What are your thoughts on this issue? Curious. Here's what I wrote to a friend....
For the longest time I was a huge advocate for keeping kids as kids as long as possible because my childhood was rather innocent and you're only a kid once. However, "with that said", since I am well aware that puberty is nature's way of telling us we're ready and willing to mate, I had to do some research. In our country, the legal age of consent for most kids is 17-18. However, if you go overseas, most Europeans have a range of around 14-16, which is generally a lot closer to the onset of puberty than 17-18 obviously is. On one hand, I originally thought....by making them wait, this may prevent teen pregnancies, and keeping kids as kids "longer." Then I did research on teen pregnancies and rapes and found that in America, there's more teen pregnancies and rapes than in Europe. So, in effect, by keeping kids from something their bodies are curious about, are we perhaps making them want to do things "more" because of that? Wouldn't it be better to sync up the legal age of consent with biology if the Europeans had less teen pregnancy rates than we did? It's just a thought. So, I'm kind of torn on that one. I had a great, innocent childhood and everything free from adult issues, but on the other hand, when being forbid to do something, I do know that it often makes kids want to do things even more, so "should we" be preventing them? It just makes you wonder. Is restraining biology for the purpose of us giving us children for a longer length of time actually more of a risk than allowing them to pursue their biological curiosities?
