Perhaps one of the most important issues the incoming Bush administration should tackle isn’t even on the transition team’s radar scope. That’s because, strangely, it is one of the least debated public policy issues of the day: “officially” defining when a child is an adult.
Seems like an odd “issue” perhaps, but maybe that’s because determining when our children become adults used to be the strict domain of parents using natural paternal or maternal instincts.
Nowadays, though, thanks to the advent of the “assault lawsuit” and lawmaking based on spur-of-the-moment emotional conditions, legally there is no single standard age for declaring a child an adult.
Consider:
- Due to the hysteria over rising incidence of violent juvenile crime, lawmakers in several states have passed bills allowing courts to try children as “adults” at varying ages — some as young as 13 years old, even though, clearly, a 13-year-old is not an “adult.” This is “thinking with your heart, not your head” legislation at its best.
- Federal courts also recognize children as adults at differing ages, depending on the type and severity of the crime.
- In many states, youngsters can become emancipated — “to be released from paternal care and responsibility” — at different ages; some as young as 16, even if a parent believes they are not ready yet “for the real world.”
- Some federal and state laws recognize a child as “adult” enough to smoke at 18 but only “adult” enough to drink a beer at age 21.
- Boys can be drafted as “young men” at 17 and trained to kill — even though some states still consider them “juveniles.”
- Children in some states can be tried for statutory rape even if they have consensual sex under the age of 17 but are allowed to get abortions without parental consent in some of the same states because then they’re viewed as “adults” making a “personal privacy” decision.
- Is an 18-year-old in his or her last year of high school an “adult” — not subject to parental control, authority and responsibility — or a “child” subject to parental oversight, especially in the eyes of the law?
There are more examples, but these serve to demonstrate that adults — and children, too — clearly have no single guideline to use in deciding the ultimate “age of consent.”
The only way to alleviate this problem is to set an “official” age when children become adults. Since it will have to be a universal age to be effective, this needs to be done on the federal — or constitutional — level.
Indeed, there is precedence. We have already set “official” ages for other important milestones in the lives of our children.
For example,
the 26th Amendment sets the voting age at 18. U.S. Code specifies the draft age at between 17-45. Kids can’t get a full driver’s license until they’re 16. In some states, they can’t legally get married until they reach a certain age.
Yet, the collection of official ages (or, as the case may be, age limitations) seems — when taken collectively — arbitrary, capricious, and in some cases, retaliatory. Often, there is no sound logic behind “official” ages.
Generally, once a child has reached 18, most people already consider them “adults” in a sort of premature, inexperienced way. Maybe that’s because, by 18, most kids are either out of high school or in their final year of high school, and set to begin the “adult” phase of their lives — college, marriage, career or combinations of all three events.
But the moment lawmakers, especially, started tinkering with the idea that a child’s age — given certain circumstances — could be automatically “advanced” to consider him or her an adult, we created a problem for ourselves.
In states where it is illegal for persons 17 or older to have sex with persons 16 and younger (statutory rape) because they are considered “minors,” how can we then try a 14-year-old for murder in a court of law as an adult?
How does the federal government reconcile allowing persons to vote and smoke at 18 while most states prohibit drinking alcohol until those persons are 21?
We won’t give a kid a driver’s license until they’re 16, but we’ll let 13-year-old girls make the very adult decision to have an abortion without parental consent?
We need a standard here, folks. Parents need a standard. So does the legal system.
At the very least, the nation should have a dialogue and a debate about this issue. The sooner the better.
