Christian Views on Parental Responsibility

[FatAndFaithless]

The whole "emotional maturity" idea is very very gray and imprecise though. Kids devlop in varying ways and at varying speeds, especially mentally and emotionally, so it's nearly impossible to set a law that will be amenable to every child's personal emotional development. The age of consent being 18 might not be approriate in all areas for all people (age of legal sex consent, buying porn, serving in the military, voting, etc), and there can be 14 year olds with far more emotional maturity and conscience than 19 year olds, but we still need to settle on some line. It's not perfect, but the line being at 18 years old is okay in my books just for practicality.

Could it be lowered for some areas, like consent to medical treatment? Sure, and as we further our understanding of mental development I'd have no problem with lowering it to whatever age seems best, I just think 18 is a safe line for now.

I disagree, 18 is too much, if kids can drive when they're 16, face criminal responsibility and work with parental authorization, are able to consume alcohol (not sure if it's like that in the US), I think some autonomy should be given by the parents. I would still deny it though. Forcing a medical treatment doesn't seem an appropriate choice to me. I'd prefer convincing my son/daughter that it was the best choice instead of using force

But for a 12 year old it's a no-brainer.

I'm not saying that 18 is the perfect line or that we shouldn't move it lower, I'm just saying that it's really hard to determine when a 13 or 14 or 15 year old suddenly hits that "mature" level of being able to give informed consent or deny treatment. Drawing the line at 16 I could easily see myself agreeing with, but it wouldn't be for the reason that they're allowed to do other things at that age (the examples you provided), but rather because we have reason to believe that a sufficient majority of kids are mature enough at 16 that drawing the line there would be safe.