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Spliff up?

Posted by Lotg on October 31, 2003

In Reply to: Black skinned blue-eyed boys aint gonna fight no dumb ol' wars posted by Lewis on October 31, 2003

: : : : : : : : : : : : The importance of single young people living with their parents as a market for the Irish billion-euro food-service industry has been highlighted in new consumer research compiled by the Irish Food Board.

: : : : : : : : : : : : SLOPs, according to the researchers, are Singles Living Off Parents, and they have been identified as prime drivers in the take-away sector.
: : : : : : : : : : : : - The Irish Times, 29 October 2003

: : : : : : : : : : : In a news article recently, it stated that the new age of adulthood is now 26 -- not 18 (voting age in the U.S.) or 21 (legal drinking age in most states). As the mother of two 20-year-olds, I'm sorry to hear that.

: : : : : : : : : : And, as the father of a 26 year old, I live in hope.

: : : : : : : : : : Another of those terms for groups of children is boomerang kids. This one is for children who leave home as adults only to return a few years later when times get hard. I've heard that in Sweden this group has got their own back on their parents for name calling. They call middle age parents the 'flashing twelve hundreds', claiming that when they return home that's what all the digital clocks on cookers, videos etc. look like as the parents don't understand how to reset them.

: : : : : : : : : ".Gone is the notion that adulthood officially started at 18, when one typically graduated from high school - or even 21, the modern-day age limit for drinking alcohol. Now many experts simply consider those markers along the way. And it appears that Americans agree. A University of Chicago survey, released earlier this year, found that most think adulthood begins at age 26. '"It's not like one day you wake up and you're an adult. It's much more gradual,' says developmental psychologist Jeffrey Arnett. A professor at the University of Maryland, he is writing a book on what he calls 'emerging adulthood' - the period between age 18 to 25." From "Rethinking The Age Of Adulthood," CBS News online at www.cbsnews.com

: : : : : : : : But the legal age of adulthood is still 18 in the US. That is, at 18 you can legally enter contracts and things of that nature.

: : : : : : : Is it really though? You can't drink at 18.

: : : : : : About.com has an article about the legal drinking age in the U.S. -- it's 21 in every state. In the 70s some states lowered the legal age to 18. But it turned out to be a bad idea. The federal Uniform Drinking Age Act ensured that all states were bumped up to 21.

: : : : : : Kids can get credit cards at 18. That's turned out to be a bad idea too.

: : : : :
: : : : : The legal drinking age in Australia is 18 and I can't see why that's a problem. I think it works here OK. It was 21 when I was growing up but it changed, I don't know, probably 25 or more years ago. Growing up in the bush, the legal drinking age was reasonably academic, cos the boys would still have plenty of alcohol at barbies and beasts on the spit no matter what age they were.

: : : :
: : : : I have always thought that whether someone is is able to manage alcohol consumption isn't so much a matter of age as much as maturity. It's also a matter of social expectations. If we expect less of young people - or anyone else for that matter - they seldom fail to disappoint. That's as true with credit cards as with alcohol.

: : : Should it be 'adulthood' or 'adultery'?

: : : Being 'adult' is about accepting responsibility, not numerical achievement.

: : :
: : : Anyhow, managing alcohol is a cultural problem - advertising showing people doing stupid things eg Wicked hardly helps encourage mature handling of drink.

: : : 18 in England, with some exceptions. The more forbidden it is, the worse the problem with abuse. If being drunk is thought stupid, then it is less glamourous, but if it is a forbidden fruit (the name of a Belgian Ale BTW) then youngsters drink it to excess. If it was no big deal, then it loses its shock value.

: : : Coming back from Belgium, where I had been drinking to a considerable degree without being stupid, I had a bad train journey due to American youths bingeing on alcohol. They were about 16-20 years old and really hit the buffet car bar. They got louder and more stupid as the journey went on, drinking anything the bar would sell them. One of them had not labelled their luggage and the guard announced that unless the owner came forward the train would have to stop so that the case could be removed before the channel tunnel (security reasons). The bag and its location were described clearly more than once. This plea was repeated a number of times and eventually the train was slowed down to make an unscheduled stop to eject the baggage. When the train was pulling in, one of the stupid drunk American teens went to the guard and identified it as being his. He had been sitting a few feet from me and must have heard the pleas to identify his bag. The train then had to pick up speed again but missed the phasing of the signals all the way to Waterloo as a result - a few 00 miles of track. Had those youngsters not lived in a 21 years to drink society, they probably could have handled alcohol and not needed to binge, just because they were soon flying back to the States. That incident ruined the end of my trip and frankly, I would have preferred that they had kicked the kid off with his bag for being such an inconsiderate tw@t. Prohibition and restriction are counter-productive and lead to defiance not safe use.

: : : Surely somebody is 'an adult' in social and attitude terms once they have finished degree-level education or go out to work full-time?

: : : Once an adult, then there should not be artificial restrictions on what people can do. American movies are full of people with arrested development - being "in school" and treated like children at an age when they could be gainfully employed. It is nonsense to treat people between 16 and 21 as children. People mature into responsibility and if they are treated as children, they are hardly going to act maturely.

: : : American soldiers run around the world and are trusted to driving tanks and kill the right (or "wrong")people, yet if they had stayed in civvy street, they would be treated like children and not even trusted with a can of beer.
: : : Bazookas in Baghdad, bubblegum in Baltimore.
: : : It is patent nonsense and probably explains why it is the likes of MacDonalds that are the more visible exports - anything more mature would not be understood by the semi-adult population.

: : : Treating people as non-adults until 26 is unthinkable to me - in previous eras there would be almost zero adult populations had such a retrogressive step been considered.

: : : The whole issue of age-related legality needs to be continually reviewed - we have gone from a situation where girls would marry at 12 with husbands of 15 and both be dead by their late 20s to somebody seriously suggesting that 26 is the age for adult status.

: : I almost agree with you, except for the last sentence. After all, most of us don't die in our 20s any more, so it's seems a tad irrelevant.

: : My only other query is that we should treat 15 or 16 year olds as adults. I do agree that if they're out and about and working (as is my 16 year old stepdaughter), then so be it, she's out in the real world, earning her keep and she should be treated like an adult. But if they're not, I think we have to be careful about treating them as adults. After all, they're just getting over, or still going through puberty - and the whole crossing the barrier into adulthood thing is like a new toy that they don't know how to use properly yet.

: : It's a difficult one in my opinion. I left home at 16. I was raised very strictly and in a very closeted way in a Christian household in a country town. I moved to Melbourne and went beserk! I had no idea what I was doing, but I had a go at everything. It was the insane 70s so I tried every drug known to man. Injected, sniffed, ate, smoked, drank, you name it. I had no understanding of sex or contraception. But I was really lucky. The only drugs I tried that didn't have an immediate adverse effect on me were the soft ones. The hard drugs had a hideous and frightening effect on me. So I didn't pursue that line. Equally fortunately, it turns out that due to some biological defect I can't have children, so I didn't end up pregnant to the loser I was going out with. It was pure luck and maybe just enough of an intelligent grounding, that got me through. So my restrictive and over-protective upbringing could have been my undoing.

: : On the other hand, my stepdaughter while living with us had rules (not as stupid and overprotective as those I grew up with) and stayed relatively sane and out of trouble.

: : However, when her mother took over and allowed her to run riot and do anything she liked, she did exactly as I did when I cut loose from my parents. Only she was still at home with her mother. Again however, she got lucky and the drugs made her sick, and she luckily didn't end up pregnant. And again, I credit her with enough intelligence.

: : So I think some controls at that age are still extremely important. But total prohibition I think is of little benefit, because I agree with your comments re forbidden fruit.

: : Furthermore I suspect that in our current times, there is even less point to prohibition when so much information is available on the internet and so much can be accessed via the internet.

: : As for sending them to war. Well I think the reverse. I think they ARE too young and we just shouldn't send them. I realise there have been wars where it's been unavoidable for everyone to be involved, but when we're sending people off-shore to OP wars (of course, it's questionable whether we should do that as well), then I don't see the need to send children.

: Very good point about the age to be soldiers in the field. I think you're right. Being a soldier does require terrible and terrifying responsibility - expecting youngsters to handle that is probably wrong.

: My parents were down on alcohol, down on drugs, gambling and casual sex. Despite that, they rarely made absolute rules about my behaviour. I think had they tried to be more prohibitionist, I might have rebelled more. OK, so I've ended up being a regular drinker without being an alcoholic, but I'm casual about recreational drugs, enjoy controlled gambling and been boringly faithful to my wife. I try to look at the potential consequences of my actions and have done ever since I was a teenager. I do not like to be told what to do, but also do not like telling others what to do either - that 'independent' streak could have made me rebel, but I learned to choose my battles and hardly ever needed to rebel.

: I think that if you do have a rebellious streak, then prohibition gives you something to rebel against whereas moderation is difficult to fight.
: My dad has always told me that he got his serious drinking out of the way when he was in the forces, but he's never been one to tell me that I can't have another. My mother allowed a friend of mine with a drug habit to spliff up because he was in such a state of anxiety - she didn't approve, but knew that she would lose the opportunity to help him if she came down hard on it. She provided him with an ear at a very difficult time in his life. Again, moderation and tolerance overcame excess. (that guy eventually worked for the drugs squad!)

: I support the legalisation of drugs for that reason - I think that so many of the down-sides of recreational drugs are down to the psychological and practical consequences of prohibition. I don't want to encourage people to knacker their bodies and minds with bad substances, but my upbringing makes me believe that there would be less of a problem if they were legal. People should have informed choice and accept the consequences of their actions.

: Becoming an adult does involve learning how to deal with all those potentially life-destroying pitfalls. Fixing an age for somebody to be and "adult" is somewhat arbitrary - some youngsters are forced to accept adult levels of responsibility far to early, but in doing so they have become 'adult'.

: Am I being too off-topic, or is the philosphy of the wider meaning of a concept like adulthood up for discussion?

Maybe you are off the original topic, but if so, then a lot of people have been off it for a long time in this thread - so who cares. And if it's interesting - why not.

BTW Lewis, I couldn't agree with you more. I think you're response hit the nail on the head.

Although I'd like you to explain to me a term - 'spliff up'. Maybe I should start a new thread. I think I've got the general idea given the context in which you put it, but it's a new one on me (sheltered life maybe - he he).

And the other concept that caught my eye was your new item title: 'Black skinned blue-eyed boys aint gonna fight no dumb ol' wars'. 'Black skinned, blue eyed'... hmmmmm

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