I'm sure that the Overlords are on their way to oversee it.

/Yah, I know, on Fark no reference is obscure.

With the irony being, in years past when children had amazing responsibilities at a young age which made them mature, this crap just extends immaturity well into their 20s.

/30s, 40s, 50s

I am really glad I played with legos as long as I did. You have your whole lives to be adults, people, don't be in such a hurry!

Parents are letting 11 year olds get drunk and have sex?

Is it too late to get adopted?

I am alternately told that 30 is the new twenty and that 12 is the new thirty. The media needs to establish some sort of consistency in the bullshiat it spreads.

I decided to get Taco Bell last night around 10:30 PM. When I got there, there were couple of pre-teens skateboarding in the parking lot. I immediatly thought "what parents would allow their kids out this late?"

This article just gave me the answer.

Rest assured my sons will be under my iron boot of appropriate behavior restrictions until they move out and pay for their own frickin' clothing/food/housing/water/etc.

Spankings: More appropraite for your 13 year old than your 6 year old.

/Not kidding
//get off my lawn

Increasingly, youngsters can stay out late, drink alcohol, have sex and watch inappropriate films.

Little girls in particular are growing up faster than ever.

Clearly, I was born at the wrong time. On the other hand, it wasn't so long ago that girls of 14 routinely got married and maintained a home, and David Farrugut entered the Navy at age 7 and was given a command at age 12, so maybe it's time the little slackers started earning their damned keep.

/And get the hell off my lawn

After reading that article, now I want to have a girl so that while raising her I can constantly tell her that make-up is for ugly people and high heeled shoes are for women with bad legs and asses.

Childhood ends at puberty. That's also when people aren't sexy anymore.

/oops

Doesn't the UK have Europe's highest teen pregnancy rate?

I'm sure the nanny state will put it all right sometime soon.

Yeah, yeah--they're adults at 11 but just try groping one of them and they run crying back to their so-called permissive parents and then you're in prison somewhere.

Talk about double standards.

/just kidding
//take a seat over there

tonesskin: Childhood ends at puberty. That's also when people aren't sexy anymore.

/oops

You win. Thread over.

Current parents hated the rules their parents set for them, and therefore more or less abandoned them, and now they complain that the children are hooligans.

Or something. I dunno.

Aracnix: Rest assured my sons will be under my iron boot of appropriate behavior restrictions until they move out and pay for their own frickin' clothing/food/housing/water/etc.

Spankings: More appropraite for your 13 year old than your 6 year old.

/Not kidding
//get off my lawn

Yeah, good luck with that.

So.... Romeo and Juliet were 15 and 13, childhood is a relatively recent concept. For most of human history childhood ended as soon as you were able to do some real work - although full adult privileges might not have been granted until you had your first kids in some cultures.

More and more kids are being tried as adults....more and more 20 and year-olds are still living off of their parents.

Personally, I'm happy with parts of today's definition of childhood.

/Not 11 and not a parent, you do the math.

Well.. looks like it's time to rewrite that pesky statutory rape law.

Dude, she's 11.

cowsspinach: I decided to get Taco Bell last night around 10:30 PM. When I got there, there were couple of pre-teens skateboarding in the parking lot. I immediatly thought "what parents would allow their kids out this late?"

I don't see many pre-teens out that late by themselves, but I see plenty of kids out with their parents at that kind of hour. I remember getting sent to bed at 8PM on weekdays through most of elementary school. Perhaps kids get to stay up late now because parents work more and need the evenings if they're to see their kids at all.

i really don't give a shiat about this topic, I just decided to see what I would look like dressed in lite

.

Aracnix: Rest assured my sons will be under my iron boot of appropriate behavior restrictions until they move out and pay for their own frickin' clothing/food/housing/water/etc.

Spankings: More appropraite for your 13 year old than your 6 year old.

/Not kidding
//get off my lawn

Video please.

You know, this didn't happen in Mayberry...

Barney Fife was on the job..

Arthur Jumbles: So.... Romeo and Juliet were 15 and 13, childhood is a relatively recent concept. For most of human history childhood ended as soon as you were able to do some real work - although full adult privileges might not have been granted until you had your first kids in some cultures.

I was going to say the same thing, but then I remembered that the average life expectancy at the time was around 45 or so; you had to get a lot of living (and maturing) done quickly.

KIDS... not all right.

I'm not remaking Peter Pan here, you know.

/Obligatory x2 when you notice the shirt...

FTFA: Parents admit giving in to "pester pressure" and allowing their children an array of grown-up privileges. Increasingly, youngsters can stay out late, drink alcohol, have sex and watch inappropriate films.

I don't think I've ever asked my parents if I could have sex, personally.

Captain Darling:

I don't see many pre-teens out that late by themselves, but I see plenty of kids out with their parents at that kind of hour. I remember getting sent to bed at 8PM on weekdays through most of elementary school. Perhaps kids get to stay up late now because parents work more and need the evenings if they're to see their kids at all.

My point exactly. I have never seen pre-teens that late out by themselves. I can understand parenting is a hard "job" but that just worried me, seeing 11-12 year old boys out skateboarding that late.

czarangelus
11 year old tried as adult for murder

You're an adult when society wants to punish you, and you're a child when society wants to withhold sex, alcohol, or other adult rights.

QFT motherfarkers.

www.youthrights.org

tonesskin: Childhood ends at puberty. That's also when people aren't sexy anymore.

/oops

I'm gonna go change real quick. I made you some tea. Why don't you sit down over there.

Did you bring condoms?

This kind of thing makes me not want to have kids, especially not daughters. The mother is an influence, a major one, but once the kid's in middle school they're subjected to all sorts of other influences - their friends, the media, etc. I can't even remember the last time I saw kids over 11 playing outside or being respectful to adults or dressed appropriately for their age group.

If it even seemed possible to raise a child in the way that I was raised in today's world, I'd consider doing it...but the prospect seems unlikely. :/

Childhood is a culturally determined concept. What a child is varies throughout the world. However, that doesn't mean that a 12 year old has the maturity level to handle the problems that adults deal with.

/and many adults don't either.

czarangelus: 11 year old tried as adult for murder

You're an adult when society wants to punish you, and you're a child when society wants to withhold sex, alcohol, or other adult rights.

This.

czarangelus: Meh. So many young adults are still living with their parents because even with a median-wage job, you can't make enough to pay the rent and keep yourself fed.

Oh come farking on. Where I live, the median salary is $35,000. I know some of our graduate graduate students who make about a third of that. They are fed, have nice apartments, and do whatever the fark the want. Even with student loans they still only make 2/3rds of that. At least two of them are single parents supporting kids on that money. Stop biatching.

Stratos: With the irony being, in years past when children had amazing responsibilities at a young age which made them mature, this crap just extends immaturity well into their 20s.

/30s, 40s, 50s

This. I can't remember the number of times I have facepalmed due to the number of naive students around this campus.


/Probably in the tens of thousands
//UW Madison
///Darwin needs to take action more often

czarangelus: ChopSueyKS: More and more kids are being tried as adults....more and more 20 and year-olds are still living off of their parents.

Personally, I'm happy with parts of today's definition of childhood.

Meh. So many young adults are still living with their parents because even with a median-wage job, you can't make enough to pay the rent and keep yourself fed. Society expects you to go out and bust your ass for 10 hours a day and won't even pay you enough to keep up with skyrocketing rent and fuel costs. My company just cut pay raises by a full percent, while the price of fuel and rent climbs at a half dozen times the original pay raise rate...

Yeah, but you claim you don't actually put any effort into your job because you get nothing out of it and blah, blah, blah. You're lucky you get a raise at all.

/but you live near the ocean or something
//can't keep track

Childhood still doesn't end when they finish their education and it seems more children are going off to college and even into graduate school. It's scary, but it's good to drink beer and party while you burn your parents money.

Tonesskin: I know some of our graduate graduate students who make about a third of that. They are fed, have nice apartments, and do whatever the fark the want.

too right. I'm living on student loans now, and with the minimum I was strongly suggested to take out, I'll have 4,000$ dollars left at the end of June. And I live alone in a 1-bedroom, have internet, cable, heat, food, I go out to eat, buy clothing, etc. And the minimum calculation is based on a 7$/hr fulltime job.

tonesskin: czarangelus: Meh. So many young adults are still living with their parents because even with a median-wage job, you can't make enough to pay the rent and keep yourself fed.

Oh come farking on. Where I live, the median salary is $35,000. I know some of our graduate graduate students who make about a third of that. They are fed, have nice apartments, and do whatever the fark the want. Even with student loans they still only make 2/3rds of that. At least two of them are single parents supporting kids on that money. Stop biatching.

Where do you live and what kind of work do your friends do? As an undergrad in DC, there is no way I can cover nearly enough of my expenses without help. Sure I can be a part-time waiter or something, but between the time that would take up and the amount it pays it's kind of useless.

Arthur Jumbles: So.... Romeo and Juliet were 15 and 13, childhood is a relatively recent concept.

True, but this is mostly due to the fact that our life expectancies have dramatically increased since the renaissance. Having greatly enjoyed my childhood, so I'm all for a lengthy and rich childhood. I feel sad for kids today that are hurried to be "grown-up" at the urging of Madison Avenue.

HMS_Blinkin: I am really glad I played with legos as long as I did. You have your whole lives to be adults, people, don't be in such a hurry!

Some adults manage to find ways to play with their legos. ;)

Okay, so the Irregular Webcomic that's up right now wasn't the best example...

Let's try this again.

just don't go to the movies on fri/sat nights.

I've seen other news stories that claim doctors have shown that the actual age of puberty is dropping over the last few decades, something on the order of 2-3 years since the 60s. Maybe this article is merely reflecting that shift since your average 13 year-old in the 50s and 60s is closer to your average 11 year-old in 2008. Why the puberty age is dropping, no idea. . .
I would have googled "puberty age", but I'm seriously afraid of what might pop up.

ChopSueyKS: Where do you live and what kind of work do your friends do? As an undergrad in DC, there is no way I can cover nearly enough of my expenses without help. Sure I can be a part-time waiter or something, but between the time that would take up and the amount it pays it's kind of useless.

They are graduate students; they are paid as graduate students with a stipend (~$11,000 a year). With loans they have ~$18,000. I was comparing to the MEDIAN salary as mentioned. So the median salary will be different by state.

And yes, you can get a job. I'm not anti-parents supporting kids. But I am anti whiney little brats saying, "We can't live on a median salary, wahhhh."

They're not acting like adults.

They're acting like spoiled, useless children.

Lemme get this concept... Never, ever disciplining your children or telling them "NO" or paddling their useless, clueless asses is best, even if it turns them into spoiled, demanding, whiney-assed pedophile bait?

You want to do something for your kids who are wearing makeup and asscrack jeans and piercings by age 6? Blow your brains out. You failed.

Ear-piercing before age 12? Make-up under 14? Restricted adult movies while underage? None of that sounds very radical. My conservative parents allowed me to do all that 25+ years ago. They let us drink wine at dinner too. However honor-roll grades, 11 pm curfew, summer-jobs-to-save-for-your-education, attendance at Mass, and unfailing respect for all adults were also the non-negotiable norm for my sibs and me.

frozencharlotte: Restricted adult movies while underage?

That's the biggest one. As if I want a bunch of dumbasses using some arbitrary system to determine what MY kids should watch.

Teenagers can drive and work. They pay taxes on both.
But they can't vote?

I was already partaking of hookers and blow when I was 3, so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies.

i'm intellectual and stuff: I've seen other news stories that claim doctors have shown that the actual age of puberty is dropping over the last few decades... why the puberty age is dropping, no idea. . .

Age of puberty has dropped for a few reasons, it seems. Primarily, this is measured by the age that little girls get their periods. Getting your period requires being over a certain weight, and since people are getting fatter in general, that seems like a very strong reason.

Things I've read indicate that this number has dropped, particularly compared to the 50s and earlier, but that it has leveled out and won't keep dropping (we won't see kids getting their periods at age 6)