# Age of consent laws should be reformed **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 4, 2013, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995 "2013-09-04T14:28:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/41 "2013-09-10T04:56:14Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > I read recently that human brains are not fully formed until the age of twenty-five. It was formerly thought to be around the age of sixteen. > > Sorry, that makes no sense to me. If people can’t control their urges to have sex, they need to be in therapy or in an area where they are restrained. > > I think the age of consent should be eighteen. Your body may tell you that that is unreasonable, but the consequences need to be considered by at least an almost fully-developed brain. And the consequences for girls is different from the consequences for boys. > > No teacher should be allowed to marry or have sex with a student, no matter what the age. It’s against professional ethics for a reason. It causes trouble for both participants on many levels. > > No they aren’t. Their brains aren’t fully formed and they are unable to be responsible for providing a home and parenting. > > Refraining from sex will not kill them. But cavalierly criminalizing sexual drive is madness! ---
**Author:** ![John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_stamos_left_ear/32/3198_2.png) [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Stamos_Left_Ear)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/42 "2013-09-11T06:10:42Z")
Possibly just to advance the discussion, I found [this Blog post](http://www.xojane.com/issues/stacey-rambold-cherice-morales) that was spurned on by the ruling that inspired this thread was quite telling and chilling and made me feel quite badly for saying “Giggity” when I saw underage girls on TV (jokingly, but still)… Some excerpts (note that one paragraph is fairly graphic; it is hidden with the “Spoiler” tag for those who might not with to read it): > [@](#): > > I started having sex with adult men when I was 13 years old. > > Neglected at home and ostracized at school, I found comfort in the sexual attentions of older men. > > I created Prodigy chat rooms with names like “13yo girl home alone” and spent hours chatting and having phone sex with the men who would find me there. I “dated” men in their 20s and 30s that I met at the movie theater, online or hanging around local college town with my other underage girlfriends. I pursued these relationships with with Lolita-like abandon. The terrifying thing is how few adult men ever said no. > > I was not coerced. I consented to all these sexual encounters in the basest sense of the world. But I was making choices that I wasn’t emotionally equipped to make. Legally, that’s why statutory rape laws exist. Because like an intoxicated person, an underage person is not truly capable of informed consent. > > The fact is, a 14-year-old girl may be capable of agreeing to sex with a 49-year-old man, but she doesn’t have the emotional and mental maturity to consent. > > Once, I met a 28-year-old man online and went to his house for a “date.” He began to undress me almost immediately – I went along with it because I wanted him to like me, and our sexual encounter culminated with him holding my head down and ejaculating into my throat while I sputtered and struggled to pull away. Later, I couldn’t understand why he never called me again, why he didn’t want to be my boyfriend.Because I was a child, I was missing large pieces of the perspective required to understand adult situations. Children can be sexual. Children can pursue. Girl children in particular may have already learned how to manipulate and bargain with their sexuality at a very young age. They are still children. Like all children, they test boundaries, boundaries that adults must set and maintain. > > What I needed, and what she needed, were strong male role models in my life who knew how the fuck to say “No thanks” to a little girl’s come-ons. Because it doesn’t matter if a young girl is saying yes, it’s an adult man’s job to say no. Kids fooling around with other kids will happen and I wish more states would adopt [Romeo & Juliet Laws](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape#Romeo_and_Juliet_laws) which differentiate those cases from the Chris Hanson-types. But really, adult men should stop fucking teenagers. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/43 "2013-09-11T12:39:22Z")
> [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](#): > > Possibly just to advance the discussion, I found [this Blog post](http://www.xojane.com/issues/stacey-rambold-cherice-morales) that was spurned on by the ruling that inspired this thread was quite telling . However, this example is an extreme outlier, I think. If a minor is sexually active with adults, it’s vastly more likely that she would be a 15 yo in love with some attractive 20 yo than a 13 yo blowing every single male she meets. I don’t think that general policy should be based on extreme cases. Ideally, we should rely on judges’ and prosecutors’ discretion, but in this pedophile-obessed society and with the push for minimum mandatory sentences we can’t guarantee that a 15 yo won’t have to register as a sex offender for life for having had sex with his 14 yo girlfriend. That other extreme case is as harmful IMO as the case of the 13 yo slutting herself, and I think that in matters of justice and punishment, we should, on principle, err on the side of restraint (better to have a guilty man free than an innocent man in prison and all that). ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/44 "2013-09-11T12:59:06Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Since we do have to draw a line, my preference would be to make a uniform national age of consent to start with. I understand the desire, but that’s just not how US law works. States have plenary power in this regard - there’s really no mechanism for doing what you’re describing without a Constitutional Amendment. The US was only able to get states to cooperate with (kind of) national upper limits on speed limits or open container laws by tying compliance to highway funidng. Trying to mess around with state criminal law at the federal level is a political landmine and no politician would touch it without massive support, which I can’t imagine you’d ever get on this. I’m not trying to pee in your Cheerios, I’m just pointing out that the hurdles for doing this would be almost insurmountable. The closest you’ll get is something like the Model Penal Code, which exists, but which obviously hasn’t been adopted by the states in this regard. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/45 "2013-09-11T13:37:08Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > **Sven** , please note the word I wrote before “but” and read my subsequent caveat in that context. > > Still, there is more ways than one to skin a cat. We can try to clamp down on adolescent sexuality, or we could be more supportive of teenage parenthood and not treat it as inevitably the end of someone’s prospects of a good life. I have made a similar case when discussing adoption and abortion: I wish a progressive, affluent society would try better supporting pregnant teens (with childcare, social work, alternative routes to education and career training, etc.) rather than only providing a paltry version of those things and mainly just dealing with the issue via access to abortion or adoption. Unfortunately that too has undesirable consequences. It seems to be common ground that teenagers will have sex, mostly with each other. If there are no bad consequences, and possibly some desirable ones (housing support child support etc) from becoming pregnant as a teenager and before being able to support a child, then more teenage girls stop taking precautions and get pregnant. The boys don’t care because they do not have to support the results. One only has to look at teenage pregnancy rates in the UK, where such benefits exist, to see what happens. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/46 "2013-09-11T14:24:45Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > One only has to look at teenage pregnancy rates in the UK, where such benefits exist, to see what happens. What happens? Please elabourate. Is the UK in the midst of some sort of societal collapse I was unaware of? > [@clairobscur](#): > > However, this example is an extreme outlier, I think. If a minor is sexually active with adults, it’s vastly more likely that she would be a 15 yo in love with some attractive 20 yo than a 13 yo blowing every single male she meets. I don’t think that general policy should be based on extreme cases. Right, and I would have two more points to make about that example as well: (1) I can easily imagine a sad tale like this coming from a 16-year-old. Or a 17-year-old. Or even a naive 18- or 19-year-old. Hell, there are pathetic 38-year-old barflies with smeared mascara living this sad life every single day. People get treated shitty in this world, unfortunately; but we can’t criminalise all shitty treatment or throw all douchey guys behind bars no matter how much we might like to. (2) On the flip side, this woman seems to be indicating that if that 28-year-old guy had treated her nicely and wanted to be in a relationship with her (and presumably if that were allowed), it would not have caused her pain. Should nice guys who are seduced by Lolitas face the same penalty? Again, it is pretty common and maybe even standard for college freshmen girls to have this kind of exploitive experience early on, and later look back at how shitty they were treated, how naïve they were. The older guys should be nicer and not take advantage of naïve girls and just use them and dump them aside. But that is a separate issue from legal age of consent under the aegis of the criminal justice system. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/47 "2013-09-11T14:34:41Z")
> [@](#): > > What happens? Please elabourate. Is the UK in the midst of some sort of societal collapse I was unaware of? > [@](#): > > Britain still has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe despite being one of the world’s biggest users of contraceptives. > > The figures, which emerged yesterday in a large- scale international study, appeared to explode claims by the sex education lobby that the UK’s sky-high teenage birth rate is down to ignorance. > > It showed that four out of five females between the ages of 15 and 44 in Britain - 80 per cent -use some form of contraception. > > This compares to 76 per cent in the U.S., 75 per cent in France and 59 per cent in Japan. > > Britain, nevertheless, has a sky-high level of teenage pregnancies, with 2.9 out of every 100 girls aged between 15 and 19 giving birth every year. > > In France, where there is less contraceptive use, only 0.9 of every 100 girls aged 15 to 19 have babies, according to the survey. > > The level in Germany is 1.1 per hundred girls while in Japan it is only 0.4 per hundred. > > The findings suggest the huge growth in single parenthood in the UK in recent years - much of it a result of teenage pregnancy - has little to do with a lack of knowledge of sex and contraception among young people. > > Recent research projects have contradicted the long-standing claim of the sex education lobby that more information and better distribution of contraceptives is needed, pointing away from ignorance as the cause of pregnancy among young girls. > Yesterday’s report from the U.S. pressure group Population Action International surveyed health and reproduction statistics in developed countries and those in the Third World. > > Alongside Britain the countries with the highest rate of contraceptive use are China, and, surprisingly for two Catholic nations, Spain and Italy. > > The findings bear out research last year at Southampton University which found that teenage girls in Britain have a sophisticated knowledge of contraception. > > For example, seven out of ten knew the morning-after pill was effective after more than 24 hours. > > A report last month from Prince Charles’s charity the Prince’s Trust said teenage single girls on sink estates admire their peers who have given birth and often seek to copy their status and acquire the free flat they think having a baby usually brings. > > The Family Planning Association insisted yesterday, however: ‘Contraceptive use and teenage pregnancy are really two different issues and it doesn’t help to lump them together.’ > > British rates of teenage pregnancy remain well behind those of the U.S. One in 20 girls there has babies each year compared to one in 34 in this country. > > Last year more than 48,000 babies were born to teenage mothers in Britain. > > They cost the taxpayer an estimated £125million in income support alone every year, apart from other costs such as assistance with rent and council tax. > > The easy availability of contraception led to steep falls in the teenage birth rate across Europe in the early Seventies. > > But while other countries continued to achieve dramatic falls Britain’s has not changed since > > According to a 1999 report by the Social Exclusion Unit the lack of education in sex and relationships was considered the main cause. > > But the survey suggests the Prince’s Trust may have been more accurate in its assumption that the attraction of financial benefits may be more to blame. OK that did come from The Daily Mail - but still worrying ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/48 "2013-09-11T14:38:23Z")
But you are begging the question, or using circular reasoning, something along those lines. Your implied premise is that a high rate of teen pregnancy is inherently a bad thing; the whole point of my anti-CW premise was that it should not be treated that way. I was certainly not arguing that providing more support for pregnant teens would reduce the teen pregnancy rate! ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/49 "2013-09-11T14:48:52Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Ideally, we should rely on judges’ and prosecutors’ discretion, but in this pedophile-obessed society and with the push for minimum mandatory sentences we can’t guarantee that a 15 yo won’t have to register as a sex offender for life for having had sex with his 14 yo girlfriend. That other extreme case is as harmful IMO as the case of the 13 yo slutting herself, and I think that in matters of justice and punishment, we should, on principle, err on the side of restraint (better to have a guilty man free than an innocent man in prison and all that). It seems we both agree that there is an over-requirement of registering as a sex offender. But, to me, that fact does next to nothing to justify a change in age of consent laws. Change the sex registration protocols? Sure. But I still think it is better to overprotect minor from sexual exploitation than to underprotect them. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/50 "2013-09-11T15:06:20Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > … > Sorry, that makes no sense to me. If people can’t control their urges to have sex, they need to be in therapy or in an area where they are restrained. > … That was my point, that saying that sex offenders who commit crimes need treatment that assumes that the person can’t control their behavior. Ability to control your behavior and a free choice to commit the criminal act is traditionally an element of crimes, if not a universal _de jure_ one then certainly an element from a moral judgment perspective. Google “sex offender treatment”. Typically each state has some sort of heavyhanded curriculum that treats every person as out of control and unable to control their behavior. To me, a person who really and truly-o does not have rational control of their behavior doesn’t belong in criminal court or jail - they need therapy. Get them therapy, then take the people who still commit these acts out of free choice and put _them_ in jail. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/51 "2013-09-11T16:29:50Z")
> [@](#): > > then take the people who still commit these acts out of free choice and put them in jail. The problem is that you can’t tell one from another reliably. I do wholeheartedly agree that there is a serious over reaction to the perceived problem of underage sex. At least here in the UK the consent law is consistent, but dates, as always, are arbitrary and I can attest that there are many 14 year olds that can easily pass for over 16. Any judge that takes this into account seems to get hammered by the media. Whatever the age - I do think that teenage pregnancy is an inherently bad thing. They may be ready for sex, but they are not ready to bear and rear a child, financially or in any other way. Why should I, as a taxpayer, pay the costs of rearing someone else’s child. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/52 "2013-09-11T16:48:33Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Your implied premise is that a high rate of teen pregnancy is inherently a bad thing; the whole point of my anti-CW premise was that it should not be treated that way. Why shouldn’t it be treated that way? Unwed teen motherhood is associated with all kinds of social pathologies, for the mother and for her children. Even supposing that this can be fended off with increased social spending (which is rather unlikely), why incur the extra expense? What do we gain by it as a society? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/53 "2013-09-11T17:26:22Z")
Since we are never going to eliminate or drastically reduce teen pregnancy, we probably gain a great reduction in some of those social pathologies (I say “probably” because I am always cautious about the direction of causation when talking about correlations; however, by the same token, you should not assume that the social problems you refer to our caused by having offspring as a teen rather than both being the effects of a confounding cofactor like poverty, genetics, or familial socialisation). We also give women a chance to have a “second act” wherein they get educated and have a career after having children. And we know that infertility is much less likely to plague a woman early on, as our chromosomal and other birth defects. ---
**Author:** ![Amara\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7993a0/32.png) [@Amara\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amara_1)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/54 "2013-09-11T17:45:35Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Your implied premise is that a high rate of teen pregnancy is inherently a bad thing; the whole point of my anti-CW premise was that it should not be treated that way. I think it should be treated as a bad thing. Pregnancy is not always a walk in the park. Pregnancy has some fairly serious physical impacts, both short-term and long-term, on any woman. [Cite](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db58.htm)Teen pregnancy is also associated with worse outcomes for babies. Having a baby takes significant resources; I do not believe that we should be encouraging 15 year olds (or even 18 year olds) to be taking care of a child. I assume that you support very strong child-support laws as well? As an FYI, The teen birth rate has dropped fairly significantly since 2007. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/55 "2013-09-11T17:49:46Z")
> [@Amara\_1](#): > > I assume that you support very strong child-support laws as well? That depends on what you mean. As a divorced and remarried dad myself, I am not a fan of the laws as they are currently constituted and applied. I believe other than in extreme circumstances, the default should not be for the mother to have primary physical custody and the father to pay child support. Rather, the default expectation should be for everything to be split (time and costs) and for there to be no child support going either way. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/56 "2013-09-11T18:01:30Z")
> [@Amara\_1](#): > > Teen pregnancy is also associated with worse outcomes for babies. I am really sceptical of this. I followed your link but the sites do not link to any abstracts. First of all, I wonder whether they have lumped everyone from 13 to 19 together. I very seriously doubt that babies of older teens have worse outcomes, all else equal. And the “all else equal” is the other thing. Are these studies very carefully correcting for socioeconomic class, obesity, prevalence of smoking and drug use, etc.? Even after all those are screened out, it remains the case that our current social set up is for teen pregnancy to be seeing as pathological, as a failure. Therefore, it is going to be those teens that are more likely to do “irresponsible” things generally who will get pregnant and have the baby. Thus, I strongly suspect they will be more likely to eat poorly during the pregnancy, to choose poorly from the pool of potential fathers, etc. The only way we could really know is to just grab a random sampling of teens from the population, including studious, virginal girls from the suburbs, and assign them to get pregnant and carry the baby to term. Since that will obviously never happen, and should not happen, I am going to have to take the retrospective research available with a grain of salt. Although what might actually be slightly more persuasive would be to see research on outcomes for chimpanzee babies born from adolescent mothers. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/57 "2013-09-11T18:11:07Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Since we are never going to eliminate or drastically reduce teen pregnancy, we probably gain a great reduction in some of those social pathologies… Could you cite the reduction in social pathologies that have been brought about by encouraging teen pregnancy in other societies? TIA. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Amara\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7993a0/32.png) [@Amara\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amara_1)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/58 "2013-09-11T18:31:23Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I am really sceptical of this. I followed your link but the sites do not link to any abstracts. First of all, I wonder whether they have lumped everyone from 13 to 19 together. I very seriously doubt that babies of older teens have worse outcomes, all else equal. The cites are at the bottom of the page. Not all of them are web-linkable but the page is from the CDC and relies heavily on information from the National Vital Statistics System. Sounds like you agree that younger teens (\<15 year olds) have worse outcomes so pregnancy would be a bad idea. > [@](#): > > And the “all else equal” is the other thing. Are these studies very carefully correcting for socioeconomic class, obesity, prevalence of smoking and drug use, etc.? 13-15 year olds will definitely have lower educational attainment compared to older mother since they aren’t even old enough to graduate high school! If you want to control for this, how do you plan to do so? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/59 "2013-09-11T19:35:34Z")
Educational attainment was not one of the factors I mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![DevilMayhem666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/258eb7/32.png) [@DevilMayhem666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevilMayhem666)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/60 "2013-11-01T02:37:33Z")
I notice that some posters have stated that minors can not make their own decisions. While studies say teenagers 16 and older can make their own informed decisions. However, people are not emotional mature until around 26, a decade later. > [@](#): > > WASHINGTON—A 16-year-old might be quite capable of making an informed decision about whether to end a pregnancy - a decision likely to be made after due consideration and consultation with an adult - but this same adolescent may not possess the maturity to be held to adult levels of responsibility if she commits a violent crime, according to new research into adolescent psychological development. > “Adolescents likely possess the necessary intellectual skills to make informed choices about terminating a pregnancy but may lack the social and emotional maturity to control impulses, resist peer pressure and fully appreciate the riskiness of dangerous decisions,” said Laurence Steinberg, PhD, a professor of developmental psychology at Temple University and lead author of the study. “This immaturity mitigates their criminal responsibility.” > > The findings appear in the October issue of American Psychologist, published by the American Psychological Association. > > Steinberg and his co-authors address this seeming contradiction in a study showing that cognitive and emotional abilities mature at different rates. They recruited 935 10- to 30- year-olds to examine age differences in a variety of cognitive and psychosocial capacities. > > The participants took different tests measuring psychosocial maturity and cognitive ability to examine age patterns in numerous factors that affect judgment and decision-making. The maturity measures included tests of impulse control, sensation-seeking, resistance to peer influence, future orientation and risk perception. The cognitive battery included measures of basic intellectual abilities. > > There were no differences among the youngest four age groups (10-11, 12-13, 14-15 and 16-17) on the measures of psychosocial maturity. But significant differences in maturity, favoring adults, were found between the 16- to 17-year-olds and those 22 years and older, and between the 18- to 21-year-olds and those 26 and older. Results were the same for males and females, the authors said. > > “It is very difficult for a 16-year-old to resist peer pressure in a heated, volatile situation,” Steinberg said. “Most times, there is no time to talk to an adult to inject some reason and reality to the situation. Many crimes committed by adolescents are done in groups with other teens and are not premeditated.” > > In contrast, differences in cognitive capacity measures increased from ages 11 to 16 and then showed no improvements after age 16 - exactly the opposite of the pattern found on the psychosocial measures. Certain cognitive abilities, such as the ability to reason logically, reach adult levels long before psychosocial maturity is attained, Steinberg said. > > “Medical decisions are those where adolescents can take the time to understand and weigh options provided by health care practitioners,” said Steinberg. “Rarely are these decisions made in the heat of the moment without consultation with adults. Under these circumstances, adolescents exhibit adult maturity.” > > Two friend-of-the-court briefs filed by APA in cases heard by the Supreme Court spurred questions about these maturity differences and the apparent inconsistency between APA’s positions in the two cases. In its amicus brief filed in Roper v. Simmons (2005), the case that abolished the juvenile death penalty, APA presented research showing that adolescents are developmentally immature in ways that are relevant to their criminal culpability. In an earlier brief filed in Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990), which upheld adolescents’ right to seek an abortion without parental approval, APA presented research regarding cognitive abilities that bear on medical choices, showing that adolescents are as mature as adults. > > APA differentiated these two scenarios by looking at the decision-making processes required for each situation. In the Hodgson case, APA described adolescents as being competent to make informed and sound health care decisions. In the Roper case, APA characterized adolescents as too short-sighted and impulsive to warrant capital punishment, no matter what the crime. APA placed the research about psychosocial development of adolescents in the context of a court’s need to determine as part of a death penalty sentence that the perpetrator can reliably be assessed as among the “worst of the worst.” > > In November, the Supreme Court is slated to hear two cases concerning the constitutionality of sentencing juveniles to life without the possibility of parole. “Similar questions about adolescent development may be raised in these cases,” Steinberg said. APA has filed an amicus curiae brief in those cases presenting relevant research, including Steinberg’s most recent study, to the court. > > Adolescents’ legal rights, said Steinberg, should be guided by accurate and timely scientific evidence on the nature and course of psychological development. “It is crucial to understand that brain systems responsible for logical reasoning and basic information processing mature earlier than systems responsible for self-regulation and the coordination of emotion and thinking,” he said. > **[While adolescents may reason as well as adults, their emotional maturity...](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2009/10/teen-maturity)** > > Adolescents possess the intellectual skills to make informed choices, but lack the social and emotional maturity to control impulses, resist peer pressure and fully appreciate the riskiness of dangerous decisions. Btw, OP pedophilia is not a legal term. 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