What Is a Rite of Passage? Meaning, Examples, and Why Young People Need One

A rite of passage is a ceremony or experience that marks a person’s crossing from one stage of life into the next, in everyday use most often from childhood into adulthood. Britannica defines it as a “ceremonial event, existing in all historically known societies, that marks the passage from one social or religious status to another.” It is something a young person goes through, with other people present.

If you are a parent, you may know the absence of one better than the definition. Your son or daughter is not who they were at 13, and not yet who they are becoming. They are standing at a threshold nobody has marked, and you are wondering why growing up looks so much harder now.

What does rite of passage mean?

The phrase gets used loosely. A driver’s license gets called a rite of passage, and so do prom, a first job, and the first legal drink. These moments matter, but they are not what the term originally meant.

In the stricter sense, a rite of passage has three things a birthday does not. It asks something real of the young person. It is guided by people who have made the crossing before. And it ends with recognition: the family or community says, out loud, that this person has changed.

The definition is about a change in status, not age. Turning 18 changes what your child is legally allowed to do. A rite of passage changes how they are seen, by others and by themselves.

The three stages of a rite of passage

The term comes from Arnold van Gennep, a French ethnographer and folklorist who published Les Rites de Passage in 1909. Comparing ceremonies from many cultures, he found the same three stages again and again, whether the occasion was a birth, a coming of age, a marriage, or a death.

Nobody crosses alone, and nobody grants themselves the new status.

Rite of passage examples from around the world

Bar and bat mitzvah. In Jewish tradition, these mark the age, 12 or 13, when a young person takes on responsibility for the commandments. The Hebrew means son or daughter of the commandment. The public moment, often a reading from the Torah, rests on the study before it and the responsibility after.

Quinceañera. In Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino communities in the United States, a quinceañera celebrates a girl’s 15th birthday and her passage from girlhood to womanhood. Traditionally the day begins with a Mass, attended by her family and godparents.

Coming of Age Day. In Japan, Coming of Age Day falls on the second Monday of January, and local governments hold ceremonies for young people reaching adulthood. Japan lowered the age of adulthood from 20 to 18 in 2022, yet many towns still honor 20-year-olds.

The vision quest. Among many Indigenous peoples of North and South America, a vision quest has served as a rite of passage into adulthood: preparation with a spiritual guide, time alone with fasting and prayer, and a return home where the experience is interpreted. These are sacred practices that belong to the nations that keep them. We do not borrow or imitate them. We name them because their shape, preparation, solitude, and return, is the one van Gennep described.

What these share is not the clothing or the creed. It is the structure: preparation, a real demand, people who have gone before, and public recognition.

Why the passage to adulthood feels unfinished today

Britannica says it plainly: coming-of-age rites are generally not observed in modern industrial societies. One reason is that adulthood no longer arrives on a single day. Your child can drive at one age, vote at 18, and drink at 21, and years of schooling push financial independence further out. With no single day, there is no single crossing to mark.

Guiding a young person into adulthood is old work. It happened around a fire with an elder, at the forge between apprentice and master, between an older sibling and a younger. Today many young people have no one in those roles. Extended family has thinned out, many teenagers spend most of their close time with other teenagers, and screens make it easy to go years without risking anything in front of people who matter. Peers cannot initiate peers.

In our work we see two common responses. Some young people go looking for a threshold on their own: the reckless dare, the risk taken for an audience. It is often a reach for an experience their development is asking for, with no guide. The impulse is healthy. The setting is not.

Others go quiet and stay in the in-between, waiting for something they cannot name. Parents call it not launching. Sometimes the young person is waiting for a threshold that never came, one of the patterns our failure to launch work starts from.

A rite of passage for young men

This absence lands hard on many young men. In his 1990 cross-cultural study Manhood in the Making, anthropologist David Gilmore found that most societies do not assume a boy simply grows into a man. Manhood is treated as earned, through tests of action and proof of worth. He also found cultures where the idea barely exists, a reminder that cultures build it.

In our work we meet young men in their late teens and twenties who are adults on paper but were never initiated into adulthood. They are often bright, sensitive, and capable, and adrift, because nobody has asked them to find out what they stand for with someone beside them who has done it.

This is not a character flaw. It is a structural gap.

Many fathers feel it. They want something real for their son, and some sense they may not be the right person to lead it. A mentor can ask things of a young man that a parent cannot, which is why we wrote about why young men need a mentor.

Young women face their own version of this absence, and it matters just as much. We wrote about what helps in mentoring for teen girls and young women.

What a modern rite of passage looks like

You do not need to borrow another culture’s ceremony. You need the three elements every tradition above shares: a challenge that matters, a guide who has crossed before, and a witness who names the change.

That might be a few days in the backcountry, prepared for with a mentor, with time alone and a return where the young person is heard. It might be a first real job with a mentor alongside. It might be months of a weekly relationship that slowly asks more than they thought they had. Building real independence is itself a kind of extended passage.

What makes these work is the container: someone who prepares the young person, stays close without rescuing, and reflects back what they saw.

Then comes the part most people skip: the return. Much of the change shows up in the weeks afterward, when the young person tries to live the new thing at home, where it is hardest.

How Noble Mentors helps with a modern rite of passage

Much of what a rite of passage asks for can happen inside ordinary mentoring. A mentor meets a young person on trails, in coffee shops, in the car before an interview, and walks with them toward the thresholds already in front of them: leaving home, a first job, coming back from treatment. The 7 Stages of Mentorship follow a similar arc: they begin with intention and connection, descend into challenge and action, and rise through reflection toward service.

Our experiential programs add wilderness retreats and rites of passage, from one-day outings to weeklong wilderness immersions, with solo and group time supported by experienced mentors and a ceremonial structure. A men’s group for young men in their 20s, facilitated by a Noble Mentor, combines open dialogue with hikes and fire circles.

Two of our mentors are wilderness rites of passage guides. Jacob Goldberg has mentored boys and men in wilderness and therapeutic programs and is especially drawn to young men clarifying their purpose. Erica Mellon has led rites of passage journeys with teens in the backcountry. I have guided wilderness solos myself, and in my experience the return matters as much as the trip.

What we will not claim: a retreat is not therapy, and mentoring does not replace it. If your son or daughter is in serious crisis, a clinician comes first. Our mentors work with clinical oversight from our Clinical Director, Joseph DeNicholas, LCSW, and alongside therapists, not in place of them (see mentor vs. therapist).

Questions parents ask about a rite of passage

Is it “rite of passage” or “right of passage”?

Rite of passage. A rite is a ceremony, the same word as in “last rites.” The other spelling is a common mistake because the words sound alike. A right is something you are entitled to. A rite is something you go through.

What is a rite of passage program for teenagers?

A structured experience, often outdoors, that takes a teen through the three stages on purpose: leaving, a real challenge with guides present, and a recognized return. Ask who the guides are, how your teen will be prepared, and what happens after they come home. A program with no plan for the return offers an adventure, not a passage. Wilderness therapy is different: it is treatment, and we wrote about judging those programs in wilderness therapy in Colorado.

Is a rite of passage only for teenagers?

No. The classic timing is adolescence, but many young adults in their 20s are still waiting for a real passage. A 23-year-old drifting without direction may be waiting at the same point as a 16-year-old. What matters is whether the crossing has happened.

Does a rite of passage have to be religious?

No. Many of the oldest rites are religious. But challenge, guidance, and witness are human, not doctrinal. A secular family can build one around a first job, a long trip, or a hard season finished well.

If any of this sounds like your son or daughter, schedule a free 40-minute consultation and we’ll talk it through. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll point you to who is.