There are
few landmark birthdays that arrive with some serious significance: at 16 years,
in most states, you can get your driver’s license, at 18 years you can vote,
you can join the Army, you can sign contracts and you’re on the hook or any
bills in your name too. Twenty-one, you can toast your birthday with alcohol,
25 years you can finally rent a car. And you don’t have to be a teenager to
find hypocrisy in those numbers. You can buy a car before you can rent one. You
can fight in a war, before you can go into a bar. In some places, you can work
in that bar before you can drink in it.
few landmark birthdays that arrive with some serious significance: at 16 years,
in most states, you can get your driver’s license, at 18 years you can vote,
you can join the Army, you can sign contracts and you’re on the hook or any
bills in your name too. Twenty-one, you can toast your birthday with alcohol,
25 years you can finally rent a car. And you don’t have to be a teenager to
find hypocrisy in those numbers. You can buy a car before you can rent one. You
can fight in a war, before you can go into a bar. In some places, you can work
in that bar before you can drink in it.
There are
reasons for each of these apparently arbitrary milestones and arguments that
some of these rights should be made dependent on the individual’s ability to
handle them or rather that a calendar, that instead of voting age or drinking
age or driving age, we ought to decide on an age of responsibility.
reasons for each of these apparently arbitrary milestones and arguments that
some of these rights should be made dependent on the individual’s ability to
handle them or rather that a calendar, that instead of voting age or drinking
age or driving age, we ought to decide on an age of responsibility.
