It was also common to allow wives to be legally beaten, and women and children treated as property, but we’ve wised up since then.
Have you spent any time around 16 and 17 year olds? Kids are much ‘younger’ today than they were even in my day (I graduated high school in 1990), and certainly less mature and responsible than in my parents’ day.
Of course, it varies by child. But boys’ brains do not fully develop til mid-20’s. That speaks more accurately to ‘adulthood’ than any made-up cultural milestone.
All thanks to their stupid parents who baby them into thinking they are still a "kid" until they are past college.
Time to end high school at grade 10 and/or send the young adults to vocational school or college if they want. We used to have young MEN by 15, ready to face the world, now we have babies thanks to the soft, suburban douchebags that have shaped most of our nation's children since the end of WWII.
Someone who is 16 or 17 year old should never be referred to as a "child." It says alot about the state of our society that they are considered so.