Missouri legislature votes to ban child marriage, raising age to 18
Missouri legislature votes to ban child marriage, raising age to 18
The bill now only needs the governor’s signature to become law.
I don't get why a such law took so long, but late is better than never.
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Um, that's great and everything, but it's still too young. Your brain doesn't finish developing until you're 25, and the brain is the part of the body you're concerned about when you're making laws about when somebody should be able to make a big decision like getting married.
Technically you're right, but there's a whole load of things where you might be concerned about brain development. Enlisting, alcohol and tobacco consumption and taking out any sort of credit including student loans, comes to mind. I think actually you'll agree with me that those should all be restricted to 25+.
Now where things get less clear is voting. Why should people under 25 be allowed to vote if we don't consider them adult enough to make their own decisions in a lot of other cases? You could easily make the case that someone who can't yet decide their own future, should not be able to decide on the future of the nation.
The impact of this would be that the group of voters that has the most reason to care about the future, might lose their voice entirely. Maybe it's not a particularly active group, but they should be heard like anyone else.
This is one reason I don't think it's a great idea to start raising age minimums for things far above 18 based on the brain development argument.
Not to mention that marriage is a phase, they shouldn't really be letting people get married. Do you even know what those wedding cakes are made of? And what if someone bullies you?
This isn’t true. The study you are referring to was simply funded to that point in time and there has not been a repeat study or any sort of extended work on that front, that’s simply when the study stopped. The more likely explanation is that your brain never stops developing. Also, the concept of child and adult are constructs, at some point we are old enough to think and act on our own and there is no universal marker for that change in rationality and behavior or any bar for where that divide line is drawn. The idea that people shouldn’t be allowed to practice autonomy until 25 is just coddling and absurd.
Which study are you talking about? This is the mainstream view of neuroscientists.
Here's what I got from MentalHealthDaily (sources at the bottom of the article):
Neuroscientists largely agree that the human brain hasn’t fully developed until (at least) the mid-20s.
It may seem logical that those aged 18 to 25 are completely mature, the brain still is maturing – specifically the area known as the “prefrontal cortex.” Changes occurring between ages 18 and 25 are essentially a continued process of brain development that started during puberty. When you’re 18, you’re roughly halfway through the entire stage of development. The prefrontal cortex doesn’t have nearly the functional capacity at age 18 as it does at 25.
This means that some people may have major struggles with impulsive decisions and planning behavior to reach a goal. The brain’s reward system tends to reach a high level of activation during puberty, then gradually drifts back to normal activation when a person reaches roughly the age of 25. Adults over the age of 25 tend to feel less sensitive to the influence of peer pressure and have a much easier time handling it.
The research didn’t continue after the participants reached the age of 25, the study was ended. We only have data up to that point, there hasn’t been a similar study done that kept the research and observations conducted past the age of 25. We only have information from one study that brought the gathered information to that point, we don’t know how the brain continues to develop from beyond that point. To me, that doesn’t translate to brain development stops at 25, it just means we only have collected data from one study that documented the first 25 years of brain development and activity of its research participants, we can’t say we know what the path of brain development is after that because we simply don’t have the data.
Okay, I've got the consensus of neuroscientists on the one side, and then I've got a rando on Lemmy who can't even cite a study on the other. You gotta give me more to go on here.
Also, they aren't saying that the brain stops changing at 25; they're saying that it's mature at 25. These are two different things. The rest of your body changes as you get older, so it would make sense that your brain does, too.
The important part is the prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until your mid-20s. That's why you make a lot of rash and stupid decisions when you're 18-25.
I was a bit out of date, but thanks for the article, it was helpful. It’s a journalism piece interpreting multiple scientific studies, though, not a study. If you check the sources on the multiple actual studies they are referencing in it you will notice many of those studies observed that development and “maturity”, whatever that qualifies as, continues into your 30’s on average, the age of 25 is a pretty ambiguous marker for anything in the information provided from studies and there is no evidence that there is any kind of universal rate for everyone as far as what age your grey matter starts to decline in development, but the curve is well over 25. I still stand on my opinion that autonomy should be respected well before you’re 25.
I got married at 21, to a woman who was 30. Worst mistake of my life.
Robyn DeCradle
Baby steps, It's Missouri.
Anecdotally I am tending to agree but I have no scientific background. I feel like laws like this can be studied and then back by verification