Why does almost everyone consider a relationship innately bad between an adult and a minor over the age of consent inappropriate?
While I see it could be a bad relationship like any other I fail to see why it is inatly inappropriate.
I’ve moved this thread from General Questions to Great Debates. It might belong in In My Humble Opinion, or elsewhere. I’ll defer to the Great Debates moderators on the further disposition of the thread.
Gfactor
General Questions Moderator
I’m sorry, that does not compute.
Any person over the age of consent is not a minor.
I think people (men and women) who seek out the company of much younger people are stunted in their own growth and/or very controlling. There are some relationships where that works, despite the power/experience imbalance, but I don’t think it is the rule.
Ok. So debate!
PS. in some states 16 (or younger) is the age of consent (for Satyagrahi)
Actually in most places the ages are different. 18 is the common age of majority. Age of consent varies commonly from 16 to 18.
A minor is (for most purposes) under 18. Most states have varying ages of consent from 14-17
Why do you think this? And also no one said anything about seeking them out. In my experience relationships more often just happen than are sought out.
Age of consent throughout the world: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Age_of_Consent.png
Dukette,
You might add “only interested in sex” to that list. Some men will have sex with a 16 year old because they’re easier to impress and/or more to their liking physically. They probably don’t have long discussions on philosophy and arts.
As a teacher, I work with teens every day, and I really admire and like them. I have good and real friendships that started in the classroom and have persisted for years afterwards. I have been humbled many times by teens that were smarter, wiser, and more mature (in some ways) at 17 than I am at 34, and certainly than I was at 24.
That said, I am high skeptical regarding any relationship between an adult and a teen, however legal it might be. Teens are simply too easy to manipulate–they lack the ability to conceal or control their emotional responses and the perspective to properly evaluate the responses of adults. It is trivially easy to get them far more emotionally invested in a relationship while retaining emotional autonomy, and that’s a terrible imbalance. Furthermore, once you start down that path, it’s hard to stop–who doesn’t like to be loved and admired and idealized? It’s easy to teach a teenager how to make you feel 10 feet tall and bulletproof. But it’s bad for the teenager–that sort of emotional imbalance eats away at people.
I’m sure there are exceptions. But I’d be skeptical that any such relationship could be healthy.
In the same ball park but she was not a minor.
Past experience. Keep in mind that a 14-18 year old girl/woman does not always recognize a man who is trying to get laid. Also, I don’t think men know to what extent grown men prey on young women. I mean, your friends, who tell you they would never go for an underage girl, when left alone with one, it is a different story.
I have one point of view; but this is just my opinion from what I have seen. I wish I had a wider view.
Not always the case, but for the female half of the May-December pair, conception is always a possibility. This can limit her life-choices in multiple ways. Making long-term choices is not the general tendency for people in their teens.
And with the human body not completely developed until the early twenties there are also the risks of carrying a baby to term and birthing it without physical consequences both to the child and to the mother.
People often have a tendency to confuse “probably a bad idea” with “innately evil” when it comes to sexual relationships. Which in this case weakens their arguments considerably; pointing out why it is foolish IMHO is a much better argument than condemning as predatory some adult who is not doing any immediate harm (and who may well not mean any, not that it won’t probably work out badly anyway)…
Because they are not peers. The “relationships” are inherently exploitive.
What age difference are we talking about?
Is a 21 year old guy with a relationship with a 17 year old girl inherently different than if the guy is 40 years old?
Mainly because young people are relatively inexperienced and kinda stupid when it comes to life lessons, and are subject to being manipulated and exploited.
The flip side is if the adult is a decent, non-exploitative person the relationship can actaully work out pretty well as an introduction to adulthood. There was a thread here a while ago with some Doper women who had these kind of older-younger relationships (where they were the younger partner) saying they did not regret them at all.
Probably, yes.
It’s not really a yes/no thing; it’s simply a matter, to my mind, of statistical probability. It is possible that a relationship between a 40-year-old and an 18-year-old could be a healthy relationship that works for both sides. It is, however, extremely improbable.
I’m about to turn 39, and single again, and just talking to women, looking at ads, chatting women up, you can feel the maturity difference. A woman in her 30s relates to me and feels like a peer. A woman in her late 20s, still works, providing she isn’t stunted - if she has a real career, is living on her own, etc, that’s fine. But at that age a surprising number of women are still not very mature, living with Mom and Dad, don’t have educations finished yet. It starts to drop pretty quick at that point as you go down in age. I know a 20-year-old woman, friend of the family, who’s lovely, as smart as a whip, determined, hard working, very mature for her age, but there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell a relationship with her would work. She is simply not mature enough, doesn’t have the same goals or priorities. How on earth would that work? It’d be an ungodly disaster that would end in tears in a matter of months.
As you go down in age from your own, the number of people whose immaturity excludes the possibility of a healthy relationship (as opposed to casual sex; meh, if you wanna screw and it’s legal, go for it) increases as a percentage of the total population. Maybe there ARE 20-year-olds out there I could have a healthy relationship with, but I have never met one and I am guessing it’s like one woman in a million.
So, frankly, I’m skeptical of May-December relationships, because it’s just so damned unlikely that they’re good ones. Not impossible, and not my business, but it’s unlikely.
It is not just 14-18 year olds who don’t recognize that. I would suggest that other 14-18 year olds are about as likely if not more to want to “get laid”.
What past experience do you have?
How so? That explains nothing.