parents

@sozobe,

I would like it to backfire, but not to ruin them.

(and thanks. I'll try hard not to pester you.)

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

We live only a block from school so Mo's been walking himself to and from school since the second grade. It's one of the things he's most proud of -- being the first to get to do it. Most of the kids, even the ones on our block his age or older are still walked to school.

Some parents have asked me how "I got him to do it" wishing their own kids would walk on their own. They say he's "independent" and "self-reliant" but really it's because he isn't fearful. I don't want him to be afraid of the world.

Yes. I think that 's a good choice.

There was a story in the news in NY a few years ago,
when a girl who is a newspaper columnist had her 9 year old boy
using the NY subways alone. So far as we know, there were no ill effects.

David

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@sozobe,

I think it's good that some of those milestones are being pushed back too but I think it's a real problem if someone hasn't held a job before graduating from college... or really from high school.

Who wants to be an "emerging adult" right under their parent's nose? Shouldn't that be the time when you explore and (hopefully) self correct? Isn't merging into adulthood the time your supposed to make your mistakes?

More than not getting why a parent would allow it, I don't get why a kid would want it.

I need to read the whole article. I'm really curious about what societal acceptance and institutional accommodations happened that benefited adolescence 100 years ago and what they expect in the future.

And as to an information economy I say too late, that bus left 20 years ago.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

I think it's good that some of those milestones are being pushed back too
but I think it's a real problem if someone hasn't held a job before graduating from college... or really from high school.

Who wants to be an "emerging adult" right under their parent's nose?

I believe that a lot depends on how intrusive or controlling
parents prove to be; I 've seen a lot of differences among people.
I remember ASKING my mother 's opinion a lot. I VALUED it,
because I earnestly respected her mind, on the merits.
I ofen bounced pro and con arguments off of her, as a sounding board,
always knowing that the final decision was in my own hands.

boomerang wrote:

Shouldn't that be the time when you explore and (hopefully) self correct?
Isn't merging into adulthood the time your supposed to make your mistakes?

Mistakes r inevitably part of life, at all ages.

boomerang wrote:

More than not getting why a parent would allow it, I don't get why a kid would want it.

He will if his parent is a VALUED ADVISOR. That is an earned position.
I have a hunch that Mo is going to be asking your opinions
for many, many years.

David

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My experience is only mine, but in earliest grades, circa 1947, something like 35 blocks away, my mother took me to get out at the closest spot available at the school entrance.
Well, after the first day or two, when I probably cried like a banshee, when she would have walked me in. That was in Santa Monica.

In third grade, I just ran down the hill. That was New York. 1950.

In fourth, Chicago, all the neighborhood children walked, far as I know, but I may not know about some. There was no obvious drop off spot. I have designed drop offs, so this is sort of piquant to me.

In high school it was two busses or more, sometimes just to the job, with occasional parental assists. Where is your transfer slip?

In some of my later life, I lived across from a grade school. Car implosion on a very narrow street (with a MacDonalds at the end of it) twice a day five days a week.

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daughter organised herself into a 12 month student exchange Via Rotary to Sweden. She was 16 when she went.
The kid has to be right but I couldnt reccomends this more highly.
She's now a sales exec working for Hilton Hotels. (not as glamerous as you might imagine)
she wrote this lovely essay for a new website just recently
http://www.greenrenters.org/story/gardening-tales

My son had to be thrown out cause he just would not be responsible for himself. kept making really bad decisions. We tried everything but I ended up just telling him to pack his bags and go. Mum still gives him some money for important stuff like medical expenses but i'm against this. He has to be responsible for his own decisions about not going to school and not getting a job.
He was 19 when I told him to go.

1 Reply

@dadpad,

A lot going on there.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

What is the English age of adulthood ?

School is compulsory until sixteen- after that it's a matter of choice in terms of continuing on with college and a trade or apprenticeship or A-levels that lead to university.
I often see sixteen year olds working full time at restaurants, etc. I don't know if they're living on their own or not - but they're holding down full time jobs.

I would say that British parents seem much more comfortable with allowing a higher level of independence earlier than is the case in most American families that I've known.

I know British 18-20 year olds who are pretty much travelling around the world on a gap year with their parents' blessings. I have to admit that I'd find that very difficult to allow my child to do and have trouble picturing myself living through it - while for these British parents and children it seems par for the course.
I admire their ability to do it, but I know that my cultural conditioning as an American parent would be challenged by that situation should one of my children choose to do that.

My son is travelling by bus to Croatia in September and I'm already getting a little nervous picturing us being out of touch, if he loses his cell phone or has some other mishap.

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@aidan,

Quote:

I would say that British parents seem much more comfortable with allowing a higher level of independence earlier than is the case in most American families that I've known.

Than is a European thing...it is very jarring to move from one culture to the other in several ways, approach to raising adults is certainly in the top five ways that this is so....

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@ossobuco,

I suppose I should add, in agreement re different cultures, that with my very particular family, aka my boston irish mother, I was expected to stay. I think it might have about killed them individually (or maybe not my father, re my getting out, who probably had his own thing with my mother, and we had little chance to talk but we loved each other) when I got my own apartment in my nearing mid twenties, but that was coincident with their lives falling into shreds.

I'd been away before, but wasn't earning much until I got a satisfactory lab job. Before that, I got $200. a month with taxes taken out at the place I interned with - 169.00 (and then lab uniforms and nylons and owed 95. in rent) and was living on some kind of frozen spaghetti stuff by mortons.

But re culture, I've no doubt my mother wanted me at home and basically agreeing with her, which I didn't. I figure now, years later, that this was excruciating for her.

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@aidan,

David wrote:

What is the English age of adulthood ?

aidan wrote:

School is compulsory until sixteen-

Do u know the English age of adulthood ?

aidan wrote:

after that it's a matter of choice in terms of continuing on with college
and a trade or apprenticeship or A-levels that lead to university.

Do u distinguish between college and university?

Its my understanding that in America,
a university is composed of multiple colleges.

aidan wrote:

I often see sixteen year olds working full time at restaurants, etc. I don't know if they're living on their own or not - but they're holding down full time jobs.

I would say that British parents seem much more comfortable with allowing a higher level of independence earlier than is the case in most American families that I've known.

I know British 18-20 year olds who are pretty much travelling around the world on a gap year with their parents' blessings.

When I was 11, I had to take busses from Los Angeles to Phoenix and back, alone.
I remember calling my father from the Phoenix bus depo,
to get a lift home. He was annoyed; he wanted me to take
a cab or a bus.

aidan wrote:

I have to admit that I'd find that very difficult to allow my child to do and have trouble picturing myself living through it - while for these British parents and children it seems par for the course.
I admire their ability to do it, but I know that my cultural conditioning as an American parent would be challenged by that situation should one of my children choose to do that.

My son is travelling by bus to Croatia in September and I'm already getting a little nervous picturing us being out of touch,
if he loses his cell phone or has some other mishap.

I understand.

My late ex-cousin-in-law, George, told of his returning from service
in the US Merchant Marine in the Korean War. He called his
father for a lift. He refused; told him to take a bus.
He answered: "I have $77,000 with me" to which his father
said: "stay there; I'll be right there!"

David

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All of the EU countries accept 18 as the age of majority.

I didn't know that the age of majority is not a federal law. Although the United States lists 21 as the age of majority, in the state of Nebraska the age
of majority is 19.

I am all for lowering it to the age of 18 in the United States. They start driving at 16 and are allowed to work part time, so why are they still considered minors at 18?

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I 'm fairly confident that it is 18, in most American States.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

No it's 21 in the other 49 - even Puerto Rico.

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

CalamityJane wrote:

No it's 21 in the other 49 - even Puerto Rico.

That is incorrect.
I know for a fact that in New York, it is 18.
I have not checked the other States.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

the age of majority is 18 in almost almost all states with some minor exceptions ranging from 19 to 21.

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@dyslexia,

dyslexia wrote:

the age of majority is 18 in almost almost all states
with some minor exceptions ranging from 19 to 21.

I am under that general impression.

David

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@dyslexia,

You're right dys, I was thinking of the legal age to go to bars and drink alcohol
which is 21. I assumed the age of majority is the same.

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@sozobe,

That new stage was being posited in 1978 when I did my year of human development training.

I have a sneaky suspicion it all changed when parents started letting their kids have sex at home! That and needing longer and longer educations.

We couldn't wait to get out, generally speaking, and that meant economic independence ...which meant you worked to maintain yourself while you studied. Parents seem to have terrible trouble getting the kids to move out these days. I have two friends who sold their house to get rid of the kids! One of them has her daughter and two grand children back again, but that kid seems to have found what she wants to do now, and is at least working to achieve a career for herself, not just drifting as she was before.

Parenthood is much more a choice thing now...though I note the young ones at work are breeding at a great rate...but most of them seem to be in very late twenties/early to mid thirties when they do it.

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@dlowan,

dlowan wrote:

That new stage was being posited in 1978 when I did my year of human development training.

I have a sneaky suspicion it all changed when parents started letting their kids have sex at home!
That and needing longer and longer educations.

We couldn't wait to get out, generally speaking, and that meant economic independence ....

I woud not have turned my back on my mother
and abandoned her. I never had any reason to leave. I was loyal.

My uncle discussed his doing so with HIS mother (my grandmother).
I thawt less of him for that. She was very upset about it; heartbroken.

David

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