Nate wrote: Good for you. Most people don't, hence why you hear so many people say "I don't feel any different now that I'm x."
That's not my experience, Nate. Most people I talk to, including myself, started to feel like an adult somewhere between 17 and 19. The very act of moving away from one's parents, and going to College/University and/or becoming a part of the workforce, tends to bring with it a sense of becoming an adult.
Regardless of whether you feel like it or not, it still doesn't make anything unbelievable happen to your body or mind that suddenly makes you an adult. It's still just an arbitrary age created by lawmakers.
It's not an arbitrary age. It's an age rooted in the cultural realities, and educational systems, of North America, and while that educational system is flawed, I think that they have the right idea about the ideal amount of basic schooling for humans with an average lifespan in the 70s.
That's your opinion, for one. Second, did you know humans are the only creatures on the planet that rear their young for so long?
This is because we're sentient life forms. Other animals on Earth don't share our level of sentience, or our capacity to build and construct things (due to opposable thumbs, largely).
It's not odd at all.
It is odd in a culture where high school exists, and doesn't end until around when one is 18.
What's funny is in this whole conversation you're acting like 18 magically turns you into an adult. Lemme ask you this question. If 18 is when someone becomes an adult, then why do women gain the ability to become pregnant (and men the ability to impregnate) around 12 or 13?
Because at many points in human history, humans had very short lifespans, with the average sometimes being in the 40s, or even the 30s. Thus to ensure that the child would benefit from at least two decades of shared life with their parents, God made it so that pro-creation was possible at 12 or 13. That is what I believe, anyway.
That doesn't mean that the ideal time for pro-creation is at 12 or 13 (there's very valid reasons why sex between a 13 year old, and a 20 year old, would be considered statuatory rape through out North America), merely that it's physically possible to account for some unfortunate circumstances.
Do you think God made a mistake in how he created our bodies? I tell you my friend, God makes no mistakes. While I'm not endorsing people getting married and having children that young (especially not in this country), I am not condemning it either.
I think that we're a bit too biased towards late marriage in North American society today (most parents I've talked to are against their children getting married until they graduate from College/University and are perfectly financially secure, let alone graduated from high school - this is overly cautious, and also unrealistic if you want your child to abstain from sex until marriage as per Christian teachings, in my opinion). However, while I can see getting married while going through university, getting married in high school seems more than a bit unwise to me.
