At what age is a child an adult capable of making decisions?

a reply to: Plotus

If guns were absent from the child's environment then what ?

They'll learn how to make IED's from YouTube.

originally posted by: Wardaddy454

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: JAGStorm

Liquor stores should stop selling their good bourbon to anyone under the age of 55.

Those young pups don't appreciate nor can they handle it.

Hey now old timer, not all of us young pups are uncultured swine.

A young person once took all my bourbon and did something stupid. So now all young people under the age of 55 have to be punished.

Sorry but this is applicable under the law of Feels.

a reply to: JAGStorm
I think the different stages reflect, though very imperfectly, the fact that children grow into adulthood gradually. It is never the case that they are utter children one day and complete adults the next.
So the fact that we have different ages when we can legally drink, drive, vote, or serve in the army echoes that gradual process.
The anomalies come about because the various age-qualifications are allocated and tinkered with individually, not in relation to each other. For example, the world seems to have standardised the digital "age of consent" at 18, and yet youngsters can marry at 16. So a girl of 17 can legally show herself naked to her husband, but gets into trouble if she sends him a picture.
However, the American drinking age of 21 was always absurdly high, and more so now that most other qualifications have come down to 18. I could have gone into a pub and bought a drink at the age of 17.

Part of the problem we have nowadays is that adulthood is delayed. Older generations matured much faster and took on more responsibility at an early age. It wasn't uncommon for my parents to get married at 17 or 18, go off to war, hold a real job and have two or three kids by the time they were 21/22 years old. Heck, many were grandparents at 40. Some folks were kicked out the house at 14...

Nowadays, you have 25 year olds with zero responsibilities still living at home in the basement.

Maturity is fluid. I was certainly old enough to own a firearm responsibly at 18 and do most things. However, my best friend really didn't become an adult until he was like 35!

I think we should raise minimum age to 21 EXCEPT in the case of military personnel.

When I hear people recommending that we move the legal age of consent upwards, what I really hear are phrases like, "Are we ready to admit we have so miseducated our children that lowering the bar is the only option to save them from themselves". Or, "Man, we suck so bad at parenting we can't even churn out normal adults anymore...rather than improve our parenting skills why don't we give ourselves a couple more years."

The OP is a solid OP, and asks good questions. I agree, its morose that we have various ages codified into our laws that create philosophical conflict. And it should be aligned. But to change what we consider "adult", when its worked so well for so long, seems like we are missing the forest for all those damned trees.

No one is discussing solution. Only band aid BS.

Im just about sick of what is passing for politics in the US.

Personally I've probably broken a hell of a lot of UK laws technically as a kid, being 7-8 and putting an order in for beer/spirits and a bottle of coke for myself (did help it was my great aunt/uncles place) and by being 9-10 pulling pints etc and nobody battered an eyelid as they all knew me and there was staff but it was the UK in the 1970's

Used to get lifts from my uncle when he visited and i'd sit in the back of the van right next to a 12bore etc.

originally posted by: eNumbra
If we would just outlaw children we wouldn’t have those issues anymore.

China rings a bell. Well, did.

Science says that our brains don't fully mature until age 25.

LINK

Most of the privileges and responsibilities of adulthood are legally granted by the age of 18. That's when you can vote, enlist in the military, move out on your own, but is that the true age of maturity? A growing body of science says, no. That critical parts of the brain involved in decision-making are not fully developed until years later at age 25 or so.

Don't tell that to someone who is 18 though, as they won't believe it until they are over 25 when we suddenly notice that older people are in fact wiser.

Physiologically it's 25, but that's not realistic for a legal age at which we are adults.

AAMODT: Well, actually, one of the side effects of these changes in the reward system is that adolescents and young adults become much more sensitive to peer pressure than they were earlier or will be as adults.

When we are under 25, we are susceptible to not just peer pressure, but also being taken in by adults with other than honorable intentions. Its the age when brainwashing to an ideology is the easiest to accomplish. Its the age when we mess up the worst because we think we are fully adult and don't realize our decision making skills are lacking due to our brains not being fully developed.

originally posted by: slapjacks

originally posted by: eNumbra
If we would just outlaw children we wouldn’t have those issues anymore.

China rings a bell. Well, did.

Nah, they limited having multiple children.

All of a sudden it's 2018 and everyone pretends the rules changed for when a child is considered an adult now. How pathetic.

a reply to: frostjon361

However did this country manage to get going when all those immature kids had to help on the farmstead, often doing very adult work, managing their younger siblings, etc.?

a reply to: ketsuko

Not long ago children as young as 5 worked on farms, in factories. I personally don't think that was a good thing and there is a reason it went away (most of it). I've known many friends that had to tend to their siblings, sometimes from very large families, it was a horrible horrible way to have a childhood, i'd say their childhood was robbed. Many of those friends never did have children of their own because they spent their entire childhood raising their brothers and sisters.

I know i'll shake some feathers, but if we truly go by maturity then age of adulthood for women should be 18 and for men somewhere in the range of 24-49.

a reply to: ketsuko

Well, as it's been said, older generations have had adulthood thrust upon them at ages much earlier than 18. I know my parents were much more responsible than I was at 18, and their parents were probably more than that.

Nerd culture is a good example of the difference: It's really aimed at 18 - 25 year olds who have the money to spend on frivolous comic and sci-fi/fantasy-related products including things like conventions and theme cruises. Teens rarely have enough cash to take advantage of things like that.

Will you tell me the 22 year old wearing the cat ears and a red kimono pretending to be Inuyasha is a mature individual? Is the dork dressed in a very accurate (and very expensive) Boba Fett costume mature? No. They're allowed to be oversized kids nowadays. They're allowed to act 10 or 15 years younger and balk at responsibilities. This is by no means 100% pervasive but it's a HUGE subsection of people from teen to mid-twenties ages.

I know a girl who got pregnant at 18. She did what seemed to be the sensible thing and married the loser who knocked her up. She then divorced him after 3 years because he was NO help. All he did was play video games all day long. Where was his sense of responsibility? Didn't he realize he was a father? No, he was a child still in his head and was indignant about giving up his playtime.

Depends on the child, but for most it may be 18-21 on some matters. But teens are very prone to be rash, do or die, Romeo and Juliet style decisions. Thats why the deep state interferes with and influences heavily so many that are disturbed and recruits them, and its the worst crime in the world to harm a child or a teen. That and corruption of authority/power/responsibility, the hijacking of this world.

But for some, I don't think they become mature enough to make adult decisions until middle age, so maybe 40-50.

a reply to: Unity_99

I agree with everything but the Deep State comments here. I don't have enough knowledge of that to endorse it, but the rash decisions of teens are well-documented.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: JAGStorm

Liquor stores should stop selling their good bourbon to anyone under the age of 55.

Those young pups don't appreciate nor can they handle it.

Ummm...whew...squeaked under that particular bar...um limbo schtick...

Now to see if I can accomplish the same with a few shots of this good bourbon in me...





YouSir

a reply to: JAGStorm

My point is not about whether something like that was good, but simply to point out that not so long ago, kids that young were considered responsible enough to carry a lot of responsibility, even adult level responsibility.

Nowadays, we don't think people can shoulder that when they're 25 ... but a 5-year-old used to do it?

We talk about how evolved we are, but to me that seems like a sort of degradation. Again, not so much that we're no longer making 5-year-olds work adult jobs, but that we seem to think they're no longer capable of it.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
"Are we ready to admit we have so miseducated our children that lowering the bar is the only option to save them from themselves".

These are damned good questions, and I think the above is the key to it as BFFT said....lowering the bar because of what is tantamount to laziness.

Thankfully, all those years ago I saw the writing on the wall and thought the better of it and decided to NOT have children, ever...I'm not endorsing that rationale simply saying for me it was the best fit.

We've PC'ed, participation trophied, thin-skinned by way of no bullying'ed, gender-identified, twitterized, duck-faced selfied kids into meaningless little robotic carbon copies that have no real idea what it is to need to make critical decisions when they count. How do I know? I had my 17 year old nephew ask me just today, "why democracy and compromise was so important anyway?"...get a fu__in clue kid or lose what you've enjoyed up to this point.

a reply to: JAGStorm

You have a point in some respects. Kids are doing adult crime, yet are treated with leaner sentencing guidelines because they're under the age of 18. I would think by the age of 12, kids know the difference between right and wrong. If they think robbing someone at gun point, or taking a human life has no consequences, then most likely their parents didn't discipline them well and didn't teach them basic moral values. If that was done, then they're either hanging with the wrong crowd, or they're just mentally ill.

I think 18 year-old teens are recruited to join the military at a vulnerable age. Teens live day to day and most don't have plans for their future. I don't think an 18 year-old is mature enough to enter the military, but a grueling boot camp has a way of making them responsible and mature.

The problem lies with how responsible and mature they are at various ages.

originally posted by: frostjon361
a reply to: Unity_99

I agree with everything but the Deep State comments here. I don't have enough knowledge of that to endorse it, but the rash decisions of teens are well-documented.

A friend and I put short work on an attempt by a very interesting guy, just "slumming" with the poor druggies. Her daughter had her life ruined by spousal abuse and drugs and my friend had custody of a very trouble grandson who she had cared for as a baby for his first 2 years before he was taken out of province by his hardcore mother and stepfather.
She went through quite a battle for him.

Then years later, with a troubled teen, a drug addicted mother who had lost her other sons, and was single, and odd strange aquaintances. 80000 dollar trucks, but down on his luck, though he was known to be from higher ranking military family that was masonic. And he kept showing up for the kid. Obviously deep state working the street in its drug operations and programs. And most of us unaffected by their programs but brushing shoulders with all of this, we get it. We sit down and talk about exactly this and all the conspiracies on the forums, well we did that before we even knew forums existed. By we, most of anyone I know that at least had the wisdom of being a mother/grandmother, awake and getting it.

We talked deeply about world events, deep state, and he showed up when I was there and never came back because she assured him he was not required and that we were looking after our families and that Mr Black Op could just slither away. His chin went down, he didn't say much, his glance went from me to her several times and he left.

In another area, when we had moved to Chilliwack, we had the fortune/misfortune, in other words it was hard but we still had compassion and were trying to help, to provide an ark or safe space for some ministry half way house teens, that unfortunately cost alot in nerves and stolen games and even a guitar and system. However, getting to know them and get their trust, talking about hero's, Bruce Lee came up, psi, skywatching, lots of things and they had experiences. Some were very much connected to deep state, and some dark occult type areas.

One was American, living in a foster home in Canada. He'd been in trouble in the US and was told he had a choice between jail, and some military training and then Canada.

Odd, eh?

You have to open your eyes to see what the monsters are doing with the kids.