A term that lazy parents use to describe people who "discriminate" against their rude and loud children. Some parents believe that their children should be allowed to do whatever they want, because kids will be kids. This philosophy requires the belief that children can do no wrong because they don't know better, the parent isn't responsible for teaching them any better, and everyone else has to put up with it.
Any adult who protests because a strange child screamed through their entire dinner in a restaurant or cried through an entire R-rated movie at a theater is a child hating adultist.
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An elderly lady is in line at the post office. A ten year old hits her repeatedly in the leg with a nerf bat. The parent does nothing. The elderly woman asks the child to please stop. The parent screams at the lady for being rude to her child and accuses her of adultism.
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A child runs behind the counter at a coffee shop, trips the employees, and knocks over hot drinks and glass cups. The shop owner asks the parent to keep her child from behind the counter. The mother accuses the establishment of discrimination against her child (adultism).
OR
An elderly lady is in line at the post office. A ten year old hits her repeatedly in the leg with a nerf bat. The parent does nothing. The elderly woman asks the child to please stop. The parent screams at the lady for being rude to her child and accuses her of adultism.
OR
A child runs behind the counter at a coffee shop, trips the employees, and knocks over hot drinks and glass cups. The shop owner asks the parent to keep her child from behind the counter. The mother accuses the establishment of discrimination against her child (adultism).
by super mean adult August 20, 2011
Get the Adultism mug.Noun. A disease that causes otherwise fun people to start acting like adults. This means they no longer go out and drink until they black out, stop having casual sex, and stop buying shoes and purses. There is no cure for Adultism.
by barbigirl May 19, 2010
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A person who is over the age of 18 & may or may not live on their own (most of the time they don’t live on their.) They might pay their cell phone bill ( that being the only bill they pay if they still live at home with their parents.) They still need help knowing how do everyday things that “ACTUAL ADULT ADULTS” do
He is becoming more adultyish Day by day.
by Silly Sally 75 October 29, 2019
Get the adultyish mug.The idea that adults bear sole and exclusive responsibility for their ideas, actions, and circumstances, completely ignoring or denying the role of external factors—socialization, culture, ideology, power structures, economic conditions, trauma, and the myriad forces that shape human beings. Adultism pretends that adults are fully autonomous, fully self-aware, fully in control of their beliefs and behaviors—that they spring fully formed from nowhere, untouched by history, culture, or circumstance. It's the logic of "you chose your beliefs, so you're entirely responsible for them," as if beliefs weren't shaped by family, education, media, community, and the whole weight of social life. Adultism is the cognitive foundation of victim-blaming, of meritocracy myths, of every ideology that pretends individuals are islands. It's the fallacy that adults are adults and nothing else—no history, no context, no complexity.
Example: "He blamed her for her political views as if she'd chosen them in a vacuum, as if family, community, media, and life experience hadn't shaped her. Fallacy of Adultism: pretending adults are autonomous agents untouched by the world. She wasn't just responsible for her beliefs; she was also their product. The fallacy ignored everything that made her who she was."
by Dumu The Void March 10, 2026
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