It seems kind of unfair seeing anyone under 18 has no way to decide the future of their country. Which they have more stake on seeing whatever decision happen while they are under 18 will be there for the rest of their life.
It seems kind of unfair seeing anyone under 18 has no way to decide the future of their country. Which they have more stake on seeing whatever decision happen while they are under 18 will be there for the rest of their life.
The issue of when you are an adult is a trickier question than you might imagine. I have written in a previous answer about how children in North America would leave home around 13 or 14. There would be transitional spaces such as rooming houses or boarding houses before they were fully Independent, but they were fully functional “adults” by 15 or 16.
You can see this in the coming of age rituals for various cultures. The bar/bat mitzvah at age 13, the quinceanera at 15, the sweet sixteen for white folks. I do note that many of these are female centered and signal availability for dating/marriage. Boys just became men without much ceremony.
We still have a gradual introduction of rights and privileges with age. In my jurisdiction courts will consider a child’s wishes in divorce starting at age eight. You can be charged with a crime at age 12, you can work for wages at 14, you can drive at 16, vote at 18. Alcohol consumption is 19 where I live but is 18 in many parts of the country.
So why 18? It matches up with other markers of maturation like graduation from high school. Could it be 17? Probably. Should it be 16? Possibly. But 18 used to be an age of independence. You could expect to be leaving home and starting a life separate from your parents. That has certainly changed. If we were to keep things in alignment maybe we should push the age back into the mid-20s? 😆
teenage adolescence as a concept didn’t exist until the late 19th, early 20th century. large a byproduct of the creation of public education systems.
and in the 21st century was are certainly expanding it into your 20s, for sure. I met plenty of folks in their 30s or older who are still totally dependent on their parents financially and emotionally.
yeah problem with this notion is a party could eliminate large swatches of the right to vote with folks just by acting like douches and letting wealth disparity run rampant.
rich people don’t have much of an issue with that though. where i live lots of rich liberal progressives eagerly talk about banning people from voting based on education level and wealth level. they basically think you shouldn’t have a political voice unless you making 100K and have a college degree. which is pretty similar to what conservatives want too.
I get the frustration with dealing with stupidity but yeah we know historically that you simply cannot tie it to things like that as it is to easy to manipulate. I recall some country required a college degree to run for office and then like the pres put pressue on institutions to revoke peoples degrees.