Back in February/March I read Robert Epstein’s The Case Against Adolescence. Epstein and John Holt would have been buddies. Epstein’s basic premise is that adolescence is a fabricated concept and that adolescents, starting at about age thirteen or whenever they demonstrate competency, should be treated as adults with adult privileges and responsibilities. These privileges include the right to own and manage property and money, driving, marriage, and other things we as a society have traditionally restricted teenagers from doing.

Matthew Lee Anderson at Mere Orthodoxy is the one who inspired me to read this book. You may want to read his thoughts and then come back to answer my questions.

Questions:
When does a child or a teenager become an adult?

What characteristics distinguish a child from an adult?

At what age, or using what other criteria, should society give adult responsibilities to and have adult expectations of a person?

If adulthood doesn’t magically happen on your eighteenth birthday, when does it happen?

And to get very specific, and very controversial, what basis does the state of Texas have for deciding that persons under the age of eighteen, and sometimes over the age of eighteen, can be held against their will, not charged with any crime, and made wards of the State of Texas for an undetermined time period? This is exactly what is happening in the case of the FLDS in Eldorado.