This is partly a personal, partly a political question. As it stands, teenagers under 18 do not have the rights or responsibilities of adults. It therefore stands to reason that as many teens are not expected to act like adults, they won’t.
Perhaps I am a special case, but I had an unspoken agreement with my parents from the age of about 13 onwards: They would treat me as if I were fully adult with regard to curfews, privacy, etc., and I would in return act like an adult with such privelages. By and large, I didn’t abuse my privelages. Now, I may be an utter anomoly, and it may be that most teens will act like frustrated balls of horomones regardless of what is expected of them. But, there are also many other teens who are ready to handle adult responsibilites far before their 18th birthday.
Basically, I am curious what justification can be given for 18 as the magical date of adulthood. It seems to me that teens were acting as adults long before their 18th birthday for long periods of history, possibly because they were considered men grown. What data, if any, exists stating that 18 is the best date for arbitrarily conferring adulthood?
In general: as a teacher, I’ve noticed that my students, of all ages, tend to live up or down to my expectations. Treat your engineering students like careful-handed, careful-minded adults, and you’ll get careful-handed, careful-minded adults in miniature.
In specific: my compact with my parents was much like yours, and it worked quite well (modulo a few unfortunate incidents with schoolteachers; I tended to think of myself as their equal, which Did Not End Well).
18 is an arbitrary number, but since we do need an arbitrary number to legislate around, it doesn’t bother me. I’m not sure why 18 was picked in the first place, though; does anyone know the history behind that? I tried Googling on the drinking age, but the magic 18 seems to have been set in stone by the end of Prohibition.
While I don’t have many better ideas as far as adulthood goes, do we really need a magic date? Can’t we just have a ‘not guilty by reason of immaturity’ defence for any legal problems an immature teen might get into, a very basic as-unbiasable-as-possible test for basic cogitation, and consider anyone who can pass the test an adult with regard to rights? Of course, I have no reason why such a system would be superior to the arbitrary number (cogitation is just as arbitrary as age to maturity), but I think it would result in fewer false negatives (mature children treated like children) than false positives (immature children treated as adults). Of course, there is a bootstrapping issue of whether or not a child is mature enough to choose to take the test to qualify for adulthood.
My parents have always treated me as a responsible adult, and I have found that I am much more mature than almost all teenagers my age, and much more mature than quite a few teenagers older than me. Having been treated as an adult, I make pretty much my own rules, which are entirely agreeable with my parents. I believe that if parents treated their children as responsible adults, those children would strive to become so, and learn what’s best.
The idea for a test of maturity, in theory, would work quite well. But put the element of human nature in, and it is almost impossible to use the system effectively. Knowing that they were being tested, mature teens could easily act immaturely, granting them a lighter sentence.
18 is arbitrary, but 13 and below is too low as the subjects on average are just entering puberty. 14-16 are the next candidates. But, people differ in when and how effectively they adjust to puberty, their developing increased mental faculties and in general, their perspective to life. I suppose, the authorities decided to err on the side of caution by not assigning the age of adulthood to any of the above candidates. Now, we come to 17-21 as candidates. The longer you wait within this timeframe, I suppose you create more discontent among the individuals who percieve themselves ready to join the Real World™. In this hind-sight rationalisation, I suppose you could see 18 as a decent arbitrary age to demarcate childhood/adulthood. IMHO, Society doesn’t have an effective and consistent logistical resource to test adulthood on a case-for-case basis. Which brings me to your second query
Cogitation test as substitute for a fixed age
The problems I see with such a test are manifold. What determines cogitation? Who decides? There’s likely to be a lot of 18+ who would fail such a test if administered. I don’t think most, say, 28 year-olds would appreciate being administered such a test to determine that they have indeed stepped into adulthood with regards to voting or just a plain job application. Humans, by nature, are egotistical. An arbitrary age of 18 as adulthood provides a guaranteed mark of respect from society at large without needing to prove yourself. Sure, it lets a few, slip through the cracks, but statistically, that’s the best method at present.
It’s true that historically people were considered as adults long before the age of 18. But in those eras, they were given the responsibilities of adults as well. Nobody today expects a 15 year old boy to earn his own living or starve or a 15 year old girl to marry and have children.
The problem is primarily institutional, not social.
“Teenager” as a group characterized by behaviour has only come to be recognized with the rise of compulsory education under conditions that would require criminal conviction to inflict upon adults.
When I was in highschool I always found it kind of odd that we could be compelled to spend the majority of our day in a building roamed by armed guards while we did the mental equivalent of stamping liscense plates.
I think that if society were different and children were forced to take on all the responsibilities of adulthood, many of them would be able to do it. If they saw without a doubt that if they acted foolishly, they’d starve, then yeah, they’d suck it up and be responsible. Or at least most of them would.
But that’s now how things are right now. Some teenagers want certain “rights” or “perks” of adulthood, but they know in the back of their minds that if they screw up, they have mommy and daddy to bail them out. Mommy and daddy are legally responsible for bailing them out. And because they know this, their mindset is usually completely different from the 15-year-old from eras past, who knew that they’d starve if they screwed up.
However, I don’t think it’s wrong at all for parents to give teenagers more freedom, if the kids earn it. For instance, when I was a teenager, I had a reasonable amount of latitude given to me about staying out late, where I went, who I went with. Because my parents trusted me. And I had pretty decent friends. (Well, some of them were “troubled,” but I thought they were nice people.)
I was such a nerd, I didn’t get into trouble and never gave them much cause to worry. (Unless you count the silly petty things, which I don’t.) If they had treated me like a criminal even though I was a nerdy, harmless little thing who just wanted more art lessons, then I know I would have chafed at that and resented that. I was glad that my parents felt that I’d earned their trust. And truthfully, their trust in me kept me on the straight and narrow. I so enjoyed the freedoms I had, I didn’t want to mess it up.
It’s becoming increasingly common for juvenile defendants to be tried as adults. It strikes me as strange; there are few other circumstances in which a teenager can be recognized as an adult, with the consequential responsibilities and rewards, other than when they’ve demonstrated their complete irresponsibility.
So, the lesson we’re teaching our kids is: no matter how smart or mature you are, you can’t get treated like an adult. Screw up really hard, and you’ll get treated like an adult right quick.
Yes. All you have to do is look at other countries that do treat teenagers like adults. Australia does this and you would be taken aback by the maturity shown by the teenagers.
alterego, are you an expat displaying national pride, or someone who has previously visited and been impressed with the maturity of our teenagers?
While I think that in some respects U.S. teenagers are sheltered a little more than Australian teens, I don’t think that Australia can really be considered a world leader for levels of respect for teeangers or maturity shown by teenagers.
For instance, European drinking laws are much more liberal than Australian ones, and by many accounts European teenagers are more responsible in their consumption of alcohol than Australians. It may only be one aspect, but it is an important one, as drinking is one of the biggest things that seperates those underage and those overage.
I think that often (but not always, which is an important distinction), teens who are trusted become worthy of that trust. When I was a teen, my mom didn’t really give a damn who I was with or what I was doing, as long as I wasn’t bothering her, so I can’t use my own experience as a model; however, hubby had lots of freedom/responsibility and lived up to it. He was a great kid, good grades, good to his family, etc.
When my oldest was 15, we gave her lots of freedom, and she screwed it up, big time. She’s now 16, and we look over her every minute of every day. We tried treating her as an adult, and she completely didn’t live up to it! However, we won’t judge our younger two based on our oldes ones’ actions. We will also give them freedom, and let them choose whether to use it or lose it. In fact, our 12-year-old is remarkably mature; we give her a lot of latitude with her activities, because so far, she hasn’t asked to do anything that she’s not ready to do.
So, my answer to the OP: I think a lot of the time it will work. But not always. Best bet, probably, is to try it, as a parent, and see if it works for your kid.
We view the years of 13-18 as “young adult in training” years. Our kids are expected to make adult like decisions and in turn will be treated like young adults.
For the children in our family we’ve reared from birth - this has worked beautifully. For the kids who’ve joined our family as “teenagers” (foster children) they just couldn’t grasp the concept and blew it time and time again.
In my limited experience - I think the defining factor between the two groups of kids was early/childhood training. The home growns were given responsibility and the freedom to make choices very early in life, where as those who joined us later had every aspect of their life planned for them once they came into foster care and had no clue how to take control of their lives.
We’re also big believers in natural consequences, or letting them learn from their own choices. There are no life lessons learned if we step in and rescue them from their mistakes.
With proper training and support I think young adults rise to the expectations of their parents.
A bit vague, there were alot of eras back then ya know.
I don’t think that in those eras where farming and gathering and hunting rather than wage earning were the primary means of survival that people really left home even when married, nobody expected them to earn his own living or starve back then either.
IIRC the phenomenon of moving out at age 18 and making it on one’s own is largely an american post WWII thing.
That contentiousness aside,
Teens should be able to Vote at 16, and drink at 18.
There is some brain research that states that the human brain really isn’t done developing till right around 18. I’ll see if I can find it, the gist (gyst?) of it is that humans aren’t really able to read the emotions of others well until about 18. The example I remember given was that several facial expressions that looked like sadness, disappointment, etc. looked like anger to a 17 year old.
Another opinion: Alcohol is a dangerous drug that if it were invented today, there’s no friggin way it would be legal. One should definitely be fully developed before being allowed to indulge at will.
I just graduated from high school, I’d in my experience, the more respect teachers gave their students, the better the class behaved. That wasn’t true in all cases, as there definitely other factors(for example, the maturity of teenaged boys is inversely proportional to the number of boys in the group). However, the worst behaved classes I was in had teachers that treated their students like little kids. You could argue that we were treated that way because we acted so badly, but I saw the same students behave fine in other classes with better teachers. Case in point: In a grade 12 chemistry class, a teacher was handing out textbooks. She told her students to have the textbooks covered in a week, or they’d start losing marks. One of the textbooks already had a cover on it(the student who had used it in the previous semester hadn’t taken it off). The teacher rips it off in front of the student who was to recieve it. It was an incredibly childish thing to do, and you’d better believe that the students reciprocated it for the entire semester. When we teenagers are treated like children, our automatic reaction is to live up to expectations.
Oh, and I have to disagree with greck on the inability to read emotions thing. Trust me, once you’re put in a position where you need to be able to read others, you learn how quickly.
I think that’s a fair point, and much of the idea behind our OP, I think. In order to act like an adult, one must try to act like an adult and receive guidance as to what the errors are. There seems to be a trend, however, to not guide children but shield them until some magical age when they are suddenly thrown in the metaphoric lake and told, “Now swim!”
You’re put in that situation the day you’re born. You’re also put in the situation where walking, talking, reading, working, etc. are all necessities.
Can’t teach an infant math, his brain’s not ready yet. When it is, he’ll learn it pretty quickly compared to his rate of learning just a month or two prior.
There are quantifiable emotional and psychological development issues here. While historically, young people were thrust into reality at a much earlier age than today (and survived or not), let us not forget something better known as “maturity” is also involved. While each individual matures at their own rate, humans by and large have longer development cycles than other species on the planet. Perhaps the arbitrary age of 18 was selected long before the research was in that quantified what we knowing more about today. There are always exception to the case, and some have been described here already. Yey human maturity pretty much develops along a defined time frame.
Growing up, I knew kids who were mature way beyond their chronological years, as there are many today. I also found many adults operating way below the maturity level, as there are many today. Anecdotal evidence is just that, anecdotal.
As Taran says, “18 is an arbitrary number, but since we do need an arbitrary number to legislate around, …” From late research within the past year (no cite but I’m sure it can be found since it was online news), brain and development research is indicating full development does not really manifest until the mid-20s.
Perhaps we should raise the “legal age” to 21 or even 25, based on this research. After all, I’m sure I can find substantial anectdotal evidence to support it.