Coming of Age
glogirl posted in Rituals And Traditions
For millennia, young people have had to prove that they are ready to join the adults of their society. Sometimes this means killing an animal or an enemy; sometimes it is as simple as a party or ceremony where the young person is declared an adult. The age of the child varies but, usually, it is between 12 and 16.
As life expectancy increases, the age at which a person moves from childhood to adulthood is also increasing. In the time of the Roman Empire, girls were often married by the age of 13, and they were mothers several times over by the time they were twenty. Romeo and Juliet, the most celebrated lovers ever, were sixteen and fourteen, respectively, when they wed. The thought of marriage at such a young age is deeply shocking to our modern sensibilities, but was a logical process when the life expectancy was in late thirties or early forties.
Many tribal societies consider a boy's transition to manhood to be the time he makes his first kill. Tribes of the Plains Indians had a more strenuous test for their young men–it was called the Sun Dance. Boys between the ages of sixteen and eighteen would pierce the skin of their chests with needles, then string strips of buffalo sinew through the holes. The sinew was tied to a pole attached to a larger center pole. A buffalo skull was tied to the strips of sinew, and then the young men would walk around the central pole in the sun, without food or water for days. The ritual was completed when the weight of the buffalo skull would eventually rip the sinew out of the flesh of the young men.
The coming of age line has always been much simpler for girls. She is an adult as soon as she can bear children. In Victorian society, girls had "coming-out" parties usually occuring at age sixteen. Their purpose was to present the young ladies to the eligible bachelors. Today, a young woman's sixteenth birthday is referred to as her "Sweet Sixteen" because of the ritual of the "coming-out" party.
Much of the pomp and circumstance has been removed from the coming of age process, as a teenager Coming of Age is legally an adult at the age of 18 in almost all countries. At 18, individuals can assert their rights as members of the governed and control their own lives. Until the age of eighteen, children have few rights without their parents' signatures. There are certain advantages to having an official age at which one becomes an adult, but the removal of the celebration surrounding the event is disheartening. An official law makes the process too bureaucratic, so the youth of today have found other things to mark their transition from childhood to adulthood. Many of the events by which we mark our lives have adults wringing their hands in discomfort, but when old rituals are removed, they are replaced by new ones.
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