Age Of Responsibility In America

Responsibility is a concept with which everyone is familiar. We have had to be responsible for something since we were toddlers. The amount and severity of things we had responsibility over has increased as we got older. Therefore, is it reasonable to set an age for when people should start to be responsible? That is the controversial topic at hand. It is understandable that we must have laws and regulations to be“safe.” Whether that be setting an age for drinking, driving, voting etc. However, the government appears to have set these age marks in an arbitrary manner. There are many arguments supporting why the current laws regarding the age of responsibility are fine as are. However, the current system in place for determining the legal age of responsibility in America is outdated; the age of adulthood in our country should be determined by the ability of a person to prove that they are mature by paying bills, holding a job or attending college instead of by arbitrary laws and set numbers.
The laws regarding the age of responsibility must be changed in order to stop restricting our youth. There are many teenagers completely capable of taking care of themselves or simply having some more freedom. It is …show more content…
This means that changing the law to where it is required to prove one’s capability will result in stopping those “adults” who are still immature from being reckless and therefore abusing their lawful rights or privileges. An example of an adult who abuses their right would be those adults who drive carelessly, or can’t hold a job. As Kate Simmonds explained “... I know a lot of high schoolers and college students that are more mature than some adults I know” (“I’m 17”), we all know one of those adults. Granted that those adults only make up a small amount of the country’s adults, however, those reckless adults still