Currently there is a lot of concern about "child rearing" but very, very little about raising a child to adulthood. So much so that for most people it tends not to occur until the mid to late 20s these days, and then only sort of by accident/osmosis.

Today we decry "child labor" but there is a lot that the traditional apprenticeship model had going for it. For one it gave young adults important job skills and introduced them to the job market, which not only jump starts one's career and financial self-sufficiency but also inculcates responsibility, belonging, and self-esteem (because teens see that they are capable of doing valuable work, capable of learning in a way that produces tangible results, etc.) But there's a subtle aspect to the apprenticeship system which also helps teens transition to adulthood, and that's the interaction of adults and "children" on a peer level.

At the moment you have an almost pathological system, anyone that a teenager interacts with who is over 18 is basically in a different world. And most of the time those people are authority figures. For the most part teens look to their peers for cues on how to behave, with predictable results. With an apprenticeship model you don't have that same arbitrary age-based segregation; apprentices, workers, and "masters" all work together, spend time together, and so on. They often become friendly, and often the younger apprentices would pick up cues on how to behave from those who are older and more mature, because in that context they are their peers.

This is hugely important because it jump-starts the process of gaining responsibility and maturity for teens as they transition to adulthood, and provides an extended network of people beyond just one's immediate family who can be consulted for advice on various questions that tend to present themselves when one is growing up.

When I was a teen I was considerably more mature than the average of folks around me and for the longest time I didn't realize exactly why. I'm sure some of that is just my own personality, but recently I figured out that part of it had to do with the fact that I ended up spending a lot more time interacting with and working with adults than is normal for most teens and children. To me, it didn't feel weird to be hanging out with adults or working alongside adults as a peer when I was 10 or 14 or what-have-you, and that made the transition to adulthood fairly non-eventful. Sure, I struggled with plenty of the normal problems that everyone faces in their 20s (what to do with your life, how to build a career, etc.). But I didn't struggle with the same issues a lot of newly minted 18 year olds struggle with for years, such as how to be a responsible person, how to do work or learn of your own volition instead of being forced into it, and so on.

Unfortunately, that sort of thing is if anything almost actively discouraged today due to an excessive fear of child predators. And while we've perhaps incrementally affected the prevalence of sexual abuse of minors, if we even have, we've definitely stunted the development and maturation of millions upon millions of people over several generations, which unimaginably enormous negative consequences.

I don't know what the answer is to these problems but I do know that the current system is broken to an almost pathological extent, it should be one of our highest priorities to fix it.