Since that time, advances in neurophysiology and psychology have led to a consensus among researchers that the human brain is not fully formed until the age of 25 or 26, on average.
The physical formation of the brain correlates with the faculties of decision-making, judgment, and choosing response over reaction.
These findings from the academic world are confirmed by the experiences of those who work on a regular basis with teenagers.
Allowances must be made for the fact that these are statistical averages. There are certainly some 17-year-olds who demonstrate great maturity, and some 35-year-olds who are quite immature.
Because we must deal with averages, however, it is clearly a mistake to call a 18-year-old boy a "man", and to call a 18-year-old girl a "woman."
It's time for our nation to revisit the age of majority.
If legal adulthood were recognized only when one reached, e.g., the age of 21, the benefit both to society and to young people would be immense.
Many 19-year-olds are making disastrous decisions which harm themselves and others, decisions which, however, the current legal system is obliged to acknowledge and even defend.
Parents, lawyers, physicians, psychologists, police, counselors, and other helping professions are not able to offer curbs to the wilder instances of excess because these children are legally considered adults.
