5.Apr.2006 at 5 | xn
Treating kids as adults, and Sex in the City
If you don’t watch Larry King (as I don’t), you may not have heard the story of Justin Berry, the young man who at 13 got into the child pornography industry and at 18 is now testifying against his former customers. If you’d like to get up to speed on the story, here are a couple links (unfortunately the original NYT story is no longer available without paying for it):
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/21/pzn.01.html (you have to scroll about 80% down the page to get to the story)
There is also a story w/comments on this site:
http://www.theconglomerate.org/2005/12/the_horrifying_.html#comments
Late entry: http://tatumweb.com/blog/index.php/2005/12/20/justin-berry/
Interesting in the comments is the recurring idea by many that Justin is responsible for his acts and knew exactly what he was doing…How could he at 13 NOT know what he was doing?
I think this points out the glaring illogic of treating kids as if they are just smaller versions of adults, with the same decision-making capabilities, who don’t need parenting. That’s the trend now for the last few decades, and people wanting to hold Justin completely accountable reinforce that worldview.
Trouble is, he DIDN’T at 13 have the maturity and decision-making ability of an adult. Kids are not just small adults…they NEED parenting and direction and help making decisions–parents aren’t ancillary; they are essential.
What happened to Justin is the natural, logical, completely predictable result of saying, “We should let kids make their own decisions.” NO WE SHOULD NOT.
