News:
This Saturday is the big, monthly Shoes.com Saturday Sale.
And Monday the Fabulous Festival is here!
Around the blogosphere:
Sallie sent this in –
Our local Christian radio station (KCFY) has won 2 years running Christainwebcast.coms People’s Choice Award and are in the running for winning an unprecedented 3rd year in a row. I thought it would be interesting for my blog and so I did an interview with the general manager (plus our kids LOVE everyone who works there)!
If you go to the blog and leave a comment, I’m having a drawing for a prize package that will last until Monday at midnight. All you have to do is leave a comment with your name and email blocks filled in .. at least that much so I know who you are 🙂 This is a great chance for you to pick up some info about the station that you didn’t know before and there’s even a great blooper story!!The prize package is a great devotional book and 2-CD Christian music package. Hope you all can go look … thanks!
Also in my inbox today: Simply Charlotte Mason is having a photo contest. I promise you I will not be entering it, but some of you are quite good photographers.
And now, a riveting question for you: at what age would you hope/expect young people to be grown up, capable of making their own decisions and being responsible for at least themselves?
I’m noticing that, while we have, I think successfully, charted a course aimed at age 18, many of my friends appear to be on a different timeline. A longer one.
mmmmm…… I’m thinking that if you give your child the car keys and let them take off on their own – with or without anyone else in the car, you have determined that they are capable of making their own decisions and are responsible for at least themselves and probably anyone else in the car with them. Most of us reached that age at 16.
That doesn’t mean we didn’t make some mistakes, however; and, if we were smart, we continued to ask for information and advice about decisions for …… ever?
Okay, 16. And that’s one of the clues that I have that many parents are not on the same timeline we are: it’s become rather a rarity for young people to get their license at 16.
Wondering if that is partially related to finances. Very few people drive the kind of scruffy cars we do, thereby being able to get by with just liability insurance.
I think the realistic age is actually about 23 years old. By then, you should be done with college (if you chose to go), and beginning to establish a little bit of financial stability. That’s at least what seems common for my peers who share my family income bracket.
I wish I had been allowed to have a job in high school and in my first years of college – I think I would have learned how to manage my time, budget, and save money sooner.
I didn’t get my license until 17 – and even then my car and insurance was provided for me (and I didn’t have a clue about it).
I think 18 is a good target age, or HS graduation, thereabouts. I know when I graduated HS, even though I was a few months shy of 18, I presumed my own authority. I think young people still need a lot of support at that age, guidance, etc., but they should be actively planning to take charge of their life at that point. Whether that includes college, work, or (I hope not yet) marriage and children. What I don’t agree with is the “you’re 18, don’t let the door hit you on your way out” mentality. That seems to be more rare these days, though.
When I went away to college at 18, I was expected to budget my expenses, feed and clothe myself, etc. even though the $ came (initially) from my parents. At the end of the first year, they told me to either come live at home for the summer, or support myself if I wanted to stay where I was. I went out and got a summer job (or two). The second year I was expected to contribute to the cost of my education, through work, loans, etc. It was a nice balance, for me.
Well, what I think and what I see are two different things. In my father’s day, he was kicked out at 16. Through a lot of hard work, he had graduated high school with several part time jobs. He joined a company and never left until he retired. My parents married young (21) and had four children in rapid succession.
I left home at 16 (to to to university, we split costs until my third year, and graduated at 20. My husband and I were married when I was 21 and he was 22. We waited for ten years to have kids, which we both agree even now was a good decision.
I see my niece (22) and nephew (24) and I can’t imagine either of them married and they don’t have stable jobs. I think it’s good they’re taking their time to make serious life decisions. In this day and age I think people need to really know who they want to spend their life with, and what they really want to do, before they make lifelong commitments,
So, with my son, I want him to focus on his education, his friends and family and to make a happy life. I guess we’ll consider him an adult when he commits fully to his studies, learns to finance, and learns time management, I’m not sure that makes sense? Anyway, we’ll do what we can financially to support him, within reason. University, yes. A car…no,
These days, kids are so inundated with information, it’s hard to control what they are exposed to. I think somewhere between 18-23 is reasonable. It all depends on the circumstances and the mental maturity level of the particular kid.
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The New York Times had an interesting article on this:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E1DD1E3CF93AA35753C1A9619C8B63
The author added a new phase of life between adolescence and adulthood called the “Odyssey years.”
I believe we were given more freedoms as children and teens in my generation (I’m 44) and therefore learned the ways of the world younger. Fear now prevents many parents from letting their kids walk to school, take the public bus, spend an afternoon in the woods, etc.
Ironically, while teens today seem more sophisticated about culture, fashion, and technology, they are innocent of how to handle real life on their own. It is, after all, a skill that must be learned by experience.
The expectation in my family was we’d be out of the house at 18, either at college or in jobs. If college, then we were required to have jobs during the summers to help financially. My parents’ mantra was, “We’re raising adults, not raising children.” Adulthood is the goal!
What is impossible to assess is which way is “better.” Who is happier? Who is more fulfilled? Who knows? Only the very long lens of history may be able to tell.
Hey Louise, we’re the same age! 🙂
I certainly was given more freedoms, and more than I would give my daughters. It just doesn’t seem safe for young ladies to wander around alone, even in so-called safe areas.
While I agree that many life skills must be learned by experience, can’t they also learn by the experience of others? Roughly paraphrased, the Bible says something to the effect of: learn by instruction or the hard way. With the pace of modern life, I just think there isn’t enough time leftover for the conversations that can help young people learn to process real life decisions.
So they are, like you pointed out, very sophisticated about pop culture type stuff, because they get plenty of that kind of input. They may even be well-educated academically, excel at sports or other activities, but the real-life stuff, which is the domain of the family to teach, is lacking.
I would say it is possible to assess which way is better: statistically isn’t every variety of tragedy up since you and I were kids? And the kids that I know feel more restricted by the lack of trust than they appreciate the lack of responsibility.
In general, people seem to be happiest when they are having fun being productive.
Rebecca, you asked, “statistically isn’t every variety of tragedy up since you and I were kids?”
Actually, and happily, the answer is no. What has increased is our awareness of every crime, so the perception is that more crime is happening. Not surprising, considering we now have 24 hour news channels that are competing to produce more “news” all the time. And bad news sells more than good news. So we hear about every Amber alert and car jacking when in fact there are FEWER every year.
I used to publish statistics for a living, so I am well aware of how crime stats have trended DOWN in the last decade. Here is a great link to the US Department of Criminal Justice Statistics that has some wonderful downward-trending graphs:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.htm#Crime
Many of them show sharp decreases since 1994, and all show downward trends. This is great news, but sadly we never hear in on CNN.
What is going up is arrests and reports to the police. So not only are there fewer crimes, but more criminals are being caught and punished. More good news, in my opinion.
BTW, I love your attitude that productive fun leads to happiness. I couldn’t agree more 🙂
(I have not had time to read the other replies, so pardon me if I’m just repeating what someone else has already said.)
My husband is taking a Soc class this semester and we actually just happened to be discussing this last night after his class.
We were discussing in specific reasons why we think kids (people?) are growing up slower? Especially in the U.S. In many other countries kids are growing up at the same rate they were 30 years ago. I wondered if it was maybe because kids here don’t have to work. I mean, a teen is rarely expected to get a job at age 16. A lot of college students don’t work aside from doing their school work. I guess you would expect a 23 year old to have a starter job and not really be where they’re going to be until they’re 30 or so?
My parents were old fashioned and gave us responsibilites from the get-go. Every week day after I started school I was responsible to clean up my room and make my bed daily, as well as have a daily chore to help out around the house. The tasks increased by age. If I wanted to drive, I had to pay for my own insurance. Which meant I needed a job. And I was only allowed to use their car until I saved for m y own. No, we were not slaves. We were not unhappy. My parents were fair, and we learned work ethic. And I think it matured us faster.
I got married at age 18 and had a child when I was 20. I am only 25 and pregnant with my third.
25 seems so young when I look around! A lot of my peers are still out having a good time. Honestly, I cringe when I think about someone getting married at age 18. But you know what? I was ready. I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew whether it was right for me or not. And we never borrowed a penny from either of our families to start out and we never have since.
But seriously, I think it’s a mix of two componants – the individual, and their upbringing (what was expected of them).
I would suspect that for the majority of the population, about age 17-18. I know their are families (such as yours) that produce responsiblity much earlier. I would hope that I can teach the same thing, but I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch!
When I saw this question I was curious about what some of the stats are, so I googled them. I am about average in my google-skill, but this is what I came up with: everything is happening later now days. I wasn’t able to find anything that I would consider reliable which gave exactly what the average age of people leaving home is, but I did find other statistics that might paint a clearer picture of what people consider the “age of responsibility”.
*The average age for a man to get married in this country is now approaching 28, and the average age for a woman is approaching 27.
*The average age of women giving birth to a baby in 2006 was 30.4 years old
*The average age of women having their FIRST baby in 2006 was 29.2 years old
*In 2006 mothers in their early thirties (30 to 34) accounted for nearly HALF (42%) of all live births
*The average age of a first time home buyer in 2004 was 32 years old
Also, things are pretty hard on young people when you consider how expensive things are:
*Households where the head of household is younger than 25 are the lowest earning household types, making LESS than households lead by people over the age of 75 which bring in a median income of $20,467 per year (that means people under 25 make an average of less than $9/hr full time)
*The average high school graduate makes $26,505 per year AFTER they hit 25
I personally think it is great to have your kids emotionally and mentally prepared for adult choices and responsibilities by the time they are somewhere in the neighborhood of 16-18 years old-however every kid has different needs, and there are a lot of external factors which might keep kids at home longer.