Many of the laws that are passed to presumably protect young people
actually rather serve the purpose of controlling them.
This is especially true for laws that do not allow young people to work
and earn money on their own. For young people who opt out of their
biological families, the choices for earning money legally are so
restricted that the only alternatives to returning home are theft, prostitution,
and drug dealing.
Laws that prohibit youngsters to earn a living outside of their
families thus are instruments of pressure in the hands of parents and the
state.
The same is the case for laws that do not allow young people to legally
enter into contracts on their own. Young people who opt out of their
biological families cannot rent a house or apartment; they have nowhere
to stay, and thus have no alternative to living on the streets.
Some young people have good parents, and others have bad parents. Good
parents recognize that from puberty, young people have a great impulse
for designing their own lives. Parents have to understand this, and
they have to withdraw from the lives of their children who develop their
own personalities.
The worst parents are those who enforce their decisions upon their
children who are growing up, against the will of their children.
Many young people during and beyond puberty are inclined to run away.
Often, this inclination is legitimate. The will of young people ought to
be respected. It is not correct to dismiss their wishes for designing
their lives by themselves, claiming that young people are immature.
The campaign of the US government against child prostitution is
hypocritical. The US government (and the legislative branch which it controls)
itself is partially responsible for child prostitution and youth crime
in the US, as well as for the fact that many young people enter the
drug trade. The US government and legislature are partially responsible
because they have shut down so many other options for young people to
earn a living and to be adults.
And through the NGOs that are aligned with the US government, and
through which the US has great influence on other countries, either directly
or indirectly through the UN, the same policies are exported to other
countries, even those where traditionally, young people between 14 and
18 or between 16 and 18 were considered young adults, not children.
As the UN are located on US soil, American NGOs have an easy time,
lobbying, and virtually controlling, UN branches that concern themselves
with cultural or educational policies such as the UNESCO and UNICEF.
Strict standards against young people below the age of 18 (who are
uniformly defined as children) have originated at these UN bodies and other
US-based international organizations in which, typically, feminists and
Christian fundamentalists are strongly represented.
Only in the world of drugs, prostitution, and crime, count 15-year olds
(and even 13-year olds) as fully emancipated members of a community.
Everywhere else, they are just children.
My proposal that young people from the age of 14 are given more
opportunities to earn money on their own (and to prove that they are adults)
has been replied to with the remark that young people should first avail
of an education before starting to work.
But this reply reflects an old-fashioned idea about education as
something a young person obtains as a block, before entering the workforce.
By contrast, I believe that anybody should be given the opportunity to
further his or her education until one's death. I advocate that people
start working early, so they will have an opportunity to earn money
(outside of the foul career options of prostitution, crime, and drug
dealing).
But I do not mean that young people should work full-time, unless this
is their clear wish. Young people should have the option of working
part-time, and of furthering their education part-time.
Actually, I advocate such an approach not only for youngsters, but for
virtually anybody (including myself; I am well beyond 50, and I am
still enrolled in university courses).
Fortunately, there is an ever increasing number of "open" universities
for which no formal prior education has to be proven, and more and more
universities offer distance programs (though an "open" university with
campus classes should be chosen in most cases).
My point is: much of youth crime has its origin in the fact that
teenagers from the age of 14 are still considered children, and treated as
children, while the one thing they really, really want to be, is: adults.
Give them genuine opportunities to earn money, and treat them as young
adults, and you will be surprised to what extent they will start
showing responsible behavior. The traditional laws of many countries other
than the US reflected this assessment in that they conferred the status
of being "adult" upon every teenager, no matter how young, if he or she
entered into a marriage.
Of course, such traditions undermine the agenda of feminazis and
Christian zealots who crusade to have any person under the age of 18
perceived and treated as child, no matter whether the age is 7 or 17. But the
real concern of feminists and Christian zealots is not the welfare of
people under 18.
For both feminazis and Christian zealots, to keep those who are not yet
18 under control, allows them to mold their characters and to convert
them to their ideologies. This should be recognized for what it is: an
egoistic interest to have offspring who reflect their parents'
preferences.
It is futile to argue that per se, parents know what is best for their
children. Fact is that some parents know what is good for their
children, and others do not. While good parents will make wise suggestions as
to what their growing up children should do (and this should be
encouraged), young individuals should have more rights to decide on their own.
Even when some of the decisions young people may take seem wrong to
their parents, they may in fact be much more appropriate for the world a
younger generation lives in than the outmoded templates their parents
believe in.
