I’m not asking this from a biology lens, I get that aspect, but more from the sociology/anthropology lens. My question is which culture started using 18 as this hard cutoff, when, and under what reasoning.
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The simple answer is that it isn’t, even now not every country uses 18 as a cutoff, and few countries even use the same age for cutoffs for “adulthood” by different criteria (marriage, voting, sex, alcohol, military service, being tried as an adult, legal autonomy to name some of the most important)
Many cultures have used ages from 13 to 25 (maybe even outside that range) as the cutoff for “adult” for various different things, and ages between about 16 and 21 are still pretty common with a few even still being outside that range now. Most countries still have different ages for at least some of those thresholds
Most of these things have changed over time too – eg in the UK as a whole voting is now 18 but was previously 21, and you can find dozens of similar examples
18 seems to be where countries are coalescing over time as a bit of a “sensible-ish middle ground”, but there’s no real reason behind it beyond the (fairly vague) fact that at 18 most people are roughly fully grown
This was *just* discussed on an episode of the Freakonomics spinoff podcast “No Stupid Questions.” Here you go:
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/when-do-you-become-an-adult/
I don’t have an answer for that, but I do have an interesting answering for why the age of majority is sometimes 21: English legal tradition, and by extension the American founding fathers, were really into sevens.
For example, the common law rule on “infancy” was that children under 7 are never responsible for their actions, children under 14 are presumed *not* to be responsible for their actions unless proven otherwise, children under 21 are presumed to be responsible for their actions unless proven otherwise, and at age 21 you’re on your own. Eventually this evolved into the modern system of “juvenile court”.
That’s also why the U.S. Constitution requires the President to be at least 35 years old and a resident of the U.S. for at least 14 years (as well as a natural born citizen.) There are lots of other examples, but those are the only ones I remember right now.
I think it’s generally tied to the age your society expects the average person to be *productive*/*independant* to some degree. And it’s relative to the needs/opportunities of the common person in the society/time period.
15 year old William in the middle ages probably isn’t in school, he’s probably going to be working the wheat fields with his father. They’ll call him an adult and not treat him with kid gloves because he has nothing else to do *but* learn to be productive/carry on responsibilities.
15 year old Billy in 2024 isn’t expected to be farming all day, he’s expected to do his algebra homework so he can still graduate high school while William probably doesn’t even have an opportunity to learn to *read*, or to even spend years learning a trade that would give him better success. Billy has tons of classes and many years of study ahead of him before he can be remotely independent or productive to the point where we can call him an adult.
Children of divorced parents over the age of 15 basically get to pick which parent to live with, so long as they’re not a legitimate terrible human being.
It was 21, but during Vietnam an unprecedented number of teenagers were dying. People were quite upset so the age of the draft didnt
Change, but the right to vote did. So in 1971 the voting age was lowered, if you got tapped to die for your country, you should at least have a voice in government. Then Nixon repealed the draft.
We almost had socialized medicine under Nixon.
Don’t get me wrong, he was an asshole.
But he did a few important things.
I think it depends a lot on the country. In a lot of countries military service and voting have always gone hand in hand. In scandinavia people vote on kings by beating shields with their sword. In Switzerland they voted by showing their service weapon.
So since kids are drafted at 18, that is also the voting age.
Historically, the Jewish Talmud is the oldest historical document that sets 18 as an “age of majority” because that’s when King Josiah decided he was old enough to make correct monetary decisions as a judge.
Shabbat 56b, “Rather, in every judgment that he issued from the age of eight, when he was crowned, until the age of eighteen, he returned the money to the parties whom he judged liable, due to concern that in his youth he may not have judged the cases correctly.”
Because certain religious people in the midwest thought 10 or 12 was a good number and we just had to pick one that wasn’t disguising.
It is subjective, which is why it’s different everywhere. Even within a given society, different individuals will tell you different ages they think it’s appropriate for.
It’s even different for various issues for different reasons. Maybe you can drive at 16, join military at 18, and can’t drink until 21.
>but more from the sociology/anthropology lens
It is what it is, because that’s what people will tolerate.
Maybe we’re not fully cognitively developed until ~25(I’ve heard the claim, then I’ve also heard counter claims, so that’s more of a hypothetical than a statement of fact). But do you think society will tolerate not doing all the various adult things until 25? Hell no.
We all see the reason in not letting children under 12 do these things(in a best case scenario, some people are a bit more sociopathic and don’t care), but we’d be absolutely steaming if some collection of politicians tried to push these things all to 25. There would be rebellion(or, alternatively, overwhelming oppression like we still see in some nations in regards to limitations on women).
If I had to boil the answer down to one word, it would be “freedom”. The populace demands agency, and they generally get it unless they are very overpowered by those in control.
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