Collection 4: "When Do Kids Become Adults?" by Laurence Steinberg, et al.

Neuroscientists now know that brain maturation continues far later into development than had been believed previously.

This is why 16-year-olds are just as competent as adults when it comes to granting informed medical consent, but still immature in ways that diminish
their criminal responsibility, as the Supreme Court has noted in several recent cases.

The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, establishes 18 as the minimum voting age for both state and federal elections.

Like all lines that divide legal childhood from adulthood, the voting age is essentially arbitrary.

Indeed, in modern America 18-year-old voting has become unmoored from one of its more important original justifications, which was matching the minimum age for draft eligibility (itself also an arbitrary line).

Indeed, in modern America 18-year-old voting has become unmoored from one of its more important original justifications, which was matching the minimum age for draft eligibility (itself also an arbitrary line).

Between 1942 and 1970 federal legislators introduced hundreds of such proposals, but the issue lacked momentum until the late 1960s, when a confluence of factors—including the escalating war in Vietnam—pushed 18-year-old voting closer to the surface of the national political agenda.

The 26th Amendment itself was the culmination of some creative political maneuvering by Congressional advocates, with a crucial assist from the Supreme Court in Oregon v. Mitchell.

The amendment’s passage was propelled by a small group of federal legislators whose motivations and rationales were considerably more complex
than commonly thought.

Still, the Vietnam-era slogan, “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote,” was unquestionably a powerful claim, encompassing deeply embedded ideas about civic virtue, adulthood and fairness.

Interest in improving young adults’ political participation would be better focused on attacking barriers like residency requirements that exclude college students and voter ID laws that disfavor young and mobile voters, sometimes egregiously.

The second decider for me is the discovery by scientists that poor decision-
making, the hallmark of many teenagers’ existence, has its roots in biology.

Is there any inconsistency in the fact that a teen may work but not drive at night?

The transition to adulthood can be either clear or diffuse, depending on whether a culture chooses to offer all the privileges and responsibilities at one distinct age or spread them across time.

Becoming an adult is also a subjective experience, of course, and there is little doubt from recent research that individuals are taking longer to recognize themselves as adults.

Another psychological aspect of being an adult is feeling autonomous, and individuals whose autonomy is supported—at any age—are more personally motivated.

Parents who are using technology (calls, Skype, texting, e-mail, Facebook, etc.) to micromanage lives from afar may be thwarting the timely passage to adulthood.

College parents can help with the transition by serving as a sounding board rather than being directive, by steering their college-age kids to campus resources for help, by considering long-range goals rather than short-term ones and by giving their “kids” space to grow up.

Children are so variable in their growth and the ways in which cultures understand child development are so different, it is futile to attempt to pin down the “right” age of majority.

The result would be a cohort of more mature 19-year-olds who would make better workers and better citizens.