Pretty much the title. It seems 18 is universally recognized as the age of adulthood and I’m wondering why such a specific number. Why not 20 for example?
I know there are tribes around the world where children step into adulthood at a younger age, but usually there is some sort of rite of passage involved.
In: 74
I always felt like it was sort of a “well, we have to pick something… 21 seems too restrictive to wait for some things and younger teens seems too immature… let’s go with 18 for some and 21 for others”.
I’ve had this conversation so many times because I have colleagues into their 30s who are still immature and gullible and honestly make really bad impulsive decisions in life, and teenagers who are so full of wisdom, grit, and collected under pressure that I feel like they could be a respected general leading a platoon into wartime victory.
But not ALL people are like either of those. So we had to pick an arbitrary number in between and agree on it.
It basically comes from medieval pattern for nobles of a child until 7 then 7 more years as a page (7-14) then you became a squire looking to be come a knight at 21 but 18 was seen as the lowest if you had preformed some heroic act or political/economic reason. Land and title that need someone to look after it.
For lower classes you 7 was the age you could become a servant or expected to start to work on the farm. 14 is when you could expect to be paid for working or become an apprentice for 7 years bringing us to 21 again.
Legally you were considered to have limited legal responsibility starting at 7 then increasing at 14, to criminal responsibility but you were not financially responsible until 21 until then your parents, boss or master had to sign off on money matters.
So 21 was the benchmark and was the voting age.
This was moved to 18 in fairly modern times due to middle/upper class late 19th century schooling. You were expected to finish school at 17 before going to university or entering business at 18. When voting was extended to universal suffrage and with mass drafts and age to enlistment ages.
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