Age at which one can rent a car: \u00a0typically age 21 (some states mandate age 18), with additional charges applicable until age 25.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nAnd there are probably other minimum ages I\u2019m forgetting about.<\/p>\n
One could look at this \u00a0list and say that there is no single age that demarcates adulthood, but I would say that there is a clear marker: \u00a0at age 18 one is deemed capable of making one\u2019s own decisions. \u00a0All the other \u201cfirsts\u201d are about permitted actions. \u00a0And marriage is a decision of lasting consequence, every bit as much as the decision to take the risks involved in joining the military or working at a hazardous job.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot about age 18, though, that seems arbitrary. \u00a0Yes, that the age that coincides, in most cases, with high school graduation, and it wouldn\u2019t make sense to have particularly many minors attending universities, signing student loan contracts, making decision while living apart from their families. \u00a0For the non-college crowd, it doesn\u2019t make sense to oblige individuals to wait longer than that to begin employment at \u201creal\u201d jobs, which can involve hazards. \u00a0Was there some magic behind the idea of secondary school ending after 12th grade? \u00a0I don\u2019t know. \u00a0Certainly in Germany, for students entering apprenticeships school lasts \u2019til 10th grade, and for the college-bound, \u2019til 13th grade (at least in some states and, used to be, everywhere). (Have I blogged about the notion that we could benefit from a \u201c13th grade\u201d \u2014 that is, rather than pushing kids into AP classes to accelerate their learning, just having a final year of high school for the college bound which covers the material that would otherwise be that first year of college, the introductory courses, but free and at home?)<\/p>\n
What about the notion that, in prior generations, people were considered adults, and marriageable, at much younger ages? \u00a0Off the top of my head, age at marriage varied considerably \u2014 in Northern and Western Europe, even in the middle ages, one waited until one had land to farm or a trade learned. \u00a0In India, it seems to me, there wasn\u2019t, and isn\u2019t, a need to be able to live independently because the next generation continues to live in the husband\u2019s parent\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
But in any case, I could see there being a reasonable argument to be made that marriage was not, in prior generations, a decision that required reaching adulthood to make: \u00a0if it\u2019s a given that one is going to marry, and choice of spouse is largely determined by one\u2019s parents, or by other practical considerations, then it\u2019s not quite so weighty to decide this. \u00a0In modern Western societies, it\u2019s a decision that has to be made by \u201creal\u201d adults, when it\u2019s expected that one loves one\u2019s spouse, and is compatible, generally speaking, and, what\u2019s more, that one make the decision with enough maturity that one isn\u2019t tempted to abandon the marriage quickly, which isn\u2019t an issue in a society in which the community compels the couple to stay together.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s a further question: \u00a0at what age is it detrimental to a person\u2019s well-being to be married? \u00a0Early childbirth is generally considered to be harmful to women, as is, generally speaking, being married at a young age to a much older man, or being placed as a\u00a0daughter-in-law in a position of subservience in a larger household. \u00a0But if it were just a matter of early marriage having ill-effects, I don\u2019t know that this would justify a delayed marriage age. \u00a0We set an age, however arbitrary but more or less appropriate for the majority of people, based on the age at which they are able to make decisions which involve risk.<\/p>\n
What about other cultures? \u00a0To be sure, there is some science behind the adulthood age, but we also have an understanding, however vaguely, that in prior generations people de facto<\/em> reached adulthood far earlier than our arbitrary age of 18. \u00a0I\u2019m not so sure about this, though, to be honest, I\u2019m going to punt on this rather than dig into it. \u00a0It seems to me that even though individuals were expected to do hard, \u201cadult\u201d work at ages below our marker of\u00a018, they weren\u2019t necessarily considered \u201cadult\u201d; they wouldn\u2019t have lived in their own households (and young wives weren\u2019t necessarily considered \u201cadult\u201d even if they ran an entire plantation household like Mrs. O\u2019Hara). \u00a0In any case, our sense of making binding contractual decisions wouldn\u2019t necessarily make sense in a traditional culture where the idea that one made individual decisions as opposed to meeting the expecatations of\u00a0the wider community, wouldn\u2019t be relevant.<\/p>\nWhat about the various religious coming-of-age ceremonies at about age 13? \u00a0The Bar Mitzvah, confirmation, and the like? \u00a0Didn\u2019t they signal that one became an adult? \u00a0This, too, I\u2019ll label as an \u201cexercise left to the reader,\u201d to cite my old actuarial exam textbooks.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Image: \u00a0are these adults? \u00a0flickr: https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/elisfanclub\/360214806; creative commons license<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So in a prior post I used the issue of the minimum age at marriage to talk about practices in some Christian communities and the extent to which we in the broader mainstream community feel like \u201cthat\u2019s none of my business\u201d or \u201cit makes us look bad to talk about.\u201d But there is definitely a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6379,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[648,151],"class_list":["post-6680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adulthood","tag-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\n
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