"Adult children" comes from "adult children of alcoholics", but now has broader reference to adults who were abused emotionally, physically or sexually in childhood.
16 The word adult appear to have derived from the Latin term adultus, meaning grown up, mature, adult, ripe. Adulterate (and its cognate adultery) is reported to derive from the Latin adulterare - to falsify, corrupt. Are the meanings and derivation of adult and adulterate, directly related, or is this just a coincidence of spelling?
Etymonline comments: Specific sense of "adult male of the human race" (distinguished from a woman or boy) is by late Old English (c. 1000); implying that "man" was used in a purely non-gendered way before then.
There is a specific term, and it keeps evading me, that refers to an adult who still embraces child-like wonder, curiosity, etc.... Not inferring a child-like or infantile adult, i.e. someone with a
terminology - synonym for child-like [adult] - English Language & Usage ...
What term can be used for an adult, especially a man, who is in his forties and still behaves like a teenager, shunning responsibilities typical of mature people, preferring to enjoy himself?
"adult children" is sometimes used in contexts where age is important, such as a form requiring someone to list all children under 18 and all adult children living with them. And someone might use it to emphasise that their children have left home or aren't dependent on them. But you wouldn't introduce someone as "my adult child/ren".
4 Based on usage, hyphenation doesn't seem necessary. According to Google, "a child and adult psychologist" seems to be the most idiomatic expression referring to a psychologist specializing in both "child psychology" and "adult psychology". Your own suggestion and other suggestions in previous answers are simply not as idiomatic among ...
Is there such a term for the opposite - an adult without any children? This question actually comes out of a software development situation where I have nodes that relate to each other as parents and children - a parent node has zero or more children.
nouns - Is there a term for an adult without children, similar to ...