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Douva wrote:But in a sense, doesn't that progression simply mirror the way life works? You don't go to bed one night a pimply-faced fourteen-year-old with no concerns beyond trying to figure out how to talk to the cute girl in homeroom and then wake up the next day an adult with a job, a mortgage, a wife, and kids. Responsibility typically comes in stages.

It also comes at different rates for different people; does it really make sense to say that on day 6569 of your life you're not old enough to do anything without your parents' consent, but on day 6571 you can buy a pack of cigarettes and a rifle, regardless of whether you're the kid with a perfect SAT score and your own successful business or the one with a successful...undocumented pharmaceutical business?

Hoi Polloi wrote:How many different ages of majority do we have in our country?

IIRC, these are just a few...
Young teens can be certified and tried as adults and not as juveniles.
16 to drive unaccompanied
17 to join the military
18 to vote and be tried as an adult
21 to drink alcohol
24 to be considered independent of one's parents for federal college grants and loans

25 to be elected to the House of Representatives
30 to be elected to the Senate
35 to be President, which leads to one of my biggest pet peeves with the Presidential order of succession; if the Speaker of the House can be as young as 25 and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate can be 30, it can then skip directly from the VP to the cabinet members, who, being appointed rather than elected, have, IMO, no business being in the succession at all.

I think that puts me near my comma quota for the day.