Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Studies have shown that there is very little difference between the decision making capabilities of 14-17 year olds regarding medical treatment decisions as compared to those who have reached legal majority...the APA testified in Hodgson v. Minnesota to this effect. Based on a large body of research, the decision making capacity of a person is remarkably indistinguishable from adult levels by age 14.
Hodgson was about Minnesota's requirement that a minor seeking an abortion have the consent of BOTH parents, or that the minor get a judicial review for permission. The court held that requiring one was reasonable and requiring both parents was not.
From the ruling:
"First, the State has a strong and legitimate interest in the welfare of its young citizens, whose immaturity, inexperience, and lack of judgment may sometimes impair their ability to exercise their rights wisely. That interest justifies a state-imposed requirement that the minor notify and consult with a parent before terminating her pregnancy."
I agree with the courts.
I've been trying to find the original studies. I was a teacher back then and I remember the controversy surrounding the case. I don't recall the "Large body of research", and I can't seem to find any such studies.
Can you supply links to any of these studies? I don't mean articles talking about the studies, but rather, the actual study.
Studies have shown that there is very little difference between the decision making capabilities of 14-17 year olds regarding medical treatment decisions as compared to those who have reached legal majority...the APA testified in Hodgson v. Minnesota to this effect. Based on a large body of research, the decision making capacity of a person is remarkably indistinguishable from adult levels by age 14.
Furthermore, it is far from obvious why it should be necessary for a person's decision making process to be fully developed rather than adequately developed. To make a questionable analogy that might still be useful, the average male isn't their full adult height until about age 18 and the average female not until about age 15 or 16, however, most of us were probably wearing adult-size clothing at least a year or two before we stopped growing, if not more. This is because someone who is (say) 95% of their full height is "close enough" to be a good fit, even though there is still the last 5%.
Why can we not use the same logic for mental development as for physical dimensions....in other words even if your brain is not fully developed, might 95% be good enough? Why or why not?
So if someone's medical decisions are at adult levels by age 14, let's say we should lower the age of medical consent from 18 to 13, presumably because (as in the clothing analogy) there might be some concept of "close enough".
Similarly, I'll argue that we should lower the age at which a person can work without parental consent from 18 or 16, down to 13, as long as the work does not interfere with school and as long as there is no reason for believing that workplace exploitation is taking place. The horrors of the sweat-shops during the Industrial Revolution can be avoided in a number of ways that don't require a strict and dogmatic all-or-nothing approach toward the labor of young people. There is a HUGE difference between a sweatshop and a 13-year-old working at, say, the local computer store after school. People keep using the historical sweatshops as an argument against this, but this is, I argue, beyond disingenuous. So let's let them work as long as they are keeping up OK in school. I would argue that if their GPA does not drop below (say) a 2.5 they should be allowed to work for up to 2 hours on school days (after school time), up to 6 hours on a weekend day, and unlimited hours during summer. If the student fails any courses or has poor grades, the school would report to the appropriate agency to suspend the employment until the student's academic situation has stabilized.
I also don't see any good reason not to lower the voting age to 13, using similar logic as discussed for medical treatment, or the age at which one can obtain a bank account or sign a lease without parental consent. However, banks and landlords should be free to require a young person to have the income, otherwise they would be signing their parents up for an obligation behind their back, and this is absolutely wrong, I think we can all agree.
I am not arguing that the parental financial support obligation should end before age 18. And parents should only be required to provide the basic necessities, NOT cell phones, TV, a separate housing unit, a car, etc. These must be earned, they are not necessities. I absolutely do NOT support requiring parents to provide any of these things, period!
I will not discuss the age of sexual consent, the drinking or smoking or gambling or gun age, or the military age, or the marriage age. In fact let's not even discuss the driving age. These are very complex issues and I don't want to get into them. If you want to discuss them among yourself, fine, but I will refrain from taking a position on any of those. Frankly I don't see them as important, because I don't see them as basic civil liberties. If you ask, I will simply remind you that I don't care, because, well, I really don't.
I will consider some counter-arguments and explain why I don't think they should be convincing. First is the "lack of life experience" (LOLE) argument, namely, that the life experience of adolescents is too limited for them to reliably make decisions in their best interest. There are a number of problems with the LOLE argument, the first being that no matter what age you start at, you will always be inexperienced. If you make a person wait until they have Y years of experience before they are allowed to do X, the no one ever will do X, because they cannot get the experience unless they are allowed at some point to do it despite a lack of experience. In other words, you have to start sometime, you cannot magically gain experience without being allowed to do the activity. Forcing a person to delay the start in order to gain non-existent experience is irrational to say the least. Another problem with the LOLE argument is that the lack of experience is not as limiting on a person's judgment as the argument seems to imply - again going back to psychological studies, the 14-year-olds have the same decisional maturity as a 56-year-old, even though a 56-year-old has lived quadruple as long. Why is this? There are a number of explanations but suffice it to say that the APA's body of evidence makes a convincing case. It is also an interesting subject to discuss what requires maturity vs. what requires wisdom. A lot of people using this argument don't seem to distinguish between wisdom and maturity.
Another common counter is the "brain development" (BD) argument. This argument is based on the fact that a large body of imaging studies have shown that the myelination of the brain occurs starting near the back of the brain and is not complete in the frontal lobes until sometime in a person's 20s. This is absolutely an empirical fact. However, it scarcely tells us anything about decision-making ability, because we don't really understand how the physical parameters of the brain affect decision making in this context. For example, why is a 13 - 14-year-old with an "underdevloped" brain still competently able to make medical decisions? The fact is that we simply do not know from empirical data how much white matter is actually necessary to make a rational decision, so it is a huge "leap of faith" to conclude based on a lack of white matter that someone's decisional process is inadequate. To give an extreme example, hemisherectomy patients only have, literally, half a brain, yet they can adapt to function in a remarkably normal fashion if the operation was performed at an early age. So if a hemispherectomy patient can make do on 50% of the normal amount of white matter, why can an adolescent not make do on 80% or 90% the amount as an adult? There must be some independent reason for thinking they can't.
Another problem with the BD argument is that it is inconsistent with the cognitive standards used to assess competence in a court of law. If we want to claim to not be prejudiced, then we should use the same standards to assess competence in teens and adults. This is to say, if you took the average 13-year-old into court and presented only data from cognitive function, it should be possible to declare them legally incompetent. If it is not, then it is prejudice not to lower the age of majority to 13, plain and simple. In fact the traditional standard for clinical mental incapacity has been an IQ of 70. This is calculated as mental age/chronological age times 100, with chronological age topping out at 15 or 16 depending on source. If we use 16, then the average 13-year-old scores a (13/16)*100 = 81.25. For these two reasons, I argue that the brain development argument is not convincing.
The third common counter I see is the economic argument - "If you aren't paying the bills, then why should you be granted the rights of an adult?". There are a number of problems with the argument but the most glaring flaw is that it is highly prejudiced and discriminatory. To see why this is so, consider a number of other classes of people who are unable to financially support themselves - those with a broken leg, those who lost their job during a recession, those who are a stay at home parent, etc. Would you argue that since they aren't paying the bills, that therefore they should not be able to sign a cell phone contract, not be able to get medical care without the consent of their financial providers, or that they should be deprived of the right to vote? If not, then the economic argument is at best inconsistent and irrationally prejudiced.
To summarize:
1) There are good, sound reasons to allow automatic partial emancipation of teenagers by granting the right to vote, work, sign binding contracts, and consent to medical treatment.
2) Three common arguments counter to this are deeply flawed and do not succeed - namely, the lack of life experience" argument, the brain development argument, and the economic argument.
3)Therefore we should partially emancipate young people beginning at 13 years of age.
Discuss!!!
Cite your sources. Without sources, I can't evaluate your information.
I also don't see any good reason not to lower the voting age to 13, using similar logic as discussed for medical treatment
Informed decisions requires two things.
1) ability to from rational decisions using logic
2) knowledge of the situation requiring the decision.
A 13 year old would not yet have taken most of the history, political science, civics, etc courses necessary to have the background knowledge to make an informed decision. People younger than 18 have not yet had all these courses either.
For example, I may have good decision making ability, but I cannot choose the best course of action for treating someone's chest pain, nor can I choose the best way to move to the front of the pack in an automobile race. I lack the background knowledge to make those decisions.
We should not include as voters people who have not yet been exposed to the complete set of this knowledge due their age and the sequencing of courses. They cannot make good decisions because they lack sufficient knowledge of the context needed to base voting decisions upon.
And I'm well aware that there are legions of ignorant old people.
Adding more ignorant people to the rolls is not a solution to any problem.
Also, you didn't use any logic for medical treatment decisions, you used an appeal to authority that not everyone accepts.
Informed decisions requires two things.
1) ability to from rational decisions using logic
2) knowledge of the situation requiring the decision.
A 13 year old would not yet have taken most of the history, political science, civics, etc courses necessary to have the background knowledge to make an informed decision. People younger than 18 have not yet had all these courses either.
For example, I may have good decision making ability, but I cannot choose the best course of action for treating someone's chest pain, nor can I choose the best way to move to the front of the pack in an automobile race. I lack the background knowledge to make those decisions.
We should not include as voters people who have not yet been exposed to the complete set of this knowledge due their age and the sequencing of courses. They cannot make good decisions because they lack sufficient knowledge of the context needed to base voting decisions upon.
And I'm well aware that there are legions of ignorant old people.
Adding more ignorant people to the rolls is not a solution to any problem.
Also, you didn't use any logic for medical treatment decisions, you used an appeal to authority that not everyone accepts.
I was going to point out that we could teach civics earlier, but incidentally I was reading on the Education forum that some elementary schools are going the wrong way....and teaching only math and English, because of standardized testing, totally neglecting social studies. Wow. You raise a very interesting point here...and I am disappointed with education in America. When I was in elementary school we had reading, English, math, science, social studies, and P.E.
Status:
"Enjoying Little Rock AR"
(set 3 days ago)
Location: The New England part of Ohio
24,140 posts, read 32,557,987 times
Reputation: 68438
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
I'm sorry, but despite what you cite, that's the age group I worked with my whole adult life, and I don't agree that they are ready to be partially emancipated. The highest number of school suspensions generally occur at ages 12, 13, and 14, and then begin to gradually subside over the next 3 years. There's a reason for that.
I also don't agree with partial emancipation. Either you're adult, or you're not. 18 seems to be a good average age for it, and in my view that should include drinking and all other accepted "adult" behaviors.
I agree with this - completely. There is no reason to "partially emancipate" younger teenagers I have both worked with them and raised them. They can be fun, but decision making is not their strong suit
I also agree that 18 should be the age of majority for everything. The most egregious example I can think of is the fact that n 18 year old can fight for their country - but they can't buy a beer.
Point of clarification - I didn't mean they should have the school's consent, only that the school should report the grades. There is a difference between the two - I don't advocate for a school to have the right to deny someone work simply because they "don't feel it is in the pupil's best interest". THAT would be analogous to parental consent, and I oppose it.
As a second point, I am saying that the student should have the *option* to work, not the *duty* to work. No one is "forcing" a student to ruin their academic situation (I suppose you could argue the parents might...however in this case parental consent would provide zero protection for the student).
Some authority has to set the cutoff GPA and set the rule that "good grades must be maintained".
Substitute in my previous post phrase "rule making authority" for "school", and my point remains.
Furthermore, because there is a floor GPA or some such behavioral requirement that's not work related, then students who are already making poor grades won't be eligible, so that amounts to getting consent, and that amounts to denying work because "don't feel it is in the pupil's best interest".
The whole scheme still amounts to saying that the child cannot be trusted to set their own priorities, and that the child is ot being emancipated. It amounts to substituting some outside authority for parental authority.
Let's ignore the second point. No one has even vaguely hinted at forced labor, especially not me, and I resent that you placed that in a response to my post.
Ok the lifespan was shorter but so what? Are you arguing that a longer lifespan actually slows down the rate of maturation or simply that we extend childhood past puberty because it isn't "out of necessity" to grow up as fast? The problem with the latter view is once you concede it is even possible for people to be so responsible at an early age, then you have to treat it not as a maturity issue or a developmental issue but as an economic cost/benefit trade-off. It is a different type of discussion entirely.
I think if you do some detailed reading of history, you will find that these child kings never had full ruling power, they were always surrounded by cliques of adults who controlled them and essentially ruled in their name. Even in Japan, where in early times the Emperor was semi-divine, child emperors were controlled by adults who coached them on what decisions to make and presented them with what information they chose to. Thus, I think there is a very serious question about whether these kids were really functioning as adults simply because they were titular rulers. I live in a country where there have been "boy kings" and, in fact, they were quite under the thumb of advisors.
If you roll the clock way ahead to modern times, youngsters made good factory workers - they were plentiful, cost little, etc. As this changed we did stretch out adolescence, postpone marriage a bit, and better food and medical advances meant that every life stage ultimately got stretched out. The idea that a country actually needed an educated citizenry is relatively knew, but it was another reason to keep kids being kids (in school.) I went to school in a rural area, some farm boys dropped out and stayed dirt farmers their entire lives; but most did not and these often moved up the financial and social scale as a result.
I don't think most fourteen year olds in any era were as responsible as adults; however, if the adults were superstitious and uneducated, it certainly would have helped to close the gap. The Childrens´Crusade gives a glimpse of that at work, and how a youngster could manipulate thousands of ignorant people.
Quote:
And why should the right to vote and consent to medical treatment mean parents should be able to kick a person out? We don't snatch those rights away from a person with a broken leg or otherwise unable to work for a number of other reasons, are you arguing that this means we should force them to work? Why is the case with young people any different?
You are doing apples and squash comparison here.
As for minors requiring medical treatment, now parents must provide it to the extent they can and keep the child fed and sheltered, if indeed this can be done at home. But no parent is obliged to keep a handicapped adult child, though most do if it is possible. There are institutions, you know, filled with adults incapable of earning a living.
I did not mention "forcing" anyone to work. You are the one who wants minors to be able to take jobs without parental permission being required. If they can work without parental consent then you are virtually making them adults. Thus, if the parents want a payment for room and board, and the child with job won't fork over - then why not put his arse on the street. Aren't you being rather one-sided in all this? You want to hand out adult privileges working, voting and medical decisions.....but you don't really believe your own theory because you are clearly afraid not to have their parents be their backups.
Essentially, you want adolescents to be more cosseted than they already are in this century! I don't know where you expect these adolescents making their own medical decisions to get insurance for one thing, but assuming Joe Jr. at age fourteen makes real lousy medical decisions........who pays for his stupidity? Now is it back to the parents, I suppose?
I think what you are proposing would make adolescents into privileged parasites.
--------------------------
It is perhaps relevant for me to point out that I did work from age fourteen until h.s. graduation, with parental permission, of course, and state working papers as I recall, and I went to public school
I worked school days 8 a.m to 8:30 and then 3:45 to 7 pm (school for all students ran from (8:35 to 3:35 with a single lunch hour for all), and then I worked 9 - 6 or 7 p.m on Saturdays, and the same full-day schedule on any day school was closed and all summer. Some farm kids, milked cows before school and then did other farm work after school, my cousins had this routine.
Thus, the idea of working/school-going kids is not new to me. In fact, the idea that most high school students do not or cannot work nowaday and have not done this for several decades is what is "new" to me.
But making an independent decision about work is, of course, something apart from this.
"Parental consent". Do people ever take into account the number of inadequate parents out there? Unless you are totally going to make all parents co-defendants in crimes of minority accused, I don't think society should be hingeing decisions on "parental consent". I do think parental opposition should be a point of inquiry. What are THESE parents really like? Are they ideologically blinded? Are they any kind of threat to their children? I think a lot of societies, ours definitely included, want to lean on a bureaucratic process, a Ford-style assembly line, creating a set of rules that can be mindlessly followed. Yeh, if you want crap to flow ceaselessly off the line, go with it. But if you want those involved to invest more than "follow the rules and you're safe", then that has to be engineered.
I agree with this - completely. There is no reason to "partially emancipate" younger teenagers I have both worked with them and raised them. They can be fun, but decision making is not their strong suit
I also agree that 18 should be the age of majority for everything. The most egregious example I can think of is the fact that n 18 year old can fight for their country - but they can't buy a beer.
That's just crazy.
As things stand we have a number of legal ages spread out over a very large range. I could list a lot more than this, but there is no need to be exhaustive.
12 - in some states this is the minimum age at which someone can be charged with a crime, in others it is 10. This is also the age in many states at which a person can choose to live with the mother or the father if there is a dispute between divorced parents.
14 - in many states, restricted working can begin at this age, as can restricted driving, but parental consent is needed.
16 - in many states, less restricted working can begin. Also it is common for people to be tried as adults for serious crimes. Additionally many states allow a minor to apply for emancipation.
18 - in most or all states, this is the age of majority for lawsuits, that is, the age at which someone can be sued for breach of a contract between parties. It is also the age of medical consent in many states. It is the age in most/all states beyond which parental financial and other responsibility ends, i.e. automatic emancipation. Finally, it is the maximum age that states are permitted to set as voting age. A little known fact is that the constitution allows states to set a younger voting age, but not an older one (26th amendment).
24 - this is the age at which parental income is no longer reportable on the FAFSA in order to determine college financial aid. Prior to the age of 24, a student is considered to be "dependent" unless they marry or join the military. "Dependent" means that a student may be denied grants due to parental income, no matter how low the student's income is.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
