At 18, Jamie had a baby. It was not, contradictory to Hallmark sentiment, a very happy occasion. She attended her high school graduation six months pregnant and, instead of spending the summer growing into young adulthood, gained 40 pounds and read childcare books.
Six months later, her 21-year-old sister Kelly is pregnant, and while even she acknowledges that the baby will arrive several years early, her pregnancy is not shadowed with the irony and resignation that fell upon Jamie's. The reason for the discrepancy: Kelly is an adult.
But wait - so is Jamie. Like Kelly, she only is legally responsible for her actions, holds a full privilege driver license, and is expected by the U.S. government to maintain an adequate stream of financial sustenance for herself and her child. The only action she cannot legally take that her sister can is drinking alcohol, a minor - if at all consequential - contributor to the criteria for adulthood.
What then accounts for the polarity of reaction to their pregnancies? What makes Jamie's an end and Kelly's a beginning? Does it signify that, despite the law, Jamie is not truly an adult, or if she is, that she has only just passed the juncture of child and adult, and so is an adult only by date, and still dependent upon her parents?
Our country answers the question twice, splitting legal dictate from social precedent. At once we say no, that the legal yardstick is a product of society's understanding of human development and the popular capacity for self-sufficiency by one's 18th birthday; and still we say yes, in a sweeping array of social responses to the needs and abilities of young adults.
The clearest evidence comes from colleges and universities, which receive their incoming freshmen with orientation sessions, both for students and their parents. They base financial assistance on a formula for "expected family contribution," which assumes that parents, not students, will foot college bills. Schools host parents' weekend workshops on issues relating to their children's education and how it will affect family dynamics; they send fliers home hawking birthday packs and study kits; and they, perhaps most telling, craft modified family environments that provide a base line of oversight and support in the form of communal living with resident advisors and dining services.
Clearly, higher education recognizes that students, while taking their first explorative steps through adulthood, are dependents on many more ways than mere tax credits. The acknowledgement is proliferating throughout the country as the undergraduate degree replaces the high school diploma as the minimum certification necessary for obtaining gainful employment and the average age for marriage rises, creating an older group of young adults, and a longer transition period from child to adult.
And yet many of our laws do not recognize that one becomes an adult over the course of several years rather than a single sunrise. Health care legislation, for instance, protects the confidentiality of medical records and treatment so fiercely that MIT sophomore Elizabeth Shin could seek counseling, threaten suicide and slit her wrists without the school informing her parents. They received none of the information until last April, following their daughter's suicide by lighting herself on fire.
The legal American drinking age of 21 hides similar dangers, for it does not allow young adults to learn to drink responsibly and in moderation while under daily parental supervision. Instead, we encourage them to drink heavily and irresponsibly by granting them adult status in every other legal regard, save in some cases tax credits, by ensuring their first encounters with the drug will be either covert operations away from the parental eye or totally independent ventures, in which they have few, if any, role models of responsible drinking. The law's effectiveness approximates that of Prohibition, which even the most basic history text reveals was futile legislation that bred more criminal behavior than it deadened.
The end effect is a cacophony of expectation and permission, one that tells millions of people between 18 and 21 that they are adults at the doctor but not at the bar, when they attend a university but not when they live at one, and that one's level of maturity is dependent upon the date. Instead, our laws, like our schools and our emotions, should reflect that adulthood happens over time, not overnight.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
