[Steve Plambeck]

If there ever was a soft rule, that'd be "You may assume that a character is 20 years old when he enters play."

32 points is when the PC "joins the story". Every character must be a lot less than 32 points at birth, and of course everyone progresses at a different rate. And they could be markedly different rates depending on the backstory! I'd suppose a human baby is born with maybe 12 points, and the fortunate will reach 32 by their mid-teens, but others that grow up with malnutrition and disease and a lack of opportunity won't reach 32 until actual 32! Some will never reach 32. And any number of characters might be just shy of reaching 32 points, then hit a protracted period where their development gets stalled for any number of in-story reasons.

32 points is just the maximum a fictional character within the story of your campaign world can reach before being "disqualified" from joining the ranks of player characters. It's kinda implied in the structure of RPGs that every character was an NPC first. To keep the playing field level, you can't "adopt" one after their attributes pass a certain point. None of which really has much to do with biological age.

How old is too old to become a PC? One of mine was a little old man who'd lead a calm and sedate life. He was a wizard, but never practiced magic in deference to his wife; she belonged to a religion that forbade the use of magic, even persecuted those that used it. Then he became a lonely widower, and went off to become an adventuring wizard among people that appreciated wizards. He was 32 points because that's what the rules require. Maybe he'd been stronger or quicker when he was younger, but let those things atrophy. Now he was active, risk-taking, traveling, and with success and new experiences his attributes were finally headed upwards despite his age.