Wanting the age for being an adult to be lowered from age 18 in all countries

Nobody should be deemed to lack capacity "by default". The Mental Capacity Act states that capacity is determined based on each individual decision. When decisions are made on behalf of people there are safeguards in place to ensure people do have the opportunity to challenge them in the form of independent mental capacity advocates, otherwise known as IMCAs, if there isn't an advocate already available to the client. 

The fact that this case went to court demonstrates that there are ways for decisions to be challenged. 

Of course I'm biased as I have a law degree and was a social worker in adult social care up until recently, but I know how much work goes into this type of assessment. The fact that a GP did a poor assessment isn't surprising, they often don't understand capacity assessments about matters such as relationships. They will barely see clients outside the GP surgery. 

The state doesn't intervene with marriages for no good reason. It intervenes when they are potentially exploitative/abusive. The decision this court made would potentially mean this man could marry by choice in a circumstance that suits him, not forced by his family for their gain. The thing with mental capacity assessment is that someone could be deemed to lack capacity to enter into a marriage on one occasion but later be supported to make a decision to marry. As a social worker, I have had to support people with capacity to remain in abusive relationships too. We do support people to make "unwise decisions", also outlined in the Mental Capacity Act. 

I've left social work recently to work in a different role, but it matters to me that people do not wrongly see us as dictators of social behaviour. I've always supported people to live their lives however they wish given that they appreciate they could come to whatever harm in whatever the situation is, just like you and I. I know there will always be social workers who are less comfortable with that but it takes a confident person to step back and let someone live a life that might potentially see them die in a high risk situation because they understand that risk. It is easy to say you would do that until that responsibility is on your shoulders. 

Well in theory maybe it works that way but not in practice. Let’s take this case ( https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCOP/2016/20.html&query=%22Mental+capacity+act%22+marry ) for example.

This young man, KM, was intellectually disabled, and the local authority was concerned that his family might be planing to marry him off in an arranged marriage.

As it turns out the young man himself was quite keen to get married someday. The local authority arranged to have a psychologist look at him who determined he lacked mental capacity. The family disagreed and it went to court.

In the courts view the doctor applied too strict a test and expected too much understanding of the implications of things like pregnancy, STD and immigration law (for spouses). Basic understanding was more or less sufficient.

The judge ruled KM did have the mental capacity to marry. And made it clear he was in the position of making a binary choice and that there were downsides to declaring that KM did have capacity.

The judge makes it clear there is a very real risk KM may end up in an unhappy marriage particularly if his family arrange one with out telling the bride about his intellectual disability.

Now suppose this situation had been different. Supose KM wanted to marry another person with an intellectual disability and both his family and the local authority were in agreement that he lacked capacity. Well he simply wouldn’t be allowed to marry.

There is an independent organisation that acts as an advocate for someone wishing to challenge their lack of capacity but they only automatically get called in when there is no friend or family member to speak for their best interest.

So in this hypothetical scenario KM would have to do all the paperwork to bring the case to court him self, that’s assuming it’s even properly explained to him he has that right. It was held by the court in KMs that he wasn’t competent to run his own case even with a lawyers help. So a lawyer was appointed to act on his behalf.

If his family and the local authority had been in agreement that he shouldn’t marry it seems unlikely to me he ever would have got to court to win his right to marry.

All too often health and care professionals stack the mental capacity test so that instead of asking ‘does this person have a basic level of understanding’ they ask ‘does this patient have enough understanding to make the decision that I think is obviously the right one.’

Now I freely admit KMs position is not ideal. Having said he has capacity to get married the court has basically no control over what happens next. The court can’t make sure KMs family aren’t lying to him about his prospective wife or that they aren’t lying to the bride about KM. wouldn’t it be better to have a situation where the court confirms KM has the final say on his marriage but that he has to exercise that right with the courts oversight and advice?

Right now there is no law for that. Not for marriage or anything else that one generally needs to be an adult to do, like agreeing employment or a debt etc.

If there was a provision in law to say that some people have capacity but that it has to be exercised under the supervision of some sort of court appointed advisor would it not be more appropriate for most teenagers to fall into that category instead of them not having capacity ‘by default’ as it were?

The problem is that Parents are too Safety-First these days. Negative experiences the Parents had as children are projected to hyperbole to the kids. As a result, Young Adults in their Twenties still act like Children.

Common Sense doesn't seem to be taught, anymore. Whenever I was young, I despised those who wanted smacking brought back. Now, I'm nothing but grateful for being smacked.

Plus, most mums live their lives through their kids. Their lack of identity rubs off on the kids.

No one Marries at 20-21 anymore. However, kids need to be brought up the Good, Old-Fashioned way.

I know this woman, who will be 40 on Tuesday, who began dating a much-older man whenever she was 16. They had a son almost immediately after she turned 18. Now that lad's a successful Barber, and she has a successful career.

Life-Skills are more important than School. That's why I consider Uni a waste of time. I understand about the fear of Girls being taken advantage of, but that's because kids these days have Too much protection.

If I had my way, Schools would be abolished and Homeschooling would be mandatory.

If people have the mental capacity to get married, intellectual disability or otherwise, then they are able to. Courts don't just prevent people from doing things for the fun of it. 

Their Egos were inflated by School, and TV.

Well marriage is a good example. Right now you can get married at 16 but only with parental consent. There is talk of raising this to 18 which would create an odd situation where for 2 years its legal to have sex with someone but legally impossible to marry them.

Now here the concern is parents may be pressuring 16-17 year olds into marriages they don’t want. But what is not as widely considered is there may be 16 year olds who are prevented from marrying because their parents don’t approve of the match. Too poor, the wrong race, maybe the wrong gender.

So instead of getting a parents consent why not switch it so it has to be a magistrate or judges consent. If a 16 year old can stand up in front of a judge and convince them that they genuinely want to get married and they know what that entails and no one is coercing them then why shouldn’t they be allowed to get married?

Remember there are some people with intellectual disabilities who want to get married but can’t because they are considered too vulnerable and the courts have taken their legal autonomy to make a choice to marry away. Ultimately that’s not fair. There needs to be a system that allows vulnerable people to do things that might normally make them vulnerable to exploitation in a safe way.

We don’t have that system and we NEED it. I don’t see why the same principle couldn’t be applied to teenagers.

Why would we respect children ruining their lives? Their brains aren't even fully developed at the ages you are suggesting. 

I lost my virginity at the age of 14 to a 19yr old man. At the time I felt it was my choice. As an adult and a parent to two young girls, I look back and feel that my innocence was taken advantage of and I have no idea why a 19yr old was attracted to my 14yr old self. It is pretty gross to be frank. I have friends with 14yr old daughters and they aren't fully developed. They don't look like women. 

My mum also had me at 16yrs old. She did the best job she could but she didn't end up happily ever after with a career, a house, a car, or exotic holidays and whatever else we see as success in life. She was a child. She didn't get to have a lot of fun years that she should've still had ahead of her. I'm grateful to her but it was a sacrifice for her, not simply a joy.

You haven't actually said WHY you think this is a good idea.

aye, i wish i had my own place though and a way to keep my own place. id have more freedom to do whatever then and feel less constrained by judgement. and id get a cat! lol probably exercise more without feeling held back by people thinking im weird.

Well, the pedophile thing was something I was alluding to but I was trying to be more subtle about it, but yes that's the biggest problem with allowing 13 years old and teenagers with the status of adulthood, just a bunch of predators ready for that kind of change.

I always imagined that I'd be living with my parents till I was 30 years old, and I never would want to be an adult before my time, so that's all understandable. I mean, with the pandemic and everything, a lot of people lost their jobs, and so times are tough. At least you have a place to live and food to eat and parents that are still alive and well. 

i still live with my parents myself at 31 and dont feel any different in my freedoms than i had as a high school kid so not entirely sure what magic powers these kids expect to have aside from legal pedophiles camping outside school gates to take advantage of being able to legally groom kids that would be seen as consenting adults lol

im just lucky i havent been tossed out the house yet, if i was like these kids demanding to be adults you bet id have been tossed out at the age of 16 and been made to learn a very hard lesson. humility and respect and not demanding things when i have nothing probably allowed me to be tolerated this long in my parents place.

I can imagine that if the age of adulthood lowered to be 13 years old, many people would take advantage of that, and likely would try to pressure them into marriage at that young age, and other things that would be deemed quite immoral.

I mean, if humans live on average till they're 70 years old, about 20 years of that is spent as a child and teenager, then you have about 50 years to be an adult, and do whatever you want to do, but in reality it's more like just doing whatever you have to do to survive. 

Sure, you are young and want to make your own decisions, and not treated like a child anymore, so do mature and independent things, get a job, do the chores, cook for yourself, have a good credit score, get your driver's licence, get your own car, and then by the time you're 18 years old, move out and find your own place to live. You don't have to keep demanding that others treat you as an adult, but you know what, you'll be living as an adult for approximately 50 years of the rest of your life, so I'd hate to tell you to enjoy your childhood while it lasts, because that's the last thing you want to hear.

I think that you would like your full freedom to do whatever you want to do, but even as an adult, you're not completely free, and you still need to sacrifice your time to earn a living. You have the choice of earning money or being homeless, so that's not much of a freedom if you were aiming for that.  

hmm the cancer one is a good one to use there. the parent refuses to end treatment because they dont wanna let their kid go, but the kid wants to end it because its not gonna save them and its causing them torture and suffering. so that is a good one to think over.

but societies issues is a collective decision. it aint just the old that voted for brexit, the media lied on that, it was pretty even most ways give or take a tiny slant that the lying media played off to make out every single young person in the world didnt want it lol but yeah media will be  the media. alot of the old gens were young when we voted to join the EU in the first place and felt robbed that time and this was their chance to have a say on it, and alot of the people that voted in felt robbed too as the question that got us in was like "do you think we should remain friendly with france" or something, which is a rotten misleading question that wouldnt be allowed now and would be branded highly illegal and misleading for it to mean "do you want to join the EU and lose your national identity and be absorbed?".

i feel that society has collectively spoken loud enough on brexit over multiple elections and votes now that sent a massive signal that first they tried to ignore but then couldnt as it kept attaining more voting power for it. the more they resisted the more stronger peoples will for brexit got. 

as for the benefits not entirely sure there was benefits either way to be fair. we never had free travel, we wasnt in the free travel zone, erasmus got replaced by a global scheme and thus that got improved and added every nation in the globe to our new scheme. people can still go on their holidays same as usual but require a passport, they can stay over freely as if were still in the EU but for 90 days which is more than enough for anyone that only the rich elite hedgefund kids would complain it isnt enough for them, and i dont think anyone cares what they think lol

I’m just going to point out our wise else’s voted for brexit. Now personally I’m in favour of that. But I don’t think it was because they carefully weighed the options with a full understanding of the diplomatic, economic and legal implications. I think it had a lot more to do with the culture they espoused and their identity as British rather than european. Not all decisions boil Down to simple objective  cost benefit analysis. If you deny young people the chance to shape their own lives according to their own subjective needs then to a degree you are robbing them of the right to have an identity. For example some careers are hard to achieve if you don’t start young, particularly in sport, if you stop young couples from having contact with each other you might be robing that young person of their future spouse.

a friend of mine was a student doctor. She did her dissertation on the double gilick principle. She interviewed children with terminal Cancer who wanted to cease chemotherapy. To be clear it wasn’t going to save them. Just buy them a few more months, painful months. The children just wanted to make the most of the time they had left, their parents wouldn’t permit therapy to be stopped.

this is why self determination is important for young people. There are some choices so wedded to who we are and what we value that no one should make them on our behalf, not even our parents, not even for children.

and yeah, thered probably be alot of dumb elders and not so wise elders who would make bad decisions. but we have to accept that every generation will make bad decisions. how can we lead ourselves in our own generation when we cannot accept possible mistakes that a other generation makes or has to make? .... your generation will be making just as many mistakes as any other generation will do, will you accept your mistakes? probably not, because you cant accept the mistakes of other generations. and if you lump your gen in control position right away you will make more mistakes than any generation before you. especially statistically speaking because youd then have a longer time frame run of control in the drivers seat than any other generation before, so yeah due to that youd be making more mistakes even if you make mistakes at a lesser rate... you cannot win on this. you have to accept the mistakes of all gens. already i see many glaring mistakes coming from our youth that will have disastrous consequences to the point of nations collapsing and being unable to support life at all lmao

also perhaps society would be better if it listened to its elders, as most times in society the elders were the ones you had to listen to for they had lived longer and had more wisdom. the purpose of the elder was always the decisions and advice. the purpose of the young was to do everything else, farm, war, procreate, raise kids. the elders role was always wisdom and to pass down knowledge and to guide the clan and make decisions. i feel perhaps we need to bring back a more natural hierarchy like this to correct the world. perhaps the issue to take from the post is that young people perhaps need to learn to respect their elders more and to realise their worth and place in the world and realise they are not at that stage yet themselves?

theres a few issues with that. such as chav gangs, the existence of roving gangs of chavs prove that teenagers are not responsible enough. and that even after they leave teenage years they are still rather irresponsible for a while longer even.

the good responsible kids are actually few and far between. the norm pretty much is very irresponsible. the majority of idiots ruin it for the minority of good in this case you can say.

Dawn if young people want to make decisions sooner at an earlier age so soon then that is acceptable and respecting their views does always actually mean that they can be in control of an important decision.

You know when I was a teenager I felt I ought to be treated like an adult and frankly My views haven’t changed. Allow me to explain why. The mental health capacity act says the government can come along and take away an adults legal autonomy if they don’t have the capacity to make their own decisions. It defines the capacity as the ability:

• to understand the information relevant to the decision,
• to retain that information,
• to use or weigh that information as part of the process of making the decision, or
• to communicate his decision (whether by talking, using sign language or any other means).

Now how many 16 or even 14 year olds do you think could pass this test for most every day decisions? Ah but you may say some decisions are harder than others and you’d be right. How many adults understand pandemic modelling? Or vaccine production? How many adults even know what mRNA is? How many can weigh up all the pros and cons medically in a rational balanced way? Not many. But you wouldn’t say that they lack mental capacity to decide whether or not to take a vaccine would you? When the act talks about the ability to understand, retain, use and communicate information it means to the standard of the average adult. I suspect most teenagers could meet this standard. So if there is a mechanism where by the government can take someones adult independence away why shouldn’t a teenager be able to go to the court and say “I believe I have mental capacity and want the rights and responsibilities of an adult.” Other countries have emancipation laws that effectively allow for something like this.

There are plenty of reasons to think that in terms of intelligence teenagers are functionally close to adults. IQs are supposed to be normalised for age so that a persons IQ will, on average, not change much as they age. An 8 year old with an IQ of 100 should grow into an 18 year old with an IQ of roughly 100 (on average). But the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, arguably the most widely used IQ test, doesn’t even make an adjustment after 16. Prior to 16, 14-15 the adjustments aren’t very big.

There is of course the vulnerability argument. That teenagers are more easily manipulated or intimidated. However this point is also applicable to many adults. Our system is quite poorly designed in that if you want to add additional protections to a vulnerable adult often the only tool the system has is to take away their legal autonomy and as autistic people, a class that is more commonly considered vulnerable than others, this should concern all of us. On the one hand it means vulnerable autistic people who are deemed to have capacity do not get the protection they need and other vulnerable but otherwise rational autistic people, people who are perfectly able to understand things, are having their legal autonomy taken away because doctors see it as the only way to protect them. There needs to be a 3rd legal class of person. A legal class of vulnerable adult with mental capacity, For whom a series of laws provide additional duties and safeguards for those interacting with them without taking away autonomy. I humbly suggest that many teenagers belong in this category. It should also be pointed out that in many ways giving teenagers the rights of adults, such as the right to earn and control their own money, would make them substantially less vulnerable.

The reason under 18s are treated as children rather than adults has much more to do with the pragmatic concerns of compulsory education rather than their capacity, intelligence or vulnerability. Prior to the education act of 1918 any child under 13 needed an exemption to be in work saying they had been educated to sufficient standard. The purposes of compulsory education was not the protection of children from work but the protection of the poor from ignorance. Poor parents who could not easily turn down the money their children could earn in the mills. By making education a requirement the idea was to ensure poor children got the benefit of an education that could lift them out of poverty in later life. Although working conditions were dangerous for many the purpose was to protect children from a lack of education not to protect them from work.

The education act of 1918 recognised that education to be more than just the 3 Rs, that a post industrial revolution world needed engineers, clerks, accountants, skilled men and more of them. So the the age for compulsory full time schooling was raised to 14 and a new age for compulsory part time schooling was created an set at 18 to be phased in. Everyone under 18 but 14 or over would be required to do 49 days worth of schooling throughout the year and would be free to work the rest of the year. Now in the end that phasing in never happened for a variety of reasons (in the end they raised the age to 16 instead) but suppose it had? Suppose in 1969 when they reduced the voting age to 18 there had been 16 and even 14 year olds working to support themselves while attending school part time? Would the voting age have gone down further, to 16 or even 14? And with the voting age lowed I think you’d find most other adult rights and responsibilities would soon follow.

The education acts (1918) plan was very workable. It was even intended to extended it into university with some form of compulsory part time university education for adults over 18. And that is how university used to work. No loans as such, you have 110 days of free education (+ exams), about half of the years working days, then you work the rest of the time to support yourself. 49 days of study for teenagers may have been unrealistic but 110 seems quite feasible especially given the amount of material that is repeated between school years.

We would live in a very different world now if something like the 1918 act had gone ahead and teenagers were allowed to support themselves through a shorter school year with employment.

My experience has been that age is irrelevant.

While your parents are alive, one is still considered  a child.  That's the way it was in my insane family.