One of the downsides of having a cultural melting pot is that American culture tends to have removed itself from many cultural rites of passage. The closest example that is regularly practiced in America is the Jewish tradition of the barmitzvah, but this is hardly a pervasive tradition in the culture.
The closest example that I can come up with may be college welcome weeks. In large part, students are cleaved from parents and thrown into a completely youth-oriented culture where the leaders (for the most part) are older students. Welcome Week events tend to involve defining a personal identity (“i’m from montgomery alabama and I love listening to Slayer”) and redefining a pecking order amongst new peers.
I think this is a clear delineating line between adulthood and childhood and a cultural event that celebrates the cleaving of students from their parents. While most administrators believe that students are being acclimated to the college, I believe these proceedings may involve this more profound event of entering into a functional adulthood and leaving behind childhood.
