While I try to figure out how I want to say my thoughts about the rest of this, I'll start here:
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Anyhow, it is fascinating how this topic has got off on sexual matters. Are there other markers of childhood or adulthood besides this one?
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I think that "having a job" would be one. Bilbo really has no apparent job - he sits outside smoking his pipe while sitting out on his front step and invites people over for tea, but he has no apparent job. He appears to spend his time fairly idly. He doesn't go to work or worry about money or pay bills - all those sorts of things that can - especially from a child's perspective - be associated with adulthood.
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do we still have this stereotype that only those who reproduce are properly adult?
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Perhaps the other way around - only those who are properly adult reproduce. What do kids do when they play 'grown-ups'? It's "you're the mommy and you're the daddy and you are the kids." Marriage is not
the indicator of adulthood, but it certainly is one, especially from a child's point-of-view. Marriage - and parenthood - would seem to imply a certain level of maturity.
Romance, on the other hand, I think is a little bit different. This is more where Romeo and Juliet would fall - and where all the Disney romance movies - Cinderella, Pocohontas, Sleeping Beauty, etc. - fall. These people get married, but they're not the same kind of adult as the other way. This is where the princess and the prince fall in love and get married - this portrays marriage and romance as an event rather than a status, and it is the status of marriage that implies adulthood more than the event. But even with the more romantic sort, for kids it's still always "when we get older."
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On the other hand, such a view of adulthood also implies that childhood is an asexual state of being. I'm not sure that modern pyschology (Freud aside) would support this idea.
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Rather than saying childhood is an asexual state, I would say that it's a state where gender just isn't as important, or is important in a different way.