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Legally, you speak the truth. However, when my children are 18 years old, if they want to exercise their "legal right" to get on a plane and go to a Caribbean island to celebrate their graduation and their "adulthood" at a place where there are no limits, restrictions, etc., on drinking and the like, when they return home they'll find that I've exercised my legal right to tell them, as "adults," to find (a.) other living accomodations and (b.) another source for college money.

That's between you and your children. There is a large percentage of "children" in the US over 25 who still live at home, much of it having to do with economics and lifestyle. Your children have a choice and can do what they want.

I don't intend to keep my kids in a bubble. And I fully expect them to dabble in and experiment with things they ought not to. I'll be there to pick them up and/or kick them in the gluteus maximus afterward, whichever is required. But there is no way, absolutely no conceivable way in this or any known solar system, that I would let a child of mine go on a trip like this, whether he or she was 18 or not. No way.

You have your views, but don't try to impose them on anyone else or criticize those that allow their children to become self-supporting adults. Personally, I believe we coddle our kids too much and don't allow them to become adults. They need to leave the nest and fly on their own. Going on a trip with a large group of friends to an island noted for its very low crime rate is not, IMO, a risky venture.

I graduated high school in 1961. Besides college, it was the norm for kids to leave home, get married, or join the military, or get a job often outside their hometown. We were adults. I might add that it was legal to drink at 18 (NY). I served in Vietnam with plenty of 18 year olds. They were men.

I won't impose, I do reserve the right to criticize because expressing our respective .02 is the reason for this place. Although I never take any of it personally, and no one else should either. :)

You're about 15 years older than me. Things had already started to change somewhat at the time I got out of high school, but some of what you are saying was still going on.

All I can say is, "That was then and this is now." In my heart of hearts, I think it would be better if things were as you say. The reality is, in 2005 they aren't, and it's hard to put genies back into bottles.

There are things I did as a kid ... not as a high-schooler or college student, but as a grade-school age kid ... and never thought twice about and my parents never thought twice about, that I would, again, not in this or any known solar system let my kids (who are young, 10 and 7) do today. Like at 8 or 9 years old, roaming probably a three- or four-block area around my grandmother's house with a sack, picking up pop bottles that people had tossed out and then walking another three or four blocks to the local mom and pop store and selling them for the deposit to buy myself some goodies. I don't like this very much, I think I got a lesson in living that they're not getting, but I simply am not prepared to run that kind of risk with my kids in 2005.