Abortion pills for everyone...including predators...unintended consequences...
- Thread starter billc
- Start date
Perhaps it is not so much the fault of the parents as he fault of society that changed substantially at that time. If I had to pinpoint just one cause it would have been the rebellion against the Vietnam War. For virtually the first time, a generation of young people stood against authority. To reinforce that, the troops returning after serving in that war were treated appallingly and not given the support and recognition they deserved. This combination of factors caused society to change visibly as well as culturally. Respect was one of the first things to go. Parental authority was next. As a parent of that time, I can tell you, teenagers openly did what teenagers of my generation did not even think of doing.
I don't think psychologists even existed before that time, at least in my world. Suddenly they were everywhere offering advice that was contrary to everything we had grown up with. Discipline that we had grown up with was suddenly out the door. Teachers weren't allowed to discipline children any more. Limits were removed.
I hear constantly, "It's the parent's fault", and in some cases that is demonstrably true, but on the whole, I would place the blame squarely at the feet of the liberal society we have developed. (And, for Maka's benefit, before he says it's a welfare society, that is not what I am talking about.)
:asian:
Thanks for the reference. I chased that further and here is his article from Scientific American.
http://drrobertepstein.com/pdf/Epstein-THE_MYTH_OF_THE_TEEN_BRAIN-Scientific_American_Mind-4-07.pdf
I'm not sure that your case is supported by his article. I don't think anyone is disputing the fact that young people can achieve high levels of mental acuity at an early age and the key word, supported by the author's article is some.
What is not challenged in the article in the notion that maturity, particularly in risk taking behaviour, does not develop until much later.
An interesting graph in the article shows the increase in laws relating to young people. It supports totally what I said in the earlier post about the radical change in society values that exploded in the 70s.
One thing he discusses is 'teen turmoil' and says this is a recent phenomena. I would agree and suggest that the reason it is not in other societies is that other societies did not throw out their family values when the Western World did. What he does not say is that young people's brains develop to maturity quicker in other societies.
I can accept most of what Epstein says but I cannot reconcile that with your conclusions. :asian:
Which conclusion specifically do you disagree with? If it's the bit about the Welfare State, that's something that is actually the least of my concerns. I think that if society stoped infantalizing youth and placed gaining personal responsibility as the bar for growth, we wouldn't need the Welfare State so much. People would be more self sufficient.
From a practical standpoint, this is probably what Western governments should think about. As services get more expensive and budgets crunch, reducing the need for services is a viable step toward sustainability.
On the contrary, I think this notion is challenged by the article and is greatly challenged by the arguments in the book I cited.
Here is a summation.
You seem to be saying that we should be giving more and more responsibility to young people as they demonstrate their capacity to deal with it. To a large extent I can agree with that. I attended a school that gave more and more responsibility as you got older. After university I went straight out managing other people's businesses at the age of 22. With hindsight I handled what I did remarkably well considering that I don't believe I was mentally mature until some years later. The conclusion I disagree with is that children are mentally mature at an early age. There is nothing in any of Epstein's articles that actually claims that anyway.
Different animals mature at different ages and in most herd animals there is a vast difference between the 'old bull' and the 'young bull'. Even there, there seems to be a time lag between sexual maturity, physical maturity and mental maturity. :asian:
People are going to have their own definitions for what this actually looks like and we're going to find that much of this culturally defined in the end. The claim in the article and in the book is that a young person's mind is capable of mental maturity much earlier than most people expect. When scientists look at brain science and anthropological studies, they find that mental maturity and sexual maturity occur at the same time in non-western cultures. The way they define mental maturity is by looking at when the person is capable of performing adult mental tasks. Note this says nothing about the value of wisdom or what a wiser brain looks like, it's only the baseline at which a person is capable of performing adult mental tasks.
Surely this makes practical sense. If sexual maturity evolved in humans at a certain age, the mental acuity to take care of children had to have developed as well. I don't imagine that this was always perfect, surely experience counts, just as we all know, when it comes to child rearing and other adult tasks. Anyway, the point here is that young people are being infantalized by western culture and that it is affecting their brains development. In a creepy way, I think an analogy could be drawn between what is happening here and what the Chinese would call foot binding. Perhaps the retardation of development can never truly be corrected?
What kind of school did you go to, btw?
I attended a state primary school, a secondary boarding school and a residential university college, not that that has any bearing on the discussion. :asian:
I think you are missing the idea that the baseline for mental maturity is what is being discussed. Of course a child will continue to develop their cognitive skills as they grow older and become more skilled in those areas. Here is another researcher that is very mainstream and provides more support for what I'm writing.
http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/l/bl-piaget-stages.htm
Note that 12 years old is the beginning of the Formal Operational Stage. This is also the beginning of sexual maturity in most humans. Of course there are anomalies, but on average, in "natural" populations of humans, here is where the beginning of both of these coincide. Both will improve as the individual ages.
http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/l/bl-piaget-stages.htm
Piaget's Stages
An Overview of Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.
[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD]Stage[/TD]
[TD]Age[/TD]
[TD]Characteristics[/TD]
[TD]Developmental Changes[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Sensorimotor Stage
[/TD]
[TD]Birth to 2 Years[/TD]
[TD]The infant knows the world through their movements and sensations.[/TD]
[TD]Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen (object permanence).
They are separate beings from the people and objects around them.
They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them.
Learning occurs through assimilation and accommodation.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Preoperational Stage
[/TD]
[TD]2 to 7 Years[/TD]
[TD]Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects. They also tend to be very egocentric, and see things only from their point of view.[/TD]
[TD]Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others.
While they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to think about things in very conrete terms.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Concrete Operational Stage
[/TD]
[TD]7 to 11 Years[/TD]
[TD]During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events.[/TD]
[TD]They begin to understand the concept of conservation; the the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass.
Thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete.
Begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Formal Operational Stage
[/TD]
[TD]12 and Up[/TD]
[TD]At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems.[/TD]
[TD]Abstract thought emerges.
Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning.
Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information.[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Note that 12 years old is the beginning of the Formal Operational Stage. This is also the beginning of sexual maturity in most humans. Of course there are anomalies, but on average, in "natural" populations of humans, here is where the beginning of both of these coincide. Both will improve as the individual ages.
Ah, Piaget. I thought he might have been before your time but I read a lot of his ideas back in the 70s when my then wife was teaching intellectually disabled children. I would suggest his theories are at odds with your claims. His theories involved progressive changes in stages of childhood development. I would suggest, at no stage will you find anything in his work to support your hypothesis. Even where you are now saying 'baseline for mental maturity' you have no evidence to support your claims. What he is saying here is that the forth stage of development that begins about 12 years of age involves abstract thought. He gives no age at which he considers the brain to be mature.
Turn the clock forward and recent research is showing that maturation of the brain occurs much later than 12.
This helps explain why the army likes to have young people serving in the front line. They haven't the capacity to realise the full extent of what they are doing. Sure they are performing an adult role but with an element of risk taking that may well change their ability to perform if they were five or ten years older.
:asian:
How are you defining mental maturity? I think we are using different definitions.
Doesn't matter. Those "arbitrary lines" are completely necessary.
Next week, my brother will wed again, for the fourth time, this time to a woman of 27-24 years his junior. Of course, this is perfectly legal, and, for many-if not most-morally acceptable.
On the other hand, if my brother were a young man of 36-and his bride a girl of 12-well, it would be a different story then, wouldn't it? What of her "sexual and mental maturity" then, or her "ability to make adult decisions responsibly?"
just sayin'. :lfao:
Mental maturity is the time when the human brain has fully developed physically in such a way that it allows rational thought processes to occur.
One definition is "Adults, with an average intellectual capacity are classed as having reached mental maturity"
( http://psychologydictionary.org/mental-maturity/#ixzz2X5mrCGPe ), but I would challenge that by saying many young people could achieve the average intellectual capacity of the average adult in their teen years. That is not what the latest research is showing.
However, an interesting point of view in this article; https://www.mentalhealthpros.com/maturity.php?bk=29fee1facb2de244254aa9a0bc71eb6c0ef5726b suggests that mental maturity is not as dependent on the physical development as much as having the capacity to fulfil certain criteria. I would suggest that very few teens would be in that category.
Either way, I would suggest, to get back to the OP, children might be physically capable of having sex. They might,with help be emotionally mature enough to even raise a child but I would contend that in no way would those kids be anywhere near mental maturity. If after having sex, a thirteen year old had the common sense to seek out the MAP, then good for her. That, to me, demonstrates a degree of maturity above her years. :asian:
How is this definition different from the formal operational stage of cognitive development?
Well for starters the Piaget model is the beginning point of mature cognitive function, not the end point and secondly, the brain is still physically developing until the mid 20s and the later development seems to be related to the ability to make rational decisions. :asian:
Is this radically different than what I've writing?
I think if you are really interested in this matter, you should read Dr. Epstein's book.
At what general age did humans "marry" throughout human history?
"Throughout human history?"
Throughout human history, the normal condition of most of humankind has been one form of slavery or another.
Throughout human history, the normal condition of most of humankind has been constant warfare and bloodshed.
Throughout human history, the normal condition of most of humankind has been poverty[ and despair.
Really not interested in "throughout human history" as a model for the way things should be........just sayin'. :asian:
Throughout human history, the normal condition of most of humankind has been one form of slavery or another.
Throughout human history, the normal condition of most of humankind has been constant warfare and bloodshed.
Throughout human history, the normal condition of most of humankind has been poverty[ and despair.
Really not interested in "throughout human history" as a model for the way things should be........just sayin'. :asian:
That doesn't matter. What matters here is how our bodies evolved. So, what age?
Are you then implying that we are merely our bodies, or how they evolved?
It does matter. You haven't answered my question-are you implying then, that it's okay for a 44 year old man (or older) to have sex with a 12 year old girl with her consent?
