That’s the issue. Parents cant “force” their child to grow up. The child has to “want” to grow up.
Sex used to provide the drive for a child to “want” to grow up.
But birth control changed everything. And it is no longer necessary to grow up to have sex without consequences. Both girls and boys are being taught from a very young age that it is ok to have sex outside of marriage.
The problem is... the drive to have sex is what gave children to drive to want to grow up.
Now they can have their cake and eat it too!
Oh, I disagree. You can make them pay rent. You can kick them out of the house, if need be. Sometimes responsible parenting requires that.
When on his own for the first time, a kid's perspective can change quite rapidly.
“The problem is... the drive to have sex is what gave children to drive to want to grow up.”
At the time the nation was founded by the age of 16 boys and girls were doing the work of adults. The alternative was starvation as a child who didn’t work would be kicked out of the house.
When the child did leave home in the late teens, it was much easier for two to work a new farm than one. Again, survival was the driving need. Certainly the addition of children over time helped to ease the burdens on the couple because even at an early age children could do many chores. The work ethic was instilled at an early age and the skills to perform the work required to survive were learned at an early age.
Today’s education system (primary, secondary, college), provides little of the knowledge required to earn a living. Every year in May and June our universities turn out millions of psychology, history, women’s studies, sociology, and other liberal arts graduates who have no skills of value to the small businesses employing 90% of the employees in the private sector economy, much less the large companies employing the rest. Certainly none of these graduates are capable of growing crops or raising animals.
As far as wanting to grow up, my parents made it very clear from an early age I would grow up or starve. I was expected to do chores. I started working (on a neighborhood tobacco farm) at the age of six for 25 cents per day. I had a paper route, I mowed yards, I painted houses, and I performed other work for neighbors until I reached the age I could obtain a work permit which allowed me to work in a fast food restaurant while maintaining my paper route and other sources of cash income. In college I worked for a moving & storage company and in the kitchen of a restaurant. The day after graduation I was went to work full time for a company I had been doing analytical work for part time during my last year. My parents expected me to work and they expected me to be self sufficient.
Looking back on it, the day I left home to go to college I could not have envisioned any circumstance where my parents would have taken me back into their home. I knew I was on my own and survival was up to me. Fortunately, I knew how to use my hands and my mind to make money. None of that knowledge came from the public school system. As I think back on that time, sex was certainly on my mind but most of my efforts were directed at earning enough money to pay the rent and keep food in the refrigerator.