The hormonal peaks and incompletely developed executive function that made male adolescents excellent pawns in violent policy (and also contributes to their engagement in violent crime, often as similar pawns) is exactly part of them substantively being a kid.
Recruiting a 15-year-old to fight in an armed conflict, by the way, is an action that has a name: "war crime".
Neither do old teenagers; executive function isn't fully developed, IIRC, until the early-to-mid 20s.
Also the "most of human history" argument is reductive and regressive. We can and should improve on our history.
I think, as someone in my 30's, that pointing at a group of humans who are somewhere between middle school and college age and saying "those kids over there" makes sense.
Ask any developmental psychologist and they'll tell you: the brain is still developing, and 15 year olds are fucking idiots when it comes to long term consequences factoring into their decision making. "For most of human history" is a useless example because of all the other terribly stupid shit we did "for most of human history".
FOH with this "I decide who is a kid" nonsense, as if a bunch of law-abiding white kids of the same age wouldn't be called kids by most sane people.
I'm pretty sure flipped out when a judge treated Ethan Couch as a "kid" (and rightfully so).
that were old enough to hold up a gun/knife to someone and make a demand.
Actually, the brain is still a work in progress until age 25.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164...
> So the changes that happen between 18 and 25 are a continuation of the process that starts around puberty, and 18 year olds are about halfway through that process. Their prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed. That's the part of the brain that helps you to inhibit impulses and to plan and organize your behavior to reach a goal.
> And the other part of the brain that is different in adolescence is that the brain's reward system becomes highly active right around the time of puberty and then gradually goes back to an adult level, which it reaches around age 25 and that makes adolescents and young adults more interested in entering uncertain situations to seek out and try to find whether there might be a possibility of gaining something from those situations.
To give you an example. My six year old doesn't really understand why she shouldn't eat junk food. She can kind of understand that she shouldn't do it, but the "why" is beyond her. Thus if she eats a bunch of junk food, it's not her fault, it's my fault. "Children" are held harmless because they lack a basic prerequisite for culpability: the ability to truly distinguish between right and wrong.
Having the cognitive ability to distinguish right from wrong, but lacking the impulse control to do the right thing is different. I know I shouldn't eat junk food, and I'm fully capable of understanding why. But I have trouble doing the right thing. If I eat a bunch of junk food, it's my fault. I am culpable, not my mom.
Calling someone a "child" is to negate their culpability. That's not an appropriate label for an adolescent. If lacking impulse control negated culpability, I'd suspect you'd find that a lot of adult criminals had poor impulse control. That doesn't make them "children." (Contrarywise, when it is demonstrated that an adult lacks the capacity to distinguish right from wrong, that does negate their culpability, in the same manner as for children.)
Do you therefore support changing the voting age to 15, as well as the draft eligible age?
Calling them "children" is both inaccurate, and a rhetorically sneaky way to mitigate culpability, responsibility, and agency. Controlling adolescents is one of society's most important functions, precisely because of the mismatch between destructive potential and impulse control. Society thus expects adolescents to control their behavior. It might give them more leeway in that regard, but they are not (and should not be) treated like children, who generally are held harmless for their misconduct.
“Children” does not now generally exclude adolescents, but extends to all pre-adults. We have terms that are more specific that do exclude adolescents, but “children” isn't generally one of them (though in certainly contexts the term might have special definitions.)
(Historically, it may havenexclude some or all adolescents, but that's because in most cultures, adult included some or all adolescents.)
> Controlling adolescents is one of society's most important functions,precisely because of the mismatch between destructive potential and impulse control.
Arguably, but then directly contradicted by:
> Society thus expects adolescents to control their behavior
Does society deem control of adolescents an important social function because it expects that adolescents lack adequate impulse control given their destructive potential or does it not see such a gap and expect that they have adequate impulse control for self-containment? Your second statement cannot be a consequence of the first, it is an incompatible expectation.
> Does society deem control of adolescents an important social function because it expects that adolescents lack adequate impulse control given their destructive potential or does it not see such a gap and expect that they have adequate impulse control for self-containment?
There is nothing contradictory. Society holds children harmless because they're not generally cognitively capable of distinguishing right from wrong. Adolescents are, and are expected to behave. Society acknowledges that adolescents often have problems actually doing the right thing, but doesn't treat that as an excuse that mitigates culpability, as for children. Instead, they tailor punishment on a case-by-case basis to accommodate that fact. (Also, historically, they put adolescents to work, to reduce the avenues for misbehavior. Idle hands and whatnot.)
It seems to me that America and the United Kingdom often try children, not just adolescents, as adults.
I'm sure that's reporting bias, and it only happens to a miniscule proportion of underage offenders, but what is the actual guideline there?