39. Legal age for adulthood should be reduced in the United States.

I accept pro's definitions I accept pro's resolution analysis, and will assume he wants the legal age for adulthood reduced to 16 years of age. Pro's contentions: 1)I accept this contention. 2a)Military: Pro claims that the fact that 17 year olds can join the military with parental consent shows that they have the maturity to have full rights as adults. This logic does not hold water. An action taken by a minor that must be authorized by an adult is hardly cause for stating that the minor has the maturity of the adult, or that he/she should BE an adult. Although it is barely necessary, I will provide a specific example just for the sake of completeness. If a legal guardian authorizes that their child may go on a field trip at school (assuming the child could not go without parental consent), it does not logically follow that because the child gets permission and undertakes the field trip that they have conducted the actions of legal adulthood. Now I will not totally insult Pro's intelligence, because I know that he is assuming that the audience and I will take into account the fact that military personel DIE FOR THEIR COUNTRY. But even considering this fact, it is clear that the government's ducks are in a row: 18 years old: You may join the army if you would like 17 years old: You may not join the army, but your legal guardian may make a responsible adult decision reflecting the fact that they have discussed with you the implications of joining the military, and that they can vouch for you knowing the full results of your actions. You are a child, and could easily, without adult supervision, make a brash and immature decision that you do not fully understand the implications of. Emancipation: "by the current legal process many of these rights become available[to minors]." -I must respectfully ask Pro to describe the specific legal rights he means, so that I do not waste everyone's time straw-manning him. I attempted to research the topic myself, but each state is different and the list was quite extensive of the different rights that come into play. In many states there are no emancipation opportunities for children. I will assume at this point that there are no legal rights that are compelling enough to grant reducing the legal age compared to the detriments that this would incur(discussed later), and I will pass the burden of evidence back to Pro. I personally know a child who was emancipated, and I got the impression from her that it was not the best idea for her. She had a very strong false sense of responsibility, and it made her think that her actions were just as responsible as an adult's would be. I know my personal anecdotes are not relevant, but I will simply put the theoretical argument forward that emancipating minors is relatively rare, definitely not ideal, and definitely a thing to be avoided at all costs unless the state is simply left with no alternative. I will re-examine this contention if Pro can provide compelling evidence that this phenomenon is relatively common or that this represents a decision by the government that is in the child's best interest. As of now, I am not convinced that policy should be changed, and I don't see any reason that would make a voter want to support a policy lowering the legal age to 16. "In both of these cases, the legal age fails to assign maturity uniformly" -These cases are not overly common as they represent a minute percentage of children. Furthermore, neither really, by themselves, begs to lower the age of adulthood. It is only with considerable rhetorical effort on your part that they would even hint at this idea. "The imaginary line that individuals cross in the process of maturing is lowered in special cases, with no actual test to determine whether the person whom the bar is lowered for is mature enough to handle these rights" -not true. In your army example, an adult must step in and administrate the situation. The child has proven to the adult that he/she is unusually prepared to handle the life of a military person. You point out that the emancipation example is "special"; desperate times call for desperate measures. These emancipation examples are quite desperate and unfortunate, and I see no reason to want to expand them outward into society. "This creates a contradiction, and makes the legal age an illegitimate requirement" - I fail to see what you mean by "illegitimate". Legally, the legal age of adulthood is on solid ground. Exactly what usage of legitimate does the United States legal age of adulthood strike you as not satisfying? Just because a law has an insignificant semantical or highly unusual inconsistency to it doesn't make it illegitimate. For example, it is legal in some cases to kill someone. Should we make it legal all the time to kill people just to cover up this glaring inconsistency? 2b) driving. I agree with you in part("This is a massive error in judgment "), because I don't think 16 year olds should be behind the wheel. I waited until I was 18 to drive, and even then I was not ready. It makes more sense to move this one inconsistency - legal age to drive - up to 18 or 21 instead of moving adulthood and all of the lengthy list of responsibilities down to 16. You say that "This is a massive error in judgment", but you don't say exactly what the "massive error" is. I think that you most logically imply what I stated in this paragraph, not that the legal age for adulthood must be turned back to 18. I don't see why you would want 16 year olds buying porn, voting for scheming politicians, getting sued in court, buying guns, gambling, and becoming adults before they finish high school so they feel more inclined to drop out because "they can". I do not support the criminalization of truancy or drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes by minors, but this is a different subject and a very wide tangent [I have to cover my bases because of premises I made in other debates :) ]. Even though truancy shouldn't be illegal, I think it is logical to posit that 16 year olds suddenly becoming adults would be pressured into leaving high school for the work force, either because their parents would be over-opportunistic (about getting more money into the home ["you're an adult now..."])or they would feel a false sense of independence and just use it as an opportunity to drop out. "It is an antiquated and abused system that has failed its purpose of defining maturity in legal situations" -well, aside from going way overboard with this one (abused?!), I don't see that our legal age for adulthood has failed. I will provide several contentions to show that it is a success after I refute your 3rd contention. 3)Removing the contradictions you presented would result in no more than a semantical satisfaction that would prove short lived after the obvious problems it would cause would start arising. Let me move on to my contentions to explain why: 4)I will extend my high school drop-out argument to be contention 4 5)I will extend my argument that the list of adult activities I provided should not be extended to children, to be contention 5 6)There is good reason kids aren't adults. It provides them a chance to be children. I am 27 and I don't really consider myself an adult, because I don't want to grow old and look back and wish I had more of a chance to live my life free'er. People growing up too fast is a tragedy. Kids always want to be older, but that is part of being a kid. They will get their wish soon enough... Your argument would steal the childhood away from children, and do them a grave injustice. They would go along with it of course (they aren't mature enough to know how long and inevitable adulthood is), but that only reinforces my argument. I see you are 18, Brik, and probably haven't hit these realizations yet, but I promise you you will. All youngins like you WANT to be older, but thats just part of being young!