Lower the age of majority to 16?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Considering the recent social and cultural trends towards delaying the onset of adulthood, a proposal to reduce the age of majority is quite bizarre.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Considering the recent social and cultural trends towards delaying the onset of adulthood, a proposal to reduce the age of majority is quite bizarre.

Treating people like children will not help the process. Give them occupations, good Christian upbringings, and basic rights, such as voting.

     Certainly, but giving legal rights to people who lack the maturity to make use of them responsibly seems backwards. This project needs to begin in society, with parents giving their children better upbringings with more autonomy.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Considering the recent social and cultural trends towards delaying the onset of adulthood, a proposal to reduce the age of majority is quite bizarre.

Treating people like children will not help the process. Give them occupations, good Christian upbringings, and basic rights, such as voting.

     Certainly, but giving legal rights to people who lack the maturity to make use of them responsibly seems backwards. This project needs to begin in society, with parents giving their children better upbringings with more autonomy.

You estimate the degree to which people assume that the law is correct. Parents often deny their children autonomy because the law says that they're children. Plenty of parents are fine with their kids drinking at a younger age on a trip to Europe.

     If that hypothesis held, we would expect helicopter parenting to end when the children go off to college. My experience both as student and as staff at a university would tend to contradict that. It is certainly diminished, but given the difference in distance that exists between high school and college (few parents have the means to visit a professor in person) some of the displays I have seen of helicopter parenting are nevertheless astonishing.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Considering the recent social and cultural trends towards delaying the onset of adulthood, a proposal to reduce the age of majority is quite bizarre.

Treating people like children will not help the process. Give them occupations, good Christian upbringings, and basic rights, such as voting.

     Certainly, but giving legal rights to people who lack the maturity to make use of them responsibly seems backwards. This project needs to begin in society, with parents giving their children better upbringings with more autonomy.

We've already given an absurd amount of legal standing to people not mature enough for it. Why quibble about a few million?

     My point is that thinking about this in terms of the legal cutoff age is a mistake; there existing an age of majority is a practical necessity, and the exact number is an uninteresting question. 18-year olds in the United States today should be more mature than they are, but fiddling with the laws isn't going to make this happen.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Considering the recent social and cultural trends towards delaying the onset of adulthood, a proposal to reduce the age of majority is quite bizarre.

Treating people like children will not help the process. Give them occupations, good Christian upbringings, and basic rights, such as voting.

     Certainly, but giving legal rights to people who lack the maturity to make use of them responsibly seems backwards. This project needs to begin in society, with parents giving their children better upbringings with more autonomy.

We've already given an absurd amount of legal standing to people not mature enough for it. Why quibble about a few million?

     My point is that thinking about this in terms of the legal cutoff age is a mistake; there existing an age of majority is a practical necessity, and the exact number is an uninteresting question. 18-year olds in the United States today should be more mature than they are, but fiddling with the laws isn't going to make this happen.

.

If the independent variable is their life experiences and how they are treated, construct a social apparatus--including, but not limited to, the law--that sees them treated and functioning as adults sooner.

     Sure, we should construct a social apparatus to create more mature and autonomous young adults. Part of that apparatus, however, would have to hinge on changing how they are treated by adults. When children go to college having been conditioned to be totally dependent on their parents and with little to nothing in terms of real world skills, this is a problem that goes well beyond the law. If we change the age of majority to 16, do we expect parents to suddenly change how they raise their children when they hit 16 and treat them as if they were adults? I am dubious of that.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Considering the recent social and cultural trends towards delaying the onset of adulthood, a proposal to reduce the age of majority is quite bizarre.

Treating people like children will not help the process. Give them occupations, good Christian upbringings, and basic rights, such as voting.

     Certainly, but giving legal rights to people who lack the maturity to make use of them responsibly seems backwards. This project needs to begin in society, with parents giving their children better upbringings with more autonomy.

We've already given an absurd amount of legal standing to people not mature enough for it. Why quibble about a few million?

     My point is that thinking about this in terms of the legal cutoff age is a mistake; there existing an age of majority is a practical necessity, and the exact number is an uninteresting question. 18-year olds in the United States today should be more mature than they are, but fiddling with the laws isn't going to make this happen.

.

If the independent variable is their life experiences and how they are treated, construct a social apparatus--including, but not limited to, the law--that sees them treated and functioning as adults sooner.

     Sure, we should construct a social apparatus to create more mature and autonomous young adults. Part of that apparatus, however, would have to hinge on changing how they are treated by adults. When children go to college having been conditioned to be totally dependent on their parents and with little to nothing in terms of real world skills, this is a problem that goes well beyond the law. If we change the age of majority to 16, do we expect parents to suddenly change how they raise their children when they hit 16 and treat them as if they were adults? I am dubious of that.

Make no mistake, my view on this involves systemic adjustments, but we've got to start somewhere. 

     I agree, and this is definitely the easiest lever to pull. At the same time, it may be the least effective lever to pull, both in terms of reaching the goal and avoiding resulting problems.