the world because they were raised by immature people. Their parents need not have been malicious or negligent; perhaps they were simply unable to stay present in a consistent way when they were buffeted by their own emotional life. Perhaps they could be punishing and withdrawn when hurt, or they could bring too much of their own neediness to their child when they were insecure. Therapy work with such people largely involves being the adult in the room for them, being present and self-possessed over time, so that they might cultivate within themselves the maturity to hold themselves with a consistency they hadn’t fully been given.

We need maturity within ourselves for our own sake. All too often we act out what we are feeling in ways that take us further from our own well-being. Maturity—the alignment of our truth, our wisdom, and our values—is something we can cultivate.

This is the chief pursuit of the therapy groups I run. In my groups, there are six or seven people who meet weekly for 90 minutes and have ongoing relationships with each other. All kinds of things happen in this space; the relationships run the gamut of what happens between people. It’s an object lesson in cause and effect. What do I want here, for myself and for others? How does my behavior bring me closer or further from well-being? What has to be navigated in order for me to bring it about? How do I most genuinely and effectively show up? Over time, maturity is cultivated, since maturity is required if we are to progress in experiencing and promoting wellness.

Of course, we can’t all be in therapy groups. But we can all pay close attention to cause and effect as it exists in our own lives. What is important to me? Is my behavior in alignment with these values? What is required of me to move towards healthier relationships? What is called for if I’m to move more directly in the direction of my own true well-being?

Eric S. Jannazzo, Ph.D. is a writer and clinical psychologist in private practice in Seattle, Washington.

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Home Essay Samples Life

Essay Samples on Maturity

How does being in a group affect bystander intervention.

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Best topics on Maturity

1. How Does Being in a Group Affect Bystander Intervention

2. Means of Assessing Project Management Maturity Measurement Process

3. The Question Of Whether Age Matters In A Relationship

4. Maturity and Growth in The Chrysalids

5. Advantages, Disadvantages, and effects of Studying Abroad

6. Araby: The Battle of Lust and Family Roots

7. Reaching the Age of Emotional Maturity

8. Infantilism as Social Phenomenon and a Sign of Growing Immaturity

9. Correlation Between Technological Progress and Social Maturity

10. Maturity And Myself: Key Aspects That Affects Me

• Personal Experience
• Perseverance
• Career Goals
• Being Different

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Definition of maturity noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

• He has maturity beyond his years.
• Her poems show great maturity.
• She has shown great maturity in her behaviour this term.
• demonstrate

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• The forest will take 100 years to reach maturity .
• The insects lay eggs when they approach maturity.
• psychological
• These latest paintings show how the artist has really grown in maturity.
• ( business ) ( of an insurance policy, etc. ) the time when money you have invested is ready to be paid

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Home — Essay Samples — Psychology — Maturity — Emotional Maturity and Emotional Stability

Emotional Maturity and Emotional Stability

• Categories: Maturity Personality

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Words: 2215 |

12 min read

Published: Jun 5, 2019

Words: 2215 | Pages: 5 | 12 min read

Works Cited

• Kaur, S., & Singh, A. (2014). Emotional Maturity and Academic Achievement among Adolescents. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, 40(1), 87-93.
• Mauser, G. A., et al. (1984). The relationship of parent-adolescent interaction to academic achievement. Adolescence, 19(73), 257-267.
• Eccles, J. S., et al. (1991). The relation of parenting style to adolescent school performance. Child Development, 62(5), 1265-1281.
• Allison, S. T., & Sabatelli, R. M. (1988). Differentiation and self-esteem among early adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 17(3), 233-251.
• Douvan, E., & Adelson, J. (1966). The adolescent experience. John Wiley & Sons.
• Steinberg, L., & Silverberg, S. B. (1986). The vicissitudes of autonomy in early adolescence. Child Development, 57(4), 841-851.
• Hangel Suneetha et al. (2007). The Effect of Working Mothers on Child's Emotional Maturity and Achievement Orientation. Indian Journal of Psychological Science, 2(1), 11-17.
• Aggarwal, J. C. (2007). Social Maturity of Adolescents: A Study of Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Variables. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, 33(1), 13-21.
• Rani Swarupa & C.R. Prabha (2008). A Comparative Study of Social Maturity among Boys and Girls. Indian Journal of Psychological Science, 3(1), 75-79.
• Lekhi, V. (2005). Emotional Maturity and Emotional Intelligence among Rural and Urban Adolescents. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, 31(1), 39-46.

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What Constitutes Christian Maturity

What constitutes christian maturity.

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It will help to clear the ground if we consider first several factors that do not constitute Christian maturity. A study of the relevant Scripture verses will reveal these facts.

First, Christian maturity is not an aging process. Gray hairs and spiritual maturity are not necessarily wedded. Because we are aging, we should not conclude that of necessity we are progressing in maturity. Gray hairs can cover a person whose reactions to people and circumstances are anything but mature. It has been said that it is the intensity of years and not their extensity that is a true measure of maturity, for maturity is an attitude of life. It is our attitudes, not our arteries, that determine the quality of our life. Our age is beyond our control, but whatever our age, our attitudes can be changed by the power of grace and a holy purpose.

Spiritual growth is not measured by the calendar, and it can continue to the hour of death or translation if we are willing to comply with the laws governing growth.

Spiritual maturity is not instantaneous and final. If it were so, what would be the point of the exhortation in Hebrews 6:1, “Let us go on to maturity,” (or, catching the correct sense of the verb, “Let us continue progressing toward maturity”)? The whole tenor of Scripture is against the idea that one supreme act of decision permanently secures to us all the blessings of sanctification. No living thing comes to maturity instantaneously.

In the attainment of intellectual maturity, there is no alternative to the student painfully working through the pre-scribed courses. Nor is it any different in the spiritual life. Growth toward spiritual maturity will of necessity involve moral effort, discipline, renunciation, and perseverance in pursuit of the goal. There are no shortcuts.

Spiritual maturity is not automatic as a result of the mastery of scriptural teachings. Of course that is an essential element in attaining maturity, but of itself it cannot produce maturity. The accumulation of biblical information is of immense value, but it is only as the principles of Scripture are worked out in daily obedience that spiritual growth is advanced. Bible study can be largely an intellectual exercise that leaves the life unchanged.

Spiritual maturity is not the mere possession of spiritual gifts. The maturing Christian will have those spiritual gifts with which the Holy Spirit has sovereignly endowed him or her (see 1 Cor. 12:11), but these of themselves are not the measure of spiritual maturity. The case of the Corinthian church bears this out. Paul affirmed of them, “You do not lack any spiritual gift” (1 Cor. 1:7). Yet a little later he goes on to say to them, “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly” (1 Cor. 3:1-3a).

These spiritual gifts are valuable, but only if they are exercised in love and only as they result in the unity and upbuilding of the church. The true index of Christian maturity is not the possession of gifts of the Spirit, but the production of the fruit of the Spirit (see Gal. 5:22- 23). It is sadly true that not all spiritually gifted believers act and react in a mature way.

The activity of the Holy Spirit in the believer bringing about progressive and manifest growth will always be the unimpeachable evidence that he is God’s child. It may be possible for the gifts of the Spirit to be imitated in the context of a local culture, but Godlike quality of moral life called “the fruit of the Spirit”—its Spirit-led direction, its victory over the flesh—is the only valid evidence that one is God’s child.

Spiritual maturity is not copying Christ. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis does not advocate a selfgenerated copying of Christ. Spiritual maturity is rather what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” No one can live by the Sermon on the Mount, for example, without first experiencing the new birth and living it out under the control of the Holy Spirit. The steps of the Master are too majestic for unaided or unregenerate people to follow.

What Christian Maturity Is

Before we can consider how to progress in spiritual maturity, we need to define several terms. The word frequently translated “perfect” in the King James Version of the Scripture is often and correctly rendered “mature” in more recent versions. Our English word “mature” is defined as “a state of full development.”

The Greek word Paul uses, teleios, has a special technical meaning. It signifies “an end, a goal, a limit,” and it combines dual ideas: first, the full development of one’s powers; and second, the attainment of some goal or standard—the realization of the proper end of one’s existence. So our word “mature” has come to mean complete or full grown, and implies ripeness in character and experience. It is used of the full development of adulthood as compared with the immaturity of childhood.

Philo divided his students into three categories: beginners, those who were making progress, and those who were beginning to attain maturity—classifications not unlike those of John who wrote to little children, young men, and fathers.

When the word “mature” is used of us, however, it is not absolute but relative; it is like comparing a child What Constitutes Christian Maturity? with an adult. The word “perfect” in the Book of Hebrews does not hold out the promise of moral perfection on earth. If that were attainable, how could we “keep on progressing toward maturity”? It has been pointed out that perfection always has another summit, but as the poet Coleridge said, “beyond what is found in Christ, the human race has not and will not progress.”

To the Gnostics, “perfect” was a favorite and oftused word. They used it to describe one who was no longer a novice, but one who had matured, was fully initiated, and had mastered the secrets of their own mystery religion. But as Marvin Vincent says, in Christ every believer is teleios—fully initiated into the most profound mysteries of the Christian gospel. As Paul used the term, it meant “mature and complete in Christ.”

Viewed from another angle, spiritual maturity is simply Christlikeness. We are as mature as we are like Christ, and no more. He was the only fully mature man. His character was complete, well balanced, and perfectly integrated. All His qualities and capacities were perfectly attuned to the will of His Father, and this is the model, the standard God has set for us:

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13, italics mine

The supreme goal of the church is not evangelism, important and indispensable as that ministry is. The ultimate goal is stated by Paul when he wrote: “We proclaim him, teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect [mature] in Christ” (Col. 1:28, italics mine). God’s purpose is to produce disciples who reflect the perfect humanity of His Son, people who are able to react to the exigencies and trials of life in an adult and not in a childish manner—meeting adult situations with adult reactions. In short, God’s purpose is to produce people who fulfill their humanity and become what God designed for them. The questions naturally arise: “Can Christians attain a perfect maturity in this life? What degree of maturity can one expect?”

In his commentary, William Hendriksen says, “A high degree of maturity can be attained in this life here and now, but full maturity cannot be realized this side of heaven. In heaven we will be perfectly sinless and obedient.”1

This statement is in keeping with the whole tenor of Scripture:

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18, italics mine

Grow in the grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 3:18

Maturity is not an end we have achieved. We are to keep on growing and progressing. “None of us has yet attained perfection. So come and take your full share in our gatherings and in our discussions, which are aimed at helping us all towards maturity. Don’t stand aloof as though you know it all already.”2

The above extract from The Epistle of Barnabas gives an insight into the thinking of one of the early church fathers. Because maturity is related to an infinite God, our maturity will never be absolute but only relative. It is a goal unattainable in this life, but it can be a dynamic process involving constant progress.

For the Christian, spiritual maturity involves a final transformation into the likeness of Christ, and this will be consummated at His second advent.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. 1 John 3:2–3

J. Oswald Sanders

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• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of maturity in English

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maturity noun [U] ( MENTAL DEVELOPMENT )

• secondary sexual characteristic
• young at heart idiom

maturity noun [U] ( FULL GROWTH )

Maturity noun [u] ( finance ).

• bet big on something/someone idiom
• co-investor
• deposit of something
• discretionary
• divestiture
• microfinance
• pay something in
• pension plan
• unearned income

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maturity | American Dictionary

Maturity noun [u] ( physical growth ), maturity | business english, examples of maturity, collocations with maturity.

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