Maturity (psychological) - Age

Age

See also: Age of majority

While older persons are generally perceived as more mature, psychological maturity is not determined by one's age. However, for legal purposes, people are not considered psychologically mature enough to perform certain tasks (such as driving, consenting to sex, signing a binding contract or making medical decisions) until they have reached a certain age. In fact, judge Julian Mack, who helped create the juvenile court system in the United States, said that juvenile justice was based on the belief that young people do not always make good decisions because they are not mature, but this means that they can be reformed more easily than adults. However, the relationship between psychological maturity and age is a difficult one, and there has been much debate over methods of determining maturity, considering its subjective nature, relativity to the current environment and/or other factors, and especially regarding social issues such as religion, politics, human stem-cell research, genetic engineering and abortion.

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Famous quotes containing the word age:

    “Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    “At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.”
    —Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)

    “When I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three.... The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.”
    —Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)