The age of consent -- an applied ethics question
I have a brother who is in his mid-40s. He went overseas to a first world country when he was in his mid-20s. When he first went overseas he was a strong Christian who was conflicted about when to have sex, since he really didn't want to get married, but he was very attracted to women. Overseas, he changed quite a bit in his views and became a player and has had sex with probably at least a hundred women in the past 20 years. The worst part is that his age preference is in the 16-19 range. I don't have evidence that he has sex with girls under 16, but it would probably depend on the maturity of their bodies. To the best of my knowledge, my brother doesn't use force when he has sex with these girls. He is a seducer who uses charm.
He was arrested twice overseas since the age of consent in the area where he lived was 18. He received a slap on the wrist both times. The most recent time, there was enough publicity about his arrest that it made it difficult for him to stay in the country, so he has come home.
My parents are appalled by the behavior but forgive him and hope that he turns his life around. He continues to believe that he hasn't done anything wrong. Unfortunately, he now lives in a state where the age of consent is 16. I don't expect his behavior to change if he gets the opportunity.
My parents want to keep his behavior as secret as possible from friends and family. Some family friends are visiting my parents with their 14 year old daughter. They will be staying at a hotel within 20 miles of the house where my brother is living with our parents. They will be visiting the house while my brother is there for dinner or swimming.
I've told my parents that I think our friends should be told about my brother since their daughter is close to the age range that attracts my brother's interest. They say that they will be around my brother the whole time and that he will never be alone with the girl.
My questions for the forum:
1) What do you think the age of consent should be?
2) Do you think my brother's behavior is wrong?
3) Should our family friends be told about my brother?
4) If your answer to questions 2 and 3 are yes, what in general am I ethically obligated to do? I am thinking above and beyond notifying our friends. Should I create a website solely devoted to my brother's behavior and engage in SEO so that his name will be a top 10 hit if someone googles him?
I don't relish being Javert in this situation, but it struck me that if I should notify our friends about my brother's behavior, what do I owe everyone else? Our friends' daughter is not intrinsically more valuable in the abstract than any other girl. So if I act to protect her, shouldn't I attempt to protect other girls from my brother since the cost to myself would be minimal?
Of course, I would like reasons with your answers.
Thanks
He was arrested twice overseas since the age of consent in the area where he lived was 18. He received a slap on the wrist both times. The most recent time, there was enough publicity about his arrest that it made it difficult for him to stay in the country, so he has come home.
My parents are appalled by the behavior but forgive him and hope that he turns his life around. He continues to believe that he hasn't done anything wrong. Unfortunately, he now lives in a state where the age of consent is 16. I don't expect his behavior to change if he gets the opportunity.
My parents want to keep his behavior as secret as possible from friends and family. Some family friends are visiting my parents with their 14 year old daughter. They will be staying at a hotel within 20 miles of the house where my brother is living with our parents. They will be visiting the house while my brother is there for dinner or swimming.
I've told my parents that I think our friends should be told about my brother since their daughter is close to the age range that attracts my brother's interest. They say that they will be around my brother the whole time and that he will never be alone with the girl.
My questions for the forum:
1) What do you think the age of consent should be?
2) Do you think my brother's behavior is wrong?
3) Should our family friends be told about my brother?
4) If your answer to questions 2 and 3 are yes, what in general am I ethically obligated to do? I am thinking above and beyond notifying our friends. Should I create a website solely devoted to my brother's behavior and engage in SEO so that his name will be a top 10 hit if someone googles him?
I don't relish being Javert in this situation, but it struck me that if I should notify our friends about my brother's behavior, what do I owe everyone else? Our friends' daughter is not intrinsically more valuable in the abstract than any other girl. So if I act to protect her, shouldn't I attempt to protect other girls from my brother since the cost to myself would be minimal?
Of course, I would like reasons with your answers.
Thanks
Comments (193)
When they're old enough. And if that answer's not good enough, then tell me, if a heap is reduced by a single grain at a time, at what exact point does it cease to be considered a heap?
In the UK, the age of consent is sixteen, and I don't have any major issues with that.
Quoting Tree Falls
In what respect would it be wrong, and why? Is it wrong to break the law? Is it wrong for a male in his forties to have sex with a sixteen-year-old female? Yes, no, and maybe. It's complicated. One should strive to avoid prejudice and oversimplification in such matters. I'm not convinced that you've succeeded in doing so.
Quoting Tree Falls
If it's for the best, then yes. But I'm not convinced that it would be, although I understand your concern and the dilemma which you describe. If I were in your shoes, I would think about how much I trust my brother to do the right thing, and what the consequences could be. Whether the law is right or wrong, breaking it could have serious consequences. My advice would be for you to talk to your brother and emphasise the aforementioned before doing anything rash.
Quoting Tree Falls
You shouldn't act [i]rashly[/I], in a way which may ruin your brother's life, in [i]anticipation[/I] of wrongdoing or perceived wrongdoing, which might never actualise. You shouldn't try to be some kind of vigilante, unless you have very good reason to do so. Having a criminal record doesn't mean that one ought to lose one's right to privacy within the law. Subsequent to punishment by law, [i]rehabilitation[/I] is the end goal.
Quoting Tree Falls
1) In an ideal world the age of consent would be individualised.
2) It's only wrong if his 'partner' is not capable of making an informed choice; or if he uses deceit of any kind, such as lying about feelings, or making promises he has no intention of following through.
3) Only if you are a sneeking little gossip. A person's private life ought to be private. Would you be happy to divulge all your own personal acts of self abuse, or sexual peculiarities? This is YOUR brother is it not? Do you not have a duty of loyalty?
4) I suggest you reflect on the fact that you might be jealous of your brother's sexuality. Either emulate it or admire it. Don't be a sneeky git.
Hogwash. You don't know enough to know whether or not it was rape. You don't know whether or not there was mutual consent. All we have been told was that his brother was arrested twice overseas, since the age of consent in the area where he lived was 18, and that he received a slap on the wrist both times.
Have you paused to consider why he might have been "let off with a slap on the wrist"? Perhaps there was insufficient evidence, and the case fell apart. It's not even clear if it went to court, let alone whether there was any conviction.
Quoting tim wood
It's not your sixteen-year-old, so that's an irrelevance. It's not all about feelings, and in fact feelings should be discouraged to an extent. No law should be founded, or advice given or taken, when the mind is clouded in the mist of passion or fury.
Quoting tim wood
That's not knowledge, that's speculation.
Quoting tim wood
If concluded from speculation like that above, then your conclusion holds no weight. Making such publications would do the person harm, so you're going to need more than speculation to justify that act.
He's your brother! FFS
You duty to family is higher that the state.
And you have no evidence of illegality as you said.
Nonsense terminology. You are not procuring, not even holding the condoms.
Some people will see a clear open and shut case: He's 40, he's obviously abusing young women. Report. Punish. Tell everybody.
I do not like that approach.
1, A child physically old enough to perform sexually should be given appropriate information about sex and sexuality. Providing appropriate education doesn't mean they are then fair game for everyone who might want to have sex with them. One of the things that could be damaging about having sex "too soon" is not having a mature and trusted person (beside the sex partner) with whom to process the experience.
2. Sex, in itself, is not a bad thing. It is coercion and psychological manipulation that create problems. For instance, using crude force to make someone have sex with you is wrong, and so is manipulating people into having sex by threatening them: "If you don't have sex with me, I will kill myself." "If you don't have sex with me I'll tell everyone that you are a slut."
I don't know why your brother prefers to have sex with 16 year olds. But then, I don't know why gentlemen prefer blonds, or why some people like cats better than dogs. Is he avoiding a mature relationship with a woman his own age for some reason? And if he is, what on earth could you possibly do about it?
Your parents know about your brother. What can you add to their knowledge?
Why don't you talk to your brother about this?
We know very little about his brother's practices. What is in the public domain, like an unspent criminal record, can legally be published, but that doesn't mean that it should be. It's possible that doing so will do more harm than good, and in this case, we simply don't know enough to justify taking that action. If he's so concerned about the daughter of his family's friend, then he should say something to those concerned in private. But making publications online or on social media is a step too far.
Quoting tim wood
What actions? Why are you speaking in present-tense instead of past-tense? Based on what we've been told, he has been arrested twice on suspicion of criminal sexual activity with a minor. Here in the UK, the alleged incident wouldn't in itself warrant an arrest, since by legal definition there would be no minors involved. Even assuming that these arrests had lead to a criminal prosecution, they would be [i]past crimes[/I], and in another country, with different laws. Does any of this mean that we know that he is an active rapist or something of the kind? No, of course not.
My I just draw attention to this sentence, for those moralists hiding their jealousy with scorn.
Quoting Tree Falls
I think this just about covers it.
In a case where there was evidence, a professional would be bound to declare a conflict of interest and recuse himself.
A predilection to have sex. So what? That's 99% of the male population.
Depends on the jurisdiction. In the UK the age of consent is 16 but someone who's 14 or 15 can consent, in which case the crime is "sexual activity with a child".
Also, it seems strange to think that whether or not one is capable of consent depends on the legal age of consent. In Nigeria it's 11 and in Bahrain it's 21. So an 11 year old can consent in Nigeria but a 20 year old can't consent in Bahrain? Seems like mixing up consent as understood from a legal perspective and consent as understood from an everyday perspective.
And UK law doesn't even define an age of consent. It only defines consent as "a person consents if he agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice." It just also happens to be a crime if one person is under the age of 16 (although as mentioned before, not necessarily the crime of rape).
Preaching to the choir is not education, sonny Jim; it's a waste of time. The point that you appear to have missed is obviously whether or not it is factually correct, as opposed to correct in the law of a given nation, that anyone under the age of eighteen cannot give consent.
I understand perfectly well why we must have age-of-consent law (as I stated, I have no major issue with the age of consent law here in the UK, and I would hasten to add that I am of the view that there ought to be a similar law in every nation, which I believe there is) but that is beside the point.
Ask yourself why you make the assumptions you do. Ask yourself why you refer to a female under the age of eighteen as a "girl", when, if sixteen or over, in the UK, by law, she is old enough to consent to sex, consent to medical treatment, get a job, get married, have kids, join the forces, drive a moped, and so on, and, before long, vote in a general election. Does that describe a little girl or a young woman? I would say that it is a more befitting description of the latter.
Quoting tim wood
No, I'm not missing the point, actually.
Quoting tim wood
No, I'm not kidding. It's simply and evidently not your daughter in the scenario under discussion. End of. Are you seriously going to reproach me for pointing that out? Okay, so, maybe you'd kill the guy. Maybe I would, too. But that's A) irrelevant and B) a terrible basis for any kind of justice system.
Quoting tim wood
The description? Are you even [i]trying[/I] to be impartial? What exactly are you including in your assessment? Because I'm not going to treat suspicions and speculation from this one guy in the same way as what he's told us about the facts.
Quoting tim wood
Facepalm. Obviously I'm calling into question whether it's the right thing, not arguing that the right thing is the wrong thing, which would of course be self-defeating.
You didn't mention publication, but you didn't need to. The original poster implicitly raised the issue of publication when he mentioned making a website in his fourth point, and you responded to his fourth point by saying that it's the right thing. Now, if you didn't agree with that particular part, then it was your responsibility to have made that clear.
Quoting tim wood
You said, "The right thing", in response to the original poster's fourth point, so I took you to be referring to the original poster's fourth point as the right thing. You didn't say, "Just do the right thing, whatever that may be!". If my interpretation was wrong, then you should have been clearer.
To be clear, my criticism was that if your [i]conclusion[/I] that his fourth point amounts to doing the right thing, and if this is because of what we have agreed is [i]speculation[/I], then that is no grounds to [i]rightly conclude[/I] that it's the right thing.
Alternatively, if you only meant to say, "Do the right thing!", then that's a vacuous comment, as that's precisely what the discussion's about.
Quoting tim wood
No, that's not how it works, as some of what he states is quite clearly in the form of an opinion, suspicion, speculation; and some of what he states is in the form of someone reporting facts. This is a very important distinction. He doesn't have to explicitly state "[i]this[/I] is a fact and [I]that[/I] is a fact", but it is down to us to rightly make that interpretive distinction.
Broadcasting to the world that your brother is a dangerous sexual predator strikes me as reckless vigilantism. Your evidence is too limited for that, and if you do learn of specific violations, you need to go to law enforcement, not your keyboard.
This is very superficial and misleading. Here's a thought experiment for you: imagine that his brother had had sex with two females under the age of eighteen, as the original poster has suggested, [i]but it took place in the UK[/I]. Now imagine that they were sixteen or over, which is quite possible - [i]and remember, there's no evidence that his brother has slept with anyone under the age of sixteen[/I]. Hey presto! No illegality, unless further details implicate him in some sort of crime. So, why's it wrong? Is it wrong because it was in another country? Then why isn't it wrong here? Or, is it wrong here as well, despite not being against the law? Then, on what basis is it wrong? And, with this specific case in mind, if a sexual predilection is within the law, is it wrong?
(Y)
The point of the above reply, as I hear it, is: "I've heard that this guy's a bad guy, so I'm going to assume that he's a bad guy. Guilty before proven innocent. Go ahead and warn people about this bad guy. That's the right thing to do because he's a bad guy and he'll probably try to rape your teenage girl."
God, if I ever end up in court for any reason, I hope someone like you is not on the jury.
As a hypothetical, if my brother were a pedophile, arrested and slapped on the wrist in a foreign country, I would already have the website up publishing his name. Family loyalty is just balderdash when a family member is doing something terribly wrong. My brother is not a pedophile thank goodness, so (fortunately) it is not as easy for me to decide what to do.
I think a lot hinges on how much damage (if any) one thinks a mid-40s man who pursues 16-19 year old girls is causing. I am much more aligned with Tim Wood's way of thinking:
Quoting tim wood
Of course, that's my own and Tim's perspective and I don't expect everyone to share it. But if I only broadcast the facts (my brother sleeps with 16-19 year olds) and let people decide whether they approve, disapprove or are indifferent, I am not destroying his life if people don't care. My brother thinks he does nothing wrong. He says that his friends in the foreign country wouldn't think it a big deal if he had a 16 year old girl friend. If no one but a few people care, then publishing this information would be as harmless as publishing that someone drinks during a prohibition. (An imperfect analogy, but my point is that if few people care, then there is no social sanction and my brother can continue on with his ways.) And if people do care and don't want that behavior within their community and my brother's life is severely limited by publishing his history, then isn't that something good?
The question that I have is whether just because something is legal, should there be no social sanction? Should a mid-40s male pursuing 16 year old girls be tolerated within a community, even if legal? I think not, but perhaps in 100 years, such behavior won't even raise an eyebrow.
I think there is a bit of confusion from others (such as Hanover) about my dilemma. If my brother did sleep with a 14 year old girl, I would go to the police and I wouldn't be asking for perspective from this forum. So to clarify my dilemma, suppose the age of my friend's daughter were 16. Should I then tell my friend about my brother's preference for girls that age? And crucially, if you think I should tell my friend, then why shouldn't I broadcast my brother's sexual choices to the world? My friend's 16 year old daughter is not inherently more valuable than other 16 year old girls.
The difficulty I have is that in the above situation, I would be inclined to tell my friend about my brother if his daughter were 16 but I am much LESS inclined to make a website broadcasting to the world my brother's sexual preference for 16-19 year olds. But I am not sure whether there is a principled or reasoned difference between my two inclinations.
And cannabis is worse than alcohol and should be illegal because it's an illegal drug. Law is not moral, and the age of consent only matters to whether one can give a consent that matters legally speaking.
Yes.
Quoting Tree Falls
I understand the degree of responsibility you feel in protecting your friends daughter from knowledge that you have come to understand and the view of the law in which he was given a slap on the wrist. I know as a Mom you wouldn't need to get but one sentence into what you are expressing before all ties would be quietly severed with your brother and my respect for your choice to tell me would be golden. As a parent I can understand your concern and would Thank you for the heads up. I would also let your brother know that I said as such and let him deal with the consequences of not seeing anything wrong with a 16 yr old being hit on by a 40 yr old man. Let him see the reality of what other people actually think. Let the father or mother of the 16 yr old talk to your brother about his interests, you know, adult to adult.
Quoting Tree Falls
No one is suggesting that but as Hanover said if you have the proof then you take it to the law. If your brother makes a simple and common mistake in believing the word of a young lady who might say she was 19 when she was really 15. That mistake would cost him legally but more importantly and maybe something you should make your brother aware of is that 'common sense' is not lost on the convicted inmates within a prison who become aware of what some would consider a pedophile within their community.
Thank you for your perspective. I totally get where you are coming from. But I think you are not facing directly my dilemma in the above quote. You, as a mom, would be thankful that I warned you. But don't you think moms everywhere would be thankful that I put up a website warning them against my brother?
So should I or shouldn't I put up a website telling the world that my brother likes to sleep with 16-19 year old girls? If not, why not?
You seem to be having a problem with "proportionate response". If you think you are morally obligated to inform the parents of the 14 year old that your brother might attempt to have sex with her, then do so. Putting up a web site describing your brother may lead to unforeseen and/or undesirable consequences over which you will have no control.
It's a family matter, not the whole world's concern. Keep it within the family.
BTW, how old are you? Straight or gay? Older or younger than your brother? Just wondering what your relationship with your brother is like, outside of this particular age of consent issue.
No. My problem is determining the right action to take.
Quoting Bitter Crank
So, to clarify, you wouldn't tell your friend that your brother might try to have sex with his 16 year old daughter, given your brother's past history?
I am. I just listed to you only some of what someone aged sixteen or over is considered old enough to do. Obviously how mature any particular sixteen-year-old will be in terms of personality and so forth can and does vary, and the law doesn't account for this distinction. The law [i]can't[/I] account for it, because it would be too impractical to implement. But nevertheless, the fact remains that there are some sixteen-year-olds which are sufficiently adult-like in various respects, one of them being the ability to consent to sex. That's the way it is, like it or lump it. Deal with it.
Quoting tim wood
No, you don't. How about you keep your wild imaginings to yourself? 'Kay, thanks.
Two of the girls complained to the police. But it's possible that the overwhelming majority of the girls had positive experiences with my brother. I doubt it, but I have no way of knowing for sure. I think if you asked, at least 90% of the mothers in the world who have 16 year old daughters would not want them having sex with my brother. That's not dispositive by itself, but it's important to consider why mothers feel that way. Combine that with a large power imbalance, the potential for manipulation and the fact that my brother doesn't have the best interests of the girls in mind.
This is cause for concern. Are you in possession of any of the facts relating to the complaints?
Age: mid-century. Straight. Older than my brother. We had a pretty close, but argumentative relationship before his arrests. Since then, hardly any relationship. I was initially not going to answer your questions, but they have prompted me to wonder whether my pursuing this is partly due to wanting to assert a hierarchical order over my brother. At the same time, I hadn't considered telling my friend before my significant other (who is a mother), said that we should tell him.
So I don't know how pure my motives are, which is why I want good, consistent reasons for acting. And that is why I am at this forum, so that my own biases are checked.
Did these arguments relate in any way to your brothers attitude and behaviour towards women?
Have you considered trying to rebuild the relationship so that you can be a positive influence to your brother?
The first complaint was made by a girl who tried to blackmail my brother after they slept together. Whether the sleeping together included sex or not is up to dispute. The police seized his cell phone and saw other girls. They were contacted. My brother plead guilty to sexual relations with one of them, but says that he did so only so that he could get out of jail.
The second complaint, I have less information on. The details I do have are pretty sordid and I really don't have the stomach or desire to know how much is true or not true. There was another man involved who paid the girl to drop everything. The news story isn't pretty, but my brother claims the news story is wrong.
Yes if you have facts and not just hearsay.
With all due respect, whether or not a girl of 16 yrs old "likes to have sex" is irrelevant when you are speaking sex with a man over the age of 40 yrs old. @Hanover would know better than I what the law is but I can tell you what a mother or father of the age of 40 would think of such a pursuit.
No. They were about politics, religion, life. They were never serious enough to cause a rupture. Before these events, I would have died for my brother.
My brother is a master rationalizer. He will say that it depends on the girl. My brother would argue in the grey area till the cows come home. And I admit, this isn't a black and white issue like pedophilia. There will be some people who have no problem with what my brother is doing, while they won't say the same for pedophilia. I disagree with those people and I think most parents would. But if enough people in our society thought this issue were important, the age of consent would be modified to account for age differences -- taking a moral issue and making it law.
Wow, thanks for taking a stand and biting the bullet of consistency. No one else has.
The easiest way out for me is to tell my friend but not build the website. But right now, i don't see any reason why I am justified doing one but not the other. To my mind, it's either do both or neither. If I don't think my brother's behavior justifies building a website to tell the world, then I shouldn't tell my friend. But going public with this information would be insanely hard emotionally. It would probably destroy my relationship with my parents. A utilitarian might look at the cost to me and the benefit received by the girls who don't have relationships with my brother because of the website. Then see whether there is positive outcome.
But it sure is tough being objective about the costs and benefits when I will be the one bearing those costs.
No, the individual girls experience of the situation is most certainly not irrelevant and ages are not worth a damn when considered in isolation which is why I was trying to establish whether harm was done.
What I meant by "Keep it in the family." would include the parents of the 14 year old visiting your family. Though, it might be more appropriate for your parents than you to discuss this with the parents of the 14 year old. The 14 year old should be included in a discussion about the matter, but it definitely is NOT your place to broach the topic with her alone, apart from her parents.
So, it looks like you have decided to publicize the facts and your suspicions about your brothers' sexual preferences either to the world, or to those immediately involved. My advice remains to "stick to those immediately involved and leave the world out of it".
Whatever you do, you won't be able to undo it. The web-site blatt would be pretty much impossible to recall or undo, so you should just not go there. If your brother ends up having sex with the 14 year old, and if her parents know about it and object, they can report your brother to the police and then the police can do whatever they will do.
Bear in mind, a round of hysteria within her family and police involvement might be worse for the 14 year old than the sex itself.
We live in 21st century U.S. For better or for worse, we have at least a double standard about sex. Nothing new in that statement. In various 21st century countries around the world, what is considered "old enough" varies, though 15, 16, or 17 seem to be the most common ages of consent. Even in the US, quite a few states have legislated that age-of-consent limitations don't apply to people within a 3 or 4 year age range. So, in these states, a 14 year old and a 18 year old would violate no laws about age of consent. Across the border in another state, a 17.9 year old and an 18 year old would be violating the law.
At various times in our history (not talking ancient history here, either--referencing 20th century) the standards of what was considered acceptable and unacceptable were fuzzier than they are now. There is no world-wide consensus, no over-time consensus, on sex and age differences. Almost everyone agrees that pre-pubescent children should not be approached for sex by older people.
Just to get this clear, apart from making sexual comments about my family, you are arguing that the views of the females engaged in sexual act do not matter. Is this correct?
You are assuming suspect competence based on age alone.
I was trying to establish facts about the individuals involved, which I think is a better way to proceed.
Could you expand on why you think a public warning seems too much?
Due process. You are not a court.
Of course the friends, with a 14-year-old daughter, have a right to a warning about your brother.
Even if it wouldn't be legally culpable to withhold that information from them, you know that they have a right and a need to know about that
As for protecting other young girls from him, in ways such as you discussed, yes it would be justified and called-for. It's his own doing, and the situation isn't your fault. His history and tendency is consistent and persistent enough to constitute a danger that's the business of his potential victims and their parents.
The imperative isn't as strong as it is for the warning of the friends, but, as you said, why shouldn't other girls and their parents deserve warning too?
Michael Ossipoff
Great point. Would the difference between telling my friends and telling the world be the private versus public nature of the statement?
I interpret it to mean that you can't jail him or put him on probation on your own authority, or order and require him to register as a sex-offender, etc.
But not being a court doesn't mean that you don't have freedom-of-speech, or that you're required to keep his sex-with-children secret.
Michael Ossipoff
Yes, the public vs. the private is a piece of it. When I say, "Due process. You are not a court." I mean
"you have not seen evidence from a prosecutor and the defense. You have heard no witnesses. You have not heard arguments by both sides; there has been no expert testimony. You are not a jury. You do not have the authority (like, given to you by the state) to declare to the public that your brother is a menace to young womanhood.
Limiting your action to members of your family and the couple with the 14 year old may damage relationship; may prevent harm; may cause harm; but, it is limited to yourself, your parents, your brother, and the couple with the 14 year old. That's already 7 people who might wish you had kept your nose out of it.
If you post your considered but unsubstantiated opinion on a public web site, the whole thing gets messier and nastier.
Of course, you are weighing the good of preventing the 14 year old from having an unpleasant encounter with your brother (the assumption being that it will be unpleasant) against the harm of doing nothing.
The situation recalls a piece of Buddhist advice, modeled after a cliche: "Don't just do something; stand there." Sometimes doing nothing is the best choice because you can not predict what any outcome will be.
In my own family I witnessed a very well-intentioned intervention to protect a sibling and child which poisoned relationships within the family for decades afterwards. I can't say that it was worth it. Once done, it could not be undone.
Once you are convinced of the righteousness of your proposed action, you, like me and everybody else, will put the pedal to the metal and roar off down the road to your good, bad, or indifferent rendezvous with destiny.
Good luck.
I don't know enough about the psychological development in adolescence to give a direct answer, but it would seem that it is most protective of our young to come to an answer from a psycho social analysis, rather than an emotional instinct. The emotional instinct is yours, as an adult outsider, and not necessarily representative of what is experienced by the subject.
2) Do you think my brother's behavior is wrong?
I do, but I think his wrong is more complex than that of a predator taking indiscriminate victims in the pursuit of pleasure. I don't know how he engages with these women. But take the most optimistic assumption, that the girl is aware, and that the experience is something she profited from and has no regrets. Even in this scenario I think he is in the wrong. Society puts the legal age of consent at a point where it protects as many young people as possible and allows them a window where the less mature can catch up with their already mature equals (in age). If your brother is strictly pursuing women who have just passed that point of security, then he is working against a social convention that is in place to protect slower developers. It is legal at a given age because that's as far as society deemed it necessary to provide security for slower developers, without depriving the larger percentage of that population from something that is a natural part of their development. He could therefore be more heinous to social order, than to the women (assuming the best case scenario where the girl takes value from the experience). But then there are the abundance of factors that may arise from serial sexual encounters of this kind. The more women he has sex with, the higher the probability that one will be totally unprepared for the experience, or will not understand the implications of the encounter, or will even be afraid throughout but too ashamed to speak out.
The interpretation that conveys your brother as a master manipulator or sexual pervert is unhelpful, I would say. In discussions about sexual misconduct we are too often overly emotive and lump all perpetrators into one class of stigmatized outcasts. In my opinion your brother is behaving selfishly and his selfishness carries the potential to do harm to these women, harm which he has either downplayed or dismissed.
3) Should our family friends be told about my brother?
My simple answer is yes. Yes for many reasons. Firstly he stands by his actions, and doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. So then there should be no reason for him to expect secrecy. There's a difference between showing loyalty to family by helping them improve themselves, and showing loyalty by helping disguise their flaws. No service is done by masking a loved ones flaws. If he poses a risk to a 14 year old girl which you have the power to eliminate by talking, then shouldn't you speak? If there is adequate evidence that without telling her parents, he poses a real threat, then who benefits from you carrying that burden? If he was to act, then more harm would be created through your silence, assuming again that there is adequate evidence that telling them is the only preventative option. (I am trying to answer throughout in a manner that encompasses the entire spectrum of who your brother could be, and the range of harm that could arise from his actions.
4) If your answer to questions 2 and 3 are yes, what in general am I ethically obligated to do? I am thinking above and beyond notifying our friends. Should I create a website solely devoted to my brother's behavior and engage in SEO so that his name will be a top 10 hit if someone googles him?
I suggest that you are no more or less responsible for telling the world about your brother than you are of helping a homeless person that you encounter on the street. That being my opinion of your responsibility, my thoughts about whether you "should" create a website about your brother must take into consideration your relationship with him, your parents, and your community. You should consider ultimately what you believe your brother is capable of, but also acknowledge that false assumptions could ruin his life. I wouldn't think that you should publicly brand any person so severely unless you had irrefutable evidence that the threat is real and even then I'm not sure that ethically you are the person to do so. You are too close to be objective perhaps, and a better course of action for you to maximize ethical integrity could be to try to speak with him, learn the extremeness of his actions and whether he himself wants to change. If you reach a point where you evaluate he is a real threat then I would suggest unburdening it to people who are un-involved. Perhaps an ultimatum to him to speak to a counselor about it or you report what you know to be true. I hasten to mention that this is all conjecture and only examples of ethical approaches to various potential realities.
If you are seeking the highest moral position, then I think the starting point is to be honest with yourself about how clearly you can analyse the situation from such a close position. The matter about the 14 year old is a tangible and imminent circumstance which you can make a judgment call based on the knowledge you have. What your role is regarding your brother's actions in general is a much more complex issue which will take more careful consideration, in my opinion
But how can it be when in Spain the age of consent is 13, in the UK its 16 (but 14 in some circumstances), in France the law is different (they don't have an age of consent) but effectively its 11? Are you saying that the entire non-American population are not wise? Or is there something special about American 16 year old that means denying them the choice about what to do with their own bodies is 'wisdom' but it is not so with European 16 year olds?
The reason why human rights legislation works so well is that it is universal, not cultural. You're trying to make your own cultural biases into a deontology.
As society advances the age of consent gets higher.
This is clear when we compare societies, but also animals.
So its not about being nasty to those who have a different age,
but about realizing that progress of the mind is the purpose
in having the highest possible age of consent. Of course, the
other side is that if the age is too high then that society starts
to shrink in purely physical terms.
His brother is interested in sleeping with 16 year olds, who in his state of residence are above the age of consent. The friend's daughter is 14, and there is no evidence that his brother has slept with anyone under the age of 16. The two cases of him being arrested for sleeping with someone under the age of consent had an age of consent of 18, and in both cases he only received a "slap on the wrist" which suggests that the girls were only just under-age, that there was little evidence, or that he had reason to believe that the girls were of age.
My judgement is that the OP has little reason to warn his friends and no reason to post a website advertising his brother's sexual interests.
Now, what is your judgment, in plain words, of the person in question? No rationalizations, no speculations, just the facts.
How did you arrive at that judgement given the facts?
Neutral, although depending on him having known that the two girls were under the age of 18 and that the age of consent was 18, at worst I think he's disrespectful of foreign laws.
Aside from this I am in agreement with Michael and would add that it was entirely the brothers responsibility to check the girls age and be familiar with the local laws. That he did not do this is unacceptable but it does not automatically entail that he is a sexual predator and without knowing more details of the case it would be inappropriate to pass judgment on this.
I'm suggesting it can't be. It cannot be both wise to ban sex at age 13-18 and be wise to allow sex at age 13-18. The two opinions are directly opposed to each other, how can they both be 'wisdom'?
If you are claiming that the American law is collective wisdom then you must also be claiming that the laws of every country in Europe are not wise. If so, how is it that America ended up with wise laws but Europe did not?
Yes, I agree.
I also agree.
I am pretty much convinced that it isn't my position to put up a website. I should see someone who is a professional in the field with my concerns.
I think that's a great point. I agree.
Depends on how far under the age of consent they are. If the age of consent is 18 and they're 17, then I don't think it should be a serious offence. If they're 12 then it should be.
Of course.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Perhaps you could tell others here why you think my brother's behavior is terrible.
No.
By what logic would mothers have some magical insight but the daughters themselves not know their own minds?
I say that my brother is psychologically hurting many of the girls. Part of my evidence is that mothers who have daughters would overwhelmingly agree with me. It is relevant because we are talking about psychological damage through sexual acts. Gender and age are very relevant in sexual acts. Mothers with daughters have much more insight into what could cause damage to girls at that age than you or I do because of internal experience and close observation.
Greater experience in an area that the girl doesn't have experience in.
You're assuming that these mothers have only their daughter's internal well-being as the motivation for their position. You only need to look at things like 'rape-shaming' and forced marriages to see that this is blatantly not the case.
You're talking about interfering in the autonomy of another human being (two in fact). Denying a person's autonomy is considered by many ethicists to be about the most immoral thing one can do, you need an awful lot more than just speculation before you consider it.
People agreeing with you is not evidence. What is it specifically about your brother that makes you sure that his actions have caused harm? Because this is not a clear conclusion based on the facts alone.
It might not be dispositive, but it is certainly suggestive and worth taking seriously when it involves experiences that you and I don't have.
As an analogy to help you see where I am coming from, consider product reviews on Amazon. Assuming that they are truthful, you'd probably consider it some evidence as to the quality of the product if you had no experience with the product in question.
If this analogy doesn't help you see my point of view, that's fine. I don't want to argue about the particulars of this analogy. Analogies aren't a good form of reasoning, just good for helping communication.
But the effect is the same whether the reviews are truthful or not, which of course, we don't know.
1) well in society today i think we need to understand that younger people want to have sex earlier than say their parents would like them too. i think 16 is an age were you are either mature or you are not and so maybe 16 isn't the ideal age of consent but in a lot of cases that person may be capable of making a decision like that and i don't believe that it is fair to make a person choose whether to break the law or not over sex at 16, they may be completely sure they are ready to do that and as sex is a very personal thing, they should be able to make that decision at the age of 16, if they so please.
2) it depends, is he lying to the girls? is he manipulative? i don't feel that there is enough evidence to suggest he is doing anything wrong exactly. maybe he isn't making the best decision when he chooses to do that, only because of public and family perception of him if it came out about his sexual activities. if those women are giving him undoubted consent then he is innocent, if both people consent to sex then in no way is that wrong, but it's a matter of perception like i said if you believe a 16 year old is able to consent to sex then you wont have a problem with it but if you think the opposite then you will have a different opinion.
3) i don't think so, in fact i do believe you're are being a little too worried about him, the way you are talking about him, it's almost like you believe he is capable of rape or doing something wrong. if that is what you truly believe then you do what you think is right. do you think he would have sex with a 14 year old? knowing that a 14 year old cannot really consent to that?
4) why would you want to ruin your brothers life? he hasn't done anything to make you think he is a bad person so no, don't do that if you don't believe he deserves it. you have to understand that sex is a normal thing, sounds to me like you still have the views he had before he left to the other country.
we don't know your brother so we don't have any evidence to suggest that he is a bad person.
Nope. I've been an atheist since the age of 11. I am currently living in sin with a woman ;-)
I'm a gay man who was once very sexually active (sigh). Age has since snowed white hair on my head and cooled my carnal enthusiasms. As a mature adult (before and after reaching 40) I sometimes "consented" to sex with other men that turned out to be ill advised in retrospect (interest = consent). I was never risk averse in sexual encounters. Some people are very risk averse, and shy away from situations that present any risk whatsoever.
One of the "risks" of having sex at 14, 15, 16, or at 30, 40, or 50 is that one may regret having taken risks that one later feels were too high or not rewarding enough. Exactly what happened in an encounter is always subject to reinterpretation later--and this is true whether we are talking about sex, medical treatment, financial activity, trying out herbicides on the lawn, and so on. Maybe the sexual experience wasn't as great as one hoped it would be. Maybe a sexual partner had annoying habits; wore too much cologne; popped chewing gum constantly; didn't make the right moves, didn't measure up to expectations, etc. Or, in one case, was far more progressed with AIDS than I thought.
I had sex as a minor, sex which also happened to be illegal at the time on a couple of different counts, with a guy who was about 10 years older than me. I later had regrets about it, NOT because I was abused in some way -- I don't feel I was abused, though I had been carefully seduced and coaxed into the encounter. The sexual relationship went on for several years, and while I was glad to have sex available, I just didn't like the guy that much. I regretted it. I wished it had not happened. (What I really wished was that it had happened, even earlier, with somebody else.)
I didn't give "consent" the way "consent" is now interpreted. I'm still OK with that part. Where this relationship became really problematic was when the desperate neediness of this guy resulted in intrusive, highly inconvenient behavior. Worse, he was kind of like velcro and I couldn't figure out then how to get him unstuck. I wasn't quite mature enough to call his suicidal bluff, a device he used a couple of times to get me to come visit him a few hundred miles away.
So, a first sexual encounter, whether consented or unconsented, can have unforeseen consequences, which we may or may not regret for various reasons. We don't know, sometimes, to what, exactly, we might be consenting.
I think we've entered entirely too speculative a territory here. I really don't see any way to untangle what we know to be an extremely culturally variable attitude to sex from what might be generalisable moral.
It all depends on your abilities to handle certain situations.
How about we institute a sex license test? And forget the age limit.
Not so much of a question type test, but more in line with psychological development and maturity. Obviously there would be a part of it that would question the person's knowledge about the risks and consequences of sex would have to be included, but it would be more important from my point of view to evaluate their ability to make rational decisions.
And I don't think that there should be a practical section to the test.
But we're not talking here about protecting certain people from others, we're talking about presuming to protect them from themselves.
Smoking is definitely a bad choice, as is drinking in excess and eating a poor diet, not getting enough excersice, all bad decisions a person might make with harmful consequences (far more definitively harmful than sex with someone much older than you). Yet we do not intervene to ban people from making these bad choices.
The ordinary individual is clearly in an unbalanced power relationship when faced with the might of the advertising industry, the media etc, yet we do not intervene to ban them from making bad decisions egged on by those industrial giants.
So it's clearly not just about protecting people in low positions of power from harm. We're saying that one group of people require, not just advice and guidance, but actual legal bans in order to prevent them making decisions that they might later regret. Whereas the rest of humanity do not.
The only logical framework I can see for doing this is to base it on some psychological understanding of a child's developing ability to make informed decisions. But that's not what's happening here, all sorts of decisions, including some really important ones, are given to children at all sorts of ages.
Ages of consent, unless biologically based (ie puberty) are just a reflection of a culture's attitude to sex, and it's a breach of human rights to have a cultural preference forced on someone by law.
Work this through then. Bob's been arrested for statutory rape, so he puts the girl on the stand and proves she's mature, or not, and if the jury sides with him, he goes home, but if not, he goes to prison. Bob goes free after having sex with a street wise 14 year old but Joe goes to prison for having sex with a naïve 22 year old?
Rape shield statutes specifically protect rape victims from having their sexual past presented at trial. Are in favor of eliminating those so that juries can consider the background of the victim, despite the fact that no rape victim with an extensive sexual past would ever want to press charges?
My point here is that laws have to be clear and let the public know what to expect and what is expected of them. Since the passage of the test you propose generally will follow age, it seems to make sense to base these laws on age instead of case by case bases, especially considering the scrutiny the victim will be forced to undergo at trial and the uncertainty the accused will have in knowing who they can have sex with.
But this is exactly what happens with all adults out of necessity. If a rape claim is brought on the grounds that the victim was not able to consent - drugs, alcohol, mental health, then someone has to decide if that really is the case. The availability of an easy way of dodging this difficulty in some cases by banning young adults from choosing their own sexual partners does not simply justify itself, it must be weighed on its merits like any other legal proposition.
He was saying that we're talking about protecting children from themselves, rather than protecting children from adults. His point is that we're making it illegal for children to decide for themselves if they're mature enough to have sex.
You nailed it. Well done
clarified what I meant (thanks).
Quoting tim wood
I think it's reasonable to assume that "consent" means something more than the physiological ability to say yes, but there are problems with the notion that consent relies on something which can be safely presumed to be absent in young adults.
I would say consent requires that the person knows what it is they're consenting to, but most teenagers know stuff as complicated as the basics of particle physics, I think it would be a hard call to argue that they didn't know what sex was.
I would say consent had to be freely given, but again, it would be difficult to argue that the power imbalance that age disparity can bring is any different to the power imbalance in employee/employer, teacher/student, doctor/patient, client/worker relationships and yet young adults are asked to give their "consent" to all sorts of things in those relationships.
What I wouldn't say consent had to be, which it seems to be entirely about in these discussions, is avoiding doing something you might regret, or avoiding doing something your parents would disapprove of.
I think there's something like that in Germany. Between a certain age range, it's only a crime if the younger party files a complaint.
First of all we are talking about a test to decide whether a person is old enough to engage in sexual activities with other people, not rape.
My idea would be applied before the act, not after. Much like acquiring a drivers license. A sort of preventive measure if you like. And it would be applied to both sexes, not just females. Most males under 18 would probably fail it though due to lack of maturity.
Quoting Hanover
Again, not relevant to my idea of a test.
Quoting Hanover
While there should be a minimum age somewhere in there it would not be a deciding factor in each case, as your own example of the wise and naive young ladies shows.
Quoting Hanover
Again here you go towards rape and victims, not age of consent which I was discussing. And apart from underage sex being called statuary rape there is quiet often a bit of willingness and even wantonness involved on the part of the victim.
Rape is defined as non-consensual sex. Having sex with someone lacking the ability to consent is rape. Quoting Sir2u
So it's rape if I have sex with a 50 year old who has unliscensed sex?Quoting Sir2u
Ummm yuck. I can't get aboard your victim blaming.
As I stated earlier, this is what a test would have to be designed to do. Find out if the person actually has the ability to consent to having sex.
Quoting Hanover
If she or he is not capable of making a rational informed decision the yes, you can rot in prison.
Quoting Hanover
I am not blaming anyone. Just stating a fact. Many young people engage in sexual activities because they want to.
No where have I talked about rape, coercion, or any other type of unacceptable behavior. I just suggested a method of deciding upon the age of consent. Personally I believe that the basic idea that one sock fits all sizes is great, for socks. But it does not work for kids and their sex lives.
Basically I think that most of the things teenagers have to wait for till a certain age should be looked at more closely. The age that they can buy booze being one of the most ridiculous. It should be a minimum of at least twenty five.
Agreed, so on what grounds are we deciding that a 17 year old requires protection from exploitation and abuse but an 18 year old does not?
Quoting tim wood
Yes, and they are all set at an entirely arbitrary and culturally determined age. Why shouldn't a 14 year old do healthy and rewarding work? Why shouldn't a responsible 15 year old be allowed a glass of wine with their meal?
Its not the existence of an age of consent I object to, its the cultural influence over what that age actually is. We cannot keep denying a young adult's right to choose what to do with their own body on the basis of some cultural notion of development with no objective basis.
Quoting tim wood
OK, so what is "same-age" - same year, same month, exactly the same birthday? Why is it you are so confident that age determines power with such accuracy?
A lot of sex happens between preteens and also early teens, so if they are the same age and there is no force or coercion and with mutual "consent" sex would be alright? It is funny to think that the teen years in when kids suffer from peer pressure more than at any other time. Most of the time it is not even an individual that coerces them into having sex but the groups the associate with.
A lot of people would disagree with that idea because they would say that they are not mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions.
A true age of consent should not be a blanket number of years covering everyone. It should take into consideration not just their needs, desires and the ability to understand what they are doing but what would actually be needed to make sure they live a fulfilling life.
I doubt you'd have any trouble finding studies which show that unpleasant sexual relationships can be psychologically harmful. What I very much doubt is that you'd find any demonstrating that this is uniquely the case for under 18s but miraculously goes away after then, that's my point.
In hunter-gatherer societies children are given complete freedom, they are free to play with knives, poisons, fire, deep rivers, wild animals etc. What they learn from this is that they have to decide for themselves what is dangerous and what is not, they have to learn how to spot danger and avoid it. In the really deadly scenarios, and adult is always close by to step in, but other than that, they are allowed to make their own mistakes and learn from them. The result is some of the most psychologically well-adjusted young adults in the world.
In our culture we spend the whole of childhood being told what we can and can't do, we learn nothing but that someone else will tell us whether a thing is a danger or not. During the teenage years, we rebel against this authority in order to try and dictate our own person-hood, but having learnt absolutely no skills at all to help us spot danger. The result is a period in life where reckless behaviour is the norm.
How do you expect a child or young adult to learn what is good for them if you protect them from all and every harm? How do you think they magically know what to do on their 18th birthday having had absolutely no experience at all up to then.
We're failing our children badly by mollycoddling them until later and later ages, postponing their learning of vitally important life skills and teaching nothing but the fact their personal autonomy means nothing to us.
Perplexed, how do you know that many 16-19 year old girls like to have sex? How do you know what their take away is with having sex with any man, of any age? How many men had you slept with by age 16? How much older was he/were they than you? Do regret having sex with your first? Were you worried about being pregnant? Did you wonder if he broke you because of all of the blood? When did you tell your parents that you were having sex? Is one of your fantasies to get a "do -over" in losing your virginity to someone less experienced, more gentle and slower moving?
Quoting Perplexed
Sure girls can make decisions for themselves about many things at 16 like what kind of makeup to buy, what prom dress will look the best and what their friends should do about their first high school crush. Those are things that 16 year olds have the rationale to choose and can handle the lasting impact of the consequences of their choices. To look back in horror at the peach taffeta prom dress you thought was so princess like is one thing but to look back at how you navigated your sexual growth with someone twice your age makes for therapy, at least a good year of therapy. All 16 year old girls have the desire to express their free will to choose but they do not always understand the long term consequences of their choices which is why adults set what appear to be arbitrary ages for consent.
One more thing: even though it can be condescending for any adult to assume that girls at age 16 don't have minds of their own, IT IS NOT condescending of an adult to assume that a 16 year old cannot always make the best decisions for themselves.
Yes, we can deny a young adult's right to choose what to do with their own body until they, alone, are capable of handling the consequences of their actions both foreseen and unforeseen.
Because I find no reason to comment on it.
Well Tiff, you can at least try to deny them the right. And then they will go behind your back and do it anyway. Which would be worse because they would lose the benefit of knowledge and support that adults are supposed to give children.
It should be the adults job to prepare their kids for adulthood in all senses. It is not right that adults deny them things until they are 18 or 21 and them say "Go ahead now, on your own."
I still think that deny anything until a specific age is reached does more harm than good. Simply because mother nature will eventual take over and the desires will rule the day. Whether it is about sex, booze, drugs or even gambling, the best prevention to bad things happening is education. Ignorant people are famous for doing more stupid things than educated ones.
Kids being made aware of the consequences of their actions beforehand are less likely to do things. Kids that are made aware of and understand the reasons for not doing something should then be able to make a reasonable decision for themselves.
Why are there so many teen mothers around? Because they believed the guy that wanted to screw them that they would not get pregnant the first time. Because they had been told by their classmates that you cannot get pregnant if you do it standing up. Because their stupid parents never told them about sex and its results. And lots of other dumbassed ideas I have heard from students over the years.
Do you think that all of those teen mothers would have let it happen if they had been properly educated?
Ass an adult, education is the key to deciding what you want to do in your life. Why should it be less for a young boy or girl?
Absolutely, well said. If a 16 year old can't make at least a reasonably sound decision about their own body then it's us as parents that have failed, not biology.
Well I am, what makes you think I'm not?
Do children that are underage for something have any rights in that area? For example, what rights does a 12 year old have about alcohol?
What abilities would a 14 year old need for sex?
What capabilities does a 13 year old need to be allowed to drive a car?
Quoting tim wood
Yes I do.
Quoting tim wood
Which rights could be usurped if they are underage? Even if you think your 17 year old kid is mature enough to be in a sexual relationship, the law says it cannot be allowed.
I don't really care to discuss my personal circumstances on a public forum, but, yes, suffice to say that I have never told my children what they can and cannot do, they are perfectly capable of making rational decisions for themselves, the idea that children cannot decide what is in their own best interests is a myth perpetuated so that adults can justify forcibly moulding their children into an image they, or their culture, prefer. Adults treat them like dolls they can dress up and make behave in whatever way suits their little games. It's nothing to do with their best interests.
Boy I'm not so sure I share your confidence when it comes to giving the average 16-year-old the type of complete freedom over their lives it seems you're advocating for here. At the very least, I'd imagine most people that age (and maybe even a few years older) could benefit a great deal from the benevolent guidance and personal examples of those around them, be they parents, teachers, coaches, or whomever.
To me, parenting is a good example of something which (on average) there's a golden mean to be aimed at and extremes to be avoided. It depends on the particular kid, of course, but finding the right combination of encouragement, involvement, discipline, and occasional tactful pulling back to let them make mistakes, all within the framework of unconditional love and support, seems far preferable to both the laissez faire "do whatever you want it's your life" and the overbearing "you're going to do exactly what I tell you to do" approaches.
In hindsight, I think I could have used more "active" parenting of the type I just briefly outlined during those impressionable childhood and teenage years. Left to my own devices I pretty much took the easy road in everything I did, which for the most part wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great either, and I basically tried to just slip in with the crowd and do what everyone else was doing. At sixteen I had little clue as to who I was or what I wanted out of life, and I don't think I was atypical in this regard.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I would have HATED being given periodic pep talks, being encouraged to give my best effort at everything I chose to do, being encouraged to reflect upon the long-term consequences of my immediate actions, being reminded that my life was intimately connected with those around me, etc. But in hindsight I really think I could have used one or two older and wiser people in my life to offer some conventional wisdom (however banal it sounds to sophisticated ears) guided by their genuine concern.
Anyhow, this topic clearly flows into wider issues of parenting and the difficulties of trying to be a positive influence on your kids without having them resent you for being too controlling. I have two boys and their personalities are way different, so again I realize there's no one size fits all approach and would acknowledge the dangers of trying to force your kids to become who YOU want them to be and not who they want to be.
I'd re-emphasize that most teenagers probably aren't thinking of those major life issues during this transitional time (nor should they be IMO), and because of this shortsightedness many would likely benefit from the positive involvement and active concern of their parents rather than disengagement, however well-intentioned that may be. It's somewhat of a nuanced position, I guess, and I do get your concern about over-parenting to the point of being detrimental to the development of the teenager.
I took it as articulating the importance of the sort of active parenting (for lack of a better term) I was fumbling to outline above. To be honest, that seems much different from what you expressed in your most recent post, although I may very well be misinterpreting your position (or his).
I don't want to make presumptions about your upbringing so I'm going to stick to hypotheticals and leave you to correct me if you have personal experience to the contrary you'd like to share.
The thing with free parenting is that it treats good decision making like any other skill, it needs practice. I would be reluctant myself to give most 16 year olds any important decisions, but I'd be reluctant to give most 40 year olds important decisions because I think kids are not trained in how to make decisions and they don't get much better in adulthood either.
Right from the start, children are told "don't touch that", "don't go there", cupboards are locked, dangerous things are put out of reach. Children grow up thinking that anything that is a danger to them has either been ruled on already or removed from their environment.
So by the age of 16, they still have no idea how to make a sound judgement because they've never practiced. It's like expecting someone to ride a bike without ever falling off.
My boy had his first knife when he was 4, he's now quite an accomplished carver and makes most of his own toys, but I wouldn't give a knife to most 16 year olds I meet, because they weren't given one when young, they just don't know how to handle it.
The brain gets less plastic as we get older, so new skills become harder to learn, including how to make good decisions.
We avoid the chance for children to learn these skills by experience when their brains are most amenable to learning, and then expect them to learn the whole lot in the space of a few years, just when they've got everything else going on. It's no wonder we get the poor decision making ability of the adult society we've ended up with.
Sounds like you're an exceptional parent who's thought this through a great deal. The way you pitched your parenting philosophy here--specifically the reasoning behind your (in)actions--actually makes a lot of sense and there's really not much to disagree with. Your son has a good example to follow and I'm sure he benefits from that exposure quite a bit.
In some ways think I kind of fall into the category you mentioned regarding those who have to figure things out for themselves, but unfortunately it took me a long time to do so and in the process I was (e.g.) a mediocre student when I could have been exceptional, a slightly better than average athlete when I could have been much better, etc. If I had someone behind me pushing me I think the trajectory of my life may have been much different, probably even much better.
Not that I completely regret the path I've taken, but I did make some poor choices that I look back on with a sense of utter disbelief. Who was that young man who did those dumb things? Yeah, that was me. I see the person I've turned out to be, I compare that with my youthful self, and the contrast is pretty extreme. Frightening even if I'm being honest.
To switch gears here for a minute, I'm of the admittedly antiquated opinion that developing certain character traits is even more important than acquiring knowledge about things. Parenting, and education more generally, should be just as (if not more) concerned with the development of a certain way of being as with the accumulation of information, however useful the latter may be. Both are important, obviously, but I feel like the character development side of things is often overlooked these days if not outright dismissed as a remnant of an obsolete past.
In my estimation, if one has a virtuous, inspired, thoughtful, perpetually inquisitive character, then one has "succeeded" in life, and this regardless of how much money or what type of social status one has attained. I know that sounds a bit corny and probably unrealistic, and it definitely runs contrary to modern ideals and the dominant values underpinning notions of personal fulfillment and happiness in a liberal democratic consumerist society, but that's what my experience so far has led me to believe, and it's one of the few things I'm not agnostic about.
I should also clarify my own upbringing a bit since I think I gave the erroneous impression that my parents were horrible, which wasn't the case. They were very young when they had kids (my mom was 16 when she had my older sister), neither one had great parents or other role models to follow, both worked very hard with long hours at their jobs to provide a decent material existence for us, and they eventually divorced and kind of moved on with their lives when we were in our teens. All of these things (and others) led to maybe a lack of time and attention being placed on our overall development.
So they did the best they could given their personal background and circumstances, and under the guiding values of our commercialized culture. I don't resent them at all for not doing what they didn't know how to do. But still, sometimes I think of what could have been had they been more involved in our lives on a daily basis. I'm thinking primarily along the lines of Aristotle's emphasis on character development through habituation sort of thing, which in turn may have positively impacted other areas of our lives like school, personal relationships, work, etc.
But yeah, I'll leave it at that while acknowledging the difficulty I have in abstracting too much from my own concrete experiences on this topic. I'll just add one final thing, and that's that it's not just me I think of here but even more my older sister, who was always super smart and extremely talented and capable of great things, but who was also given way too much leeway to do what she wanted to do (which was usually to ditch school, hang out with older people, drink alcohol and do drugs, etc.) when what she probably needed--she readily acknowledges this now--was some parental guidance, direction, and discipline.
I do think there's a wide gulf separating your thoughtful, purposeful strategy on raising kids on one side and parental indifference or (as perhaps in my case) just plain honest ignorance of how to parent properly on the other. There was really no conscious strategy being implemented to help us develop the necessary skills and traits to prepare us for adulthood. Lots of kids are in that predicament, I think, and as you suggest many seem to stay that way through adulthood. So it takes great parenting to cultivate the specific conditions under which your kids to learn to think rationally about things and to solve practical problems on their own.
Not sure if any of these somewhat disconnected thoughts add much to the topic under discussion, but I will say I think you made some good points here. Maybe it depends on molding your style to fit the particular kid's disposition and other natural qualities. Some kids may thrive under your approach--as it sounds like your son does--while others may languish (as I in my youthful stupidity may have).
I recall a famous retired baseball coach saying something that I found very interesting when asked what made him so successful on the field and so respected among his former players. He became a good coach, he said, once he realized that it was a mistake to treat all of his players the exact same way: some needed a kick in the ass, some needed a pat on the ass, and some just needed to be left alone.
Not sure if that's relevant to the topic at hand but it struck me as being indicative of a sort of practical wisdom which can be applied to teaching, coaching, parenting, or any type of mentoring relationship.
This is certainly something that is often on my mind, especially if the kids are choosing to spend their day climbing trees instead of studying (they don't go to school obviously) but I think it's too easy to think that a push will, or would have, had an overall good impact. One only needs to look at your average high achiever to see that things are rarely all sweetness and light for them. The 'push' they received had its negative impact too.
What I've personally found to be really important is setting a good example and providing a positive environment. Given those two things, kids tend to make the right choices.
I find it perennially mystifying that parents will shout at their children, demand they do as they're told and spend all their free time watching TV and are then surprised when their children shout a lot, try to make others do what they want them to and spend their days watching TV.
With regards to your 'bad' choices, a lot of what this thread has been about is the ability (right, I would say) for kids to make some poor choices and see how they turn out, they've got to stand on their own two feet someday and the ability to know a good choice from a bad one doesn't magically arrive at 16,18 or whenever. I wouldn't presume to comment on your own experience, but I suspect you learned some important lessons from those early choices and I doubt you would have the motivation to be who you are now without having discovered for yourself what happens.
It's refreshing to hear someone else thinking there's more to an upbringing than acquiring knowledge. Children actually have a 'right' to an education under the UDHR, they do not have a right to play time. Does that sound right to you?
Personally I couldn't agree more with your definition of sucess. Like you it's one of the few things I feel I know is right (although there's lots of things I think I know are wrong).
I agree that some kids need more guidance than others, but I really can't see any justification for this constant need society seems to have to insist it knows best to such an extent as to actually ban them from certain activities and make others mandatory. Even so much as a cursory glance at the adult world will tell anyone that what modern culture thinks is best for everyone, most assuredly is not.
But my guess is that you didn't give him a skill saw at age 4.
I don't think anyone disagrees with the idea that kids should be given age appropriate risks. The focus of the disagreement is which risks are appropriate for which age. The brain's risk assessment capacity doesn't seem to fully develop until the mid-20s. That's why governments draft the young. The young don't think they will die.
Quoting Pseudonym
I'd truly be interested in any evidence that you have to support that last sentence. If it is true, I wonder how causality is determined. l'd like to see comparisons to other small, inclusive communities such as the Amish.
No as far as I can remember, no. I recall a few occasions when I've had to be quite vocal about what I saw as being the likely consequences of some action they were considering that I thought was a bad idea, but in the end the choice has always been theirs when it is theirs to make. Kids aren't stupid.
The situation never arose, he never even so much as picked up my circular saw, he asked me if my chainsaw would hurt if it 'bit' him when he was younger, I said it would, he never touched my chainsaw after that either. Why would he?
Quoting Tree Falls
I don't know where you're getting this from, but I'm presuming it's the studies done on recklessness in teenagers. Actually, more tightly controlled studies have shown that; a) the effect disappears when the teenagers are alone (so it's more peer pressure than inability) and b) that in scenarios where they're asked to judge the risk objectively, they are no less capable than adults.
What's more, the growth and plasticity of the young brain continues until about 25. The peak child-bearing age in most hunter-gatherer tribes is 22. I know evolutionary theory is not popular here, but it seems unlikely to me that we could have evolved a type of brain incapable of responsibility at the time when we're most likely to be responsible for the next generation.
Quoting Tree Falls
I don't have any comparisons to the Amish (or similar), but I'd be happy to collect a few papers for you when I'm back in the office tomorrow.
That sounds like I wrote it.
We hardly ever had supervision when I was growing up, mum and dad told us that we should not do this or that because of what might happen if we did. And they were not shy about being graphical in their descriptions of what could happen. Like most kids we paid attention to some things and ignored other things. I don't remember making the same mistake twice though and it was not because we got punished for doing things.
As a teen living in southern Louisiana, I and most of the kids around where I lived were like Huck Finn. We spent lots of time out on the bayous and lakes, none of the parents were overly worried about that because they made sure that the kids learned to swim early and taught them how to use boats. We built and rode go carts and mini bikes with lawnmower engines and had a few accidents. But we figured why it had happened and were careful to make sure it did not happen again. Sometimes we got into trouble, but every time we did we had to admit that we had been warned by the adults. I screwed up my leg and almost 50 years later still suffer from it, but what hurt more at the time was my friend's dad saying "I told you that would happen". I rode bikes many times after that and still do occasionally but I have never made that mistake again.
I remember when I got caught stealing cigarettes from my dad, I was almost 10. He did not say that we were doing anything wrong but invited us to join him and gave us a box each to smoke. An hour later and green around the edges my brother gave up smoking for life. I carried on a few more years until I ran out of money one day for bus fair but had a full box of smokes. Never smoked again.
There is a saying that I am rather fond of:
"He who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
He who has never tried anything new has not lived a life but has participated in an existence"
Childhood is a time for exploring the world, for experiencing things and finding out about yourself. Too many kids nowadays have no idea about these things because the are coddled up and protect from everything. They have little idea about their own abilities and limitations.
They have not been allowed to find out the consequences of their actions because they are not allowed to act. Many parents prefer to have a bold sitting playing video and drinking soda instead of actually doing something because they are scared that the poor little darling will make the wrong choice and be hurt physically or mentally.
The parent of one of my students told me a few years ago that her son had not done a homework assignment because she had gotten home very late. Turned out that she would not let him do the work by himself in case he got it wrong. How the fuck will that poor kid survive in the real world.
It is a well known fact that telling kids not to do things does not mean that they will not do it. If they think they are big enough to do something they will try. What kids need is knowledge, not a bunch of rules that are easy to ignore and the chance to learn from their mistakes as well as from their successes.
And if there is one thing that does not fit into this it is a specific age limit for being allowed to act.
Ignorance is not knowing.
Stupidity is being aware that you are doing something wrong and going ahead and doing it anyway.
It is scary sometimes when you look back at the things you did. But those same things have made you what you are.
I for one would not bother going back and change things if I was given a chance. I am happy with who I am.
I've no web links, but you might want to start with the work of anthropologist James Suzman who works with the Kalahari Bushmen.
For an account of the disaster of the agrarian revolution see James Scott's "Against the Grain", or Jared Diamond's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee"
Marshall Sahlins's paper "The Original Affluent Society" id the most famous account and contains a considerable number of links
You might also like Daniel Everett's investigation with the Piraha, in which he found no evidence or even notion of psychological disorders, but I don't have a link to the paper.
Maryanski and Turner's book "The social cage, human nature, and the evolution of society" gives a good overview of the changes wrought by societal changes during the agricultural revolution.
For balance
http://www.academia.edu/6409883/HAPPINESS_IN_EVOLUTIONARY_PERSPECTIVE Give s agood account of some of the difficulties of measuring happiness
And The Politics of Egalitarianism: Theory and Practice edited by Jacqueline S. Solway if you can find a copy gives a balanced account of the perspectives, both from supporters and critics of the position.
I agree completely. I think it's safe to assume that the personal example you set for your son is a huge factor in his positive development. This subtle way of communicating your values and beliefs is probably a lot more effective than imposing these on him in a browbeating way. Reading books rather than watching TV, cooking and eating at home rather than going out all the time, having great conversations and soliciting my kids' views rather than imposing mine on them, etc. will hopefully leave a lasting impression on them.
Quoting Pseudonym
Agreed again. The tough thing is that the stakes become really high when issues like sex and hardcore drugs are involved. You can become a parent before you're ready, you can become a drug addict, etc. I'm not trying to sound like a prude here--I definitely speak from experience on these matters rather than from some holier than thou standpoint--but there are obviously some legitimate risks involved in experimenting with "serious" things in a capricious manner, which is precisely what I did.
I was fortunate to come to my senses in my mid-20's, but it was a dangerous stage in my life that could have (and nearly did) turned out much different. I learned a lot about myself and other important things, that's true, but at the same time I'm not sure I want my kids to take that path. But it is a difficult call, and your point is well taken about learning from mistakes and using these to make good choices moving forward.
Quoting Pseudonym
Could you explain this a bit further? I'm not sure what UDHR stands for, but I love playtime for my kids! Learning through play and other informal/unconventional educational strategies are great IMO. I always felt like my natural inquisitiveness (which was strong until I was around 7-8-years-old) was sapped by having to sit in class for 7 hours a day; I came to associate school and learning with drudgery, and it took me a very long time to recapture that fascination and interest in the world around me.
I've said this before around here but I'm a bit of a conservative hippie, and it's been one of my pet projects to try to articulate a position which aligns a form of cultural conservatism (anti-consumerist, pro-environmental, artistically-inclined, pro-family and community, etc.) with a progressive social and economic agenda. I think there are possible areas of overlap worth exploring that could eventually lead to a significant grassroots movement, although this would likely be way down the line. (Apologies for another digression)
Education and child development loom large here, but my ideas are much more experiential and intuitive than scholarly and well-researched. I'd like to change that, though, so I'm open to any suggestions on books, articles, etc. that you think I may benefit from. I'm intrigued enough by your responses to look into your position on parenting in more depth.
Missed this last time but it's a huge issue. This captures the dilemma of parenting these days when the culture your kids are immersed in will significantly shape them in ways that you personally find abhorrent, or at the very least less than optimal for a human being's overall development. You want them to learn to think and act for themselves instead of feeling like they're your puppet, of course, but at the same time there are larger social and cultural forces out there that will provide them with a sense of personal identity and a set of values if you don't step in to challenge these.
The situation is like a tug-of-war in which radically opposed worldviews are set off against each other competing for the "soul" of your kids. But I think this comes back to the importance of positive examples in their development, which are then contrasted with the ideals and images of what they should want, how they should act, what they should think, etc. that they're constantly subjected to outside the home. I like the subtle and unpretentious nature of your approach just as much as its pragmatism.
Lots of truth in what you wrote there. I think I was just a really dumb kid. Not dumb as in doing stupid things all the time--that came in my late teens and early-20's--but as in "I'd rather sit in my room and watch television all day than get out and experience the world" dumb. That's what I chose to do with my time and I didn't learn much by doing so. If anything it made me dumber.
What do you do with a kid like that? Serious question. I think that may be where the theory of complete childhood freedom breaks down for me a bit--again I'm only going off my own example--and you may have to (at a bare minimum) force them to get outside and live a little.
The assumption seems to be that kids are naturally active and inquisitive, that they will explore and learn many things through their experiences, but what if they choose to do nothing at all? For kids who do like to get involved in a wide variety of activities the more disengaged style of parenting seems fitting.
The UDHR is the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The only use of the term 'compulsory' in the entire document (which is otherwise very careful with it's wording) in in the phrase "Elementary education shall be compulsory." (Article 26). There is no right contained in the declaration that children should be allowed tme to play, that they should have their wishes considered (though there is in the European Convention on the Rights of the Child), but the Declaration, in an unprecedented use of the term, makes primary education 'Compulsory'.
It just strikes me as indicative of the extent to which the idea that children must be forcibly 'educated' as if this was something done to them, rather than by them, has become ingrained in our culture.
Quoting Erik
Sounds a lot like my philosophy. I agree with the autonomy of conservatism, but the egalitarianism of socialism. There doesn't seem to be a term for it, but I believe it is our natural state and that's why there's such a left/right split. No-one can decide who is right because they both are. It's the socioeconomic mechanism that doesn't allow the two to co-exist hence the arguments about which one we're going to have.
Quoting Erik
The place to start is Peter Gray's book "Free to Learn". He also writes a lot for 'Psychology Today' website, so Googling him will give you some outlines of his thinking.
Sergio Pellis's "The Playful Brain" gives a good technical account of the psychological basis.
Sugata Mitra describes a fascinating experiment in self education where he put a computer in a wall in Rural India, no teachers, no instructions. Within hours the local children had found it and were already surfing the Web. Days later, many of them had email accounts!
As you can probably guess, this is my area of academic interest (as well as personal) and we're already way off topic for a thread supposed to be about a specific ethical problem, perhaps this should be a thread of its own? @Michael
One thing that often crops up in these discussions is this problem of competing influences that you highlight here. The issue I think simply boils down to what we really mean by autonomy and the freedom to learn.
If we are in a world where there are strong negative cultural influences, then learning how to deal with them is a skill that kids must obtain. Like any other skill it must be learnt by practice, making mistakes and learning from them.
Kids still need the freedom to do this.
I sometimes express this as a thought experiment. Imagine if we banned children from learning anything about numbers, they weren't even allowed to count and all books with numbers in were unavailable to children. In such a world, the idea that a 15 year old could solve a quadratic equation would seem ludicrous. No-one would even countenance the idea, and people would cite examples of 15 year olds they know, trying to even add up and getting it horribly wrong. But we know, in a world of numbers a 15 year old can be highly competent, even the least numerate can count and do basic arithmetic by then. It's the same with teaching responsibility. It's a skill like any other. Practice it and you'll get good at it, don't practice it and you'll be rubbish.
I hope this doesn't seem to impersonal, but my reply to Erik above also addresses the example you raise here, would it be OK to just ask that you read that as a response, to save me rewriting it?
Agreed, any method to prevent the child walking into traffic is appropriate including force because the child cannot learn from their mistake, nor be persuaded otherwise. The child clearly does not want to be run over, they're not aware of the consequences and we can make an almost certain guess that, were they aware of the consequences, they would not take the action they're about to take. Simple.
Quoting tim wood
This is not at all like your last example. The children can learn from their mistakes, they can (theoretically) be persuaded otherwise. It's not at all clear that the child hasn't considered all the consequences and decided that they'd prefer to take the risks,and we have plenty of time to make those consequences clear as many times as we like just to be absolutely sure.
Getting run over is definitely bad, everyone in the world agrees on that, it's not cultural, there's no personal opinion, just plain bad.
Cigarettes, drink, drugs, promiscuity and criminal behaviour are not definitely bad. Almost everyone in the world disagrees on one or more aspects of each, it is entirely cultural, the law can't even agree between countries or at different points in history. To impose any of those things directly against the child's will, when they are in full knowledge of the potential consequences, is to make that child into a possession of yours, not a person in their own right.
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we must often guess what another person wants, or would want if they knew what we know. This principle covers all sudden eventualities and most of a child's decisions as a baby/toddler.
At all other times we just don't have the right to impose by force what we think they ought to do without the same justification used to impose any normal restriction (demonstrable harm to society).
Does a twelve year old Stay away from sex because they are
too scared of mom and dad finding out and them getting angry with her?
too scared of catching something or getting pregnant?
too ignorant about it, has no real idea what it is all about?
has considered all of the information given to her and decided to wait a while.
I for one would hope the last to be true.
What exactly do you mean when you say "a twelve year old can't do it"?
Quoting tim wood
No I did not miss it, the last one includes that. Where do you think kids should get their knowledge and advice from, mom and dad, right. But as you said earlier.
Quoting tim wood
Most parents either tell their kids that they cannot and had better not do it, or the leave the decision up to the kid to make. Hoping all the while that they have enough knowledge on the topic and that things wont turn out all screwed up.
Right, they are not. But that does not mean that they don't think.
Quoting tim wood
And here is an example of them thinking. As you say they do know the difference.
Most kids are smart enough from an early age to tell the difference between what is good and bad. Even without cultural influences that they are too young to understand. I will try to find the paper I read a while ago about this but for now here is an article from everyone's favorite source.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1275574/Babies-know-difference-good-evil-months-study-reveals.html
The omission that keeps being left by the way side is that the female under the age of 18, now possesses a life long commitment to the decision that she now has to make. Have a baby at age 19 by herself and the flowery path that a single woman with a child has ahead of her OR deal with the life long ramifications of having to make the choice to have an abortion and have to disclose that on medical records for the rest of her life.
And where is he who has been slapped on the wrist twice by the law and still believes he is morally correct in attempting to have "consensual" sex with anyone over the age of _____
Out buying formula after working a double shift? Or out trying to tempt another young lady into his trap?
Since you're pointing out irrelevancies...
What they think might also be irrelevant to whether it's morally right or wrong, and even the law might be irrelevant to whether it's morally right or wrong, since neither of those necessarily determine the moral rightness or wrongness of the act. Certainly, it's not inconceivable that it's both legal and morally acceptable, and that what the parents or others think has arisen as a result of prejudice (ageism) or overprotectiveness.
Show me where, in this discussion, I have not taken a stand for principles I believe in, despite the potential controversy surrounding them. Show me where I have been inconsistent. Either do so or retract your comment.
It is a fact in UK law that, under the right circumstances (which I won't elaborate upon, but which you could look up), a sixteen-year-old in the UK can consent to sex.
Now, given that in the same reply from which I quoted you above, you said that the law is a statement of collective wisdom, why the need for me to provide additional justification? I think that it's safe to assume that this legislation was not enacted on a whim, but rather based on a considered assessment of the available evidence.
Quoting tim wood
With regards to what I mean by that word, that is again something which can be looked up with relative ease, given that we have the internet at our disposal, and given that my meaning is no different to that set out in the legislation to which I've been referring.
"The age of consent to any form of sexual activity is 16 for both men and women. "Sex" can mean penetrative sex, oral sex or masturbating together".
Quoting tim wood
Two important points:
1. The views of the community are not always right.
2. The views of the community at a given time are often, though not always, reflected in law.
With that in mind, here is some legal history for you:
[I]In 1275, the first age of consent was set in England, at age 12 (Westminster 1 statute). In 1875, the Offences Against the Person Act raised the age to 13 in Great Britain and Ireland, and ten years later the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 raised it to 16.
Other countries have set the legal age at anything from 12 to 20.
There were laws put in place and maintained for lengthy periods of time in Britain over many centuries, from Roman times right up to the last century, which criminalised homosexual activity.[/I]
Often, the views of a community are influenced by prejudice and narrow-mindedness. This is perhaps most notable in medieval times and the period known as the Dark Ages, but also in more recent history with examples such as Apartheid, The Civil Rights Movement, and women's suffrage. Enlightenment has been a long, long process, and we still have some way to go.
Quoting tim wood
That's a dangerously worded red herring. I will insist that you do not make out as though I am defending adult/child sexual contact. As far as I am concerned, for the sake of this discussion and my involvement in it, let it be known that a "child" refers only to anyone under the age of consent in the UK, which is anyone under the age of sixteen. Is that clear?
Quoting tim wood
Of course they should, barring any unmentioned circumstances which might make me think otherwise! I'm a liberal, not an outdated reactionary, not someone blinded by prejudice, not someone who rushes to cry out in alarm, "Won't somebody think of the children!?"
Quoting tim wood
Says you. Such dismissals are a dime a dozen. I'm only interested in substantial disagreement.
Quoting tim wood
What are you calling a "child"? What are you calling an "unequal relationship"? What are you calling "rape"? You need to be much clearer. First of all, I need to know what you're actually talking about. I can't tell whether you're taking aim at something I have no intention of defending, or something I consider perfectly acceptable but subject to prejudice. Perhaps both. If your use of terminology differs from that in UK law, then you risk talking past me.
You both seem to be arguing from a utilitarian perspective that because some harm can arise from the young adult's actions you (or the law) is justified in acting to prevent that harm.
But this alone is clearly not enough, adults make really bad decisions and yet the law does not intervene. We could, for example ban people from drinking alcohol if they've ever made a bad choice and drunk too much. We could make it illegal to have sex with someone who has had an abortion. We could put anti-social octogenarians under house arrest.
So why don't we do these things, they would be quite certain to avoid further harms. In fact someone whose already had an unwanted pregnancy has proved themselves at least likely to make the same mistake again. More than can be said for the teenager.
We don't do them for one of two reasons, both of which you are both ignoring. Either we consider autonomy to be a right and so it is a duty to maintain it, or, remaining utilitarian, we consider the harms of acting outweigh the harms of not.
So my question to you both is, if you think that a 17 year old should have the full authority of the law brought to bear to ban them from having sex with whomever they choose, then why would you not extend the same ban to those adults who have demonstrated themselves by their actions liable to make the exact same bad decisions that you are concerned the 17 year old will make?
On a separate note, check your statistics. Countries with lower ages of consent have lower rates of teenage pregnancies, so if you're really concerned about teenage pregnancy then you should logically be arguing in favour of lowering the age of consent.
:up:
I don't know if this point has already been made, but there are other laws which may be of relevance here, such as defamation law. You can't just go around publishing accusations of such a serious nature without risk of legal consequences, and that's just how it should be. (And whenever you post something online, that's an instance of publishing).
He mistakenly includes speculation amongst the facts, hence he arrives at a different conclusion from that of you or I.
Yes, it's relevant, but perhaps not in the way that you think it is. Do you think that it's relevant that a higher percentage of football fans would think that racism is acceptable when compared to the average? Do you think that it's relevant that a higher percentage of oil tycoons would take the stance of denying or underplaying the effects of climate change when compared to the average? It's not a good idea to appeal to those groups who are most likely to have a conflict of interest for a judgement on such matters. To suggest otherwise is indicative of naivety at best.
:lol:
At first I thought that you were joking, but having read further, it seems that you were actually being serious. I think that that's a terrible idea. I think that you'd have priests, scout leaders, and youth football coaches quitting their jobs en masse to apply for this job.
I think I specified that it would be a psychological test and that there would not be a practical part to it. And you forgot to mention politicians.
Quoting Sir2u
Yes, but who would be making the psychological assessments? Who would determine whether they pass or fail? Or do we have have computers that can do that now?
It's asking for trouble. It would increase the risk of sexual predation on vulnerable youths. You've come up with the bright idea of fixing an imperfect system by replacing it with a weaker alternative which would bring with it an additional set of problems. What you're suggesting is a bit like trying to fix a leaking roof by demolishing the house.
And I forgot to mention radio DJ's and presenters from the BBC in the seventies.
Maybe a psychologist could do it?
Quoting Sapientia
That would at least be impartial and unbiased.
Quoting Sapientia
How so? In what way could it increase the level of "predation"?
Quoting Sapientia
How is it possible to state that something that has never been tried is weaker than the present unfair system? How did you make the comparison?
Quoting Sapientia
It is about time it was done as well. A system that discriminates against people needs to be removed and replaced.
At least my method would make a complete sex education for everyone obligatory so no one could claim that "I did not think she could get pregnant and she never told it it was possible"
Yes, great idea. And I'm sure that that would in no way be seen as an attractive position for child sexual predators.
Quoting Sir2u
Yes. The only problem is that these computers don't exist, unless you know something that I don't.
Quoting Sir2u
Just think about it. It's not rocket science. It would be yet another position in which one would have power over a child which could be exploited, except that in this case it would be even easier to abuse. You've given them the green light to determine whether or not, in their professional opinion, they're ripe for the picking. And you [I]don't[/I] think that that's vulnerable to exploitation? What planet are you living on? If it's happened in the Catholic Church, if it's happened in professional football youth teams, if it's happened in schools, and in the scouts, and with politicians and parents and children's TV presenters, why on earth wouldn't it happen here of all places?
I know that no one likes having their bright idea trashed, but you can't polish a turd.
Quoting Sir2u
My goodness. It doesn't have to be tried to foresee the risks. One would expect the people responsible for these things to think about these things long and hard before jumping straight into a trial and error methodology.
How did I make the comparison? Well, I thought about the one, and then I thought about the other, and then I compared the two, and then I thought some more and reached a conclusion. Do you not have such an ability?
Quoting Sir2u
Not if the costs outweigh the benefits, and they would in this case.
Quoting Sir2u
Yes, and at least my demolished house doesn't suffer from a leaking roof! :lol:
It's been fun, as always, although I'm afraid the fun has been at your expense. No hard feelings. :victory:
So when you go to get your drivers license you have no way of knowing that the people testing you are qualified to do so? I am sure that for something as important as this test there would be no way anyone with any evil thoughts would be allowed to participate.
Quoting Sapientia
Could you please tell me which of these positions has to go through a rigorous psychological testing to find out if they have any inclinations towards sexual abuse. What planet do you live on? So many people enter those jobs just because it is easy for them to become sexual predators. There are no checks made except for criminal records. You really do need to think about what you say.
Quoting Sapientia
But there are a whole bunch of idiots doing that right now by saying that the current system works. Do you need ant old rags, I have a big bag of them I could donate to the cause.
Quoting Sapientia
The results of letting people drive cars does not have to be seen to gauge the risks, that is why people are made to take classes and get a license. Why do the same ideas not apply in this situation?
Where did I say that we are starting tomorrow and that we are hiring? I never said for the perverts to get in line for a juicy job.
Of bloody course things would have to be organized and set up, they would have to think long and hard about every detail. Not like the system in place that says if you are this age then no but if you are that age then yes hump away ready or not.
Quoting Sapientia
So let me guess, the whole comparison took you maybe 20 seconds?
What problems, apart from those you mentioned above, can you foresee in establishing a system of permissible sexual activity for those that prove they are capable of it even if they have to wait until the are thirty before they are allowed to do so?
What are the benefits of allowing someone of sixteen who has had no sexual education to have sex just because he is sixteen?
Quoting Sapientia
Oh yes I do, and I also know how to use it properly. Give it a try sometime.
Quoting Sapientia
So now you are a tightfisted fortune teller! How did you reach the conclusion that it would cost more that treating all of the sexually transmitted problems, the unwanted pregnancies and the accompanying abortions, the welfare payments for all of the fatherless kids and the state maintenance of all of the orphans and abandoned babies. Or do you actually have the time to work out how much it would cost to set up my idea and compare it to the government costs of the items mentioned above.
Get real, you think it is not a good idea so you try to make fun of it instead of actually doing so thinking.
Quoting Sapientia
Duh, how many demolished houses actually have roofs to leak. ONLY yours. So sad. :cry:
Quoting Sapientia
And how did you figure that out. You being a pompous ass as usual cost me nothing. :rofl:
I think you are mistaking a "utilitarian perspective" with a "Parents perspective". I am not only suggesting that "some harm can arise" I am saying even if you get away without getting pregnant, you were still a victim of a predator (yes I am using that word accurately) who was after you for your age, not for who you were as a person.
Quoting Pseudonym
I will give you that adults can and do make really bad decisions but if it affects another in a bad way, the law most certainly does intervene. In the same way the law will intervene on a drunk on a club crawl, OB/Gyn's are OBLIGATED to report any signs of abuse to a woman (pregnant or not) AND if Mom with baby in utero has a blood screen done and it comes up 'fuzzy' they are obligated to contact the authorities to follow that Mom's pregnancy through the babies birth. Even though pregnancy is contained to the woman's body, the law has it's eyes on that baby from the first New Pregnancy visit of any woman. All of this oversight by the law seems to keep a pretty good tab on very natural event.
Quoting Pseudonym
Source please.
Quoting Pseudonym
Again you use the term "utilitarian" and I use the word "parenting", maybe even throw in the word "actively parenting" and that position in life, I absolutely agree it involves weighing out the harm of acting or not acting.
Quoting Pseudonym
If my 17 year old chose to have sex with someone who was 40+yrs old, I would be looking to put both of them through a therapy of choice. He could go to jail and she would go to counseling to try and get to the root of why she is looking for comfort in the man my age, not her age.
Even though pregnancy is a huge concern of mine, the mental affects a 40+yr old man having sex with my 17 year old daughter would be far more lasting.
One of the things that is pissing me off about the comments on this thread is the absolute certainty that a man of forty could not have good intentions towards a girl of 17. A lot of men and women live with people a lot younger than they are.
Another thing thing is the absolute certainty that the younger of the two is going to suffer some form of trauma. Just a quick look at the case where older females have seduced "young innocent boys" of 14 to 17 years old. As an ex 14 year old I know for a fact that I would not have been traumatized by such an event, unless it was something violent of course. Most guys at that age would be delighted by the brag-ability of the whole thing. They only get traumatized when mom and dad start screaming. Shit, men used to be proud of their sons when they lost their virginity. Now it is a crime.
Before anyone goes accusing me of anything nasty, I am not in anyway implying that I am in favor of anyone taking advantage of other people. But I restate that I believe maturity and education should be the most important factors when considering a legal age of consent.
Right, so your argument is that the age of consent should stay where it is because you "as a parent" want it there. Well I "as a parent" don't. That's not how we do ethics.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
You've shifted the goal posts, we're not talking about if it affects another, we're talking about if it affect themselves. The only harm we're considering here is the harm to the teenager themselves. Your arguing that the law should be used to prevent them from harming themselves psychologically, I'm asking you why you do not consider the same should be the case of adults who have proven themselves to be bad decision makers. Why do we not have laws preventing known alcoholics from buying more alcohol? Why do we not have laws against fast-food, coffee, adventure sports, fast cars...all areas where people have demonstrably made bad decision which have resulted in serious harm. What is it about sex in young adults that you want to single out for the harm it may cause?
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Yes, but you still haven't explained why, other than repeated assertions that you personally wouldn't like it and that it might harm the child psychologically. Overbearing parents have been proven to harm children psychologically, requiring years of therapy to overcome, shall we throw them in jail too?
Far more lasting than an unwanted pregnancy? I really don't think you'd have any psychologist back you up on that assertion.
Absolutely, I personally know a couple with a twenty one year age gap, a ex-student and a teacher at college. They are happily married and have been for the ten years I've known them. They have a wonderful little girl who is doted on by both.
Throw 'em in jail! :roll:
The sad truth is that some people can't see past their own prejudice, or refuse to do so for fear that they might be succumbing to something dark and sinister. Some may even wear their prejudice as a badge of pride, or they'll convince themselves that their status somehow vindicates their prejudice, rather than serves as an indication of bias, and as a conflict of interest which should be a cause for concern. "As a [i]parent[/I]... As a [i]Christian[/I]... As your [i]elder[/I]... I'm not racist, [i]but[/I]..."
Indeed, well said.
Far too late.
Children are much better equipped to know all about sex from the earliest possible age. As soon as they can talk. This protects them and prepares them.
Sir, my intention is not to piss you off in any way. I agree that there are men who are over 40 who could have good intentions toward a girl of 17. In fact I think that a man of 40 yrs old could teach a younger woman a good trick or two that she can carry with her into her next sexual relationship. There are men of 40 yrs old that are witty enough, caring enough, deep enough, worldly enough, compassionate enough to have a very positive effect on a girl of 17 but she should be able to get that filled by her Dad. Even though I admit that there are benefits of a 17 yr old with a 40 yr old relationship, I do not think it is a healthy relationship, not at that age, not with that big of an age discrepancy.
And not all dads fill the role model position very well.
What would you say if it was your 17 year old son with a very attractive woman of 40?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/3011c67e-3b37-3359-ba46-0dadccbdbe06/ss_ex-student-sues-lake-forest.html
Check out the comments at the end.
I too agree ArguingWAristotleTiff, and I would also like to say that if it was in fact my 17 year old child who was in a relationship with an adult in their 40's, I would most definitely be against it, regardless of how attractive that person is. I know that you specifically stated 17 year old SONS in your question, but in my opinion, the gender of the child shouldn't have any effect on our behavior in this instance.
But it does, most people tend to look the other way when it is a male don't they. They are more protective of the weaker sex.
He had better hope the jury isn't drawn from Yahoo user lists.
But I sort of agree, up to a point. I don't know about girls, but boys certainly fantasize about having sex with adults. Whether it was a good, bad, or forgettable experience would depend a lot on the personality of the adult. Sex with a lot of adults just wouldn't be that much fun for a lot of other adults, let alone a 13 year old. Where is a hebephile (prefers older children than pedophiles) when you need one? They are supposed to be good at sex with young teenagers.
I am not sure about that, some of them, might force him to pay the teacher and ask the judge to put the idiot in jail to find out exactly what being traumatized really is.
Have you found any reccurring points that ring true, or have you developed a clearer idea of where you stand morally on the questions you first put forward? I'm very interested to know how the whole process has affected your perspective, and whether any particular post gave you a "eureka!" moment? The psychologist in me is very curious about the efficacy of asking a philisophically minded group for assistance in reaching a philisophical position, and then implementing it in real life! - That's not alluding to a propensity for indecisiveness among philosophers :) more to do with examining how minds can synthesize individual ideas to form higher levels of understanding (or whether strongly developed contrasting ideas grow more nuanced in opposing directions). I'm waffling, sorry - just curious to see how these posts influence the person who starts the discussion.
Also, has the visit past, and how did it go? What decisions did you make (if you don't mind me asking?)
Thanks @Tree Falls