> > Not only does Western culture not have any clear delineation of when a child becomes an adult, it occurs to me that we don't even have one standard age at which legal adultness begins. If there was *one single* age, instead of a multitude of different rules about when you can drive, when you can buy alcohol or cigarettes, when you can have sex or marry or vote or run for public office or get paid the minimum adult wage or WHATEVER, perhaps attaining this age would attract the sort of feelings people in other cultures have about their rites of passage.
>
> We don't even have a standard age for adult things across the western countries. By that I mean the legal age for different things like smoking, drinking, voting etc. varies between our various countries.
>
> For instance, in the UK we have:
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> Age 16 - Drive a moped, get married, buy tobacco products, join the armed forces, age of consent, leave parental home (with their permission).
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> Age 17 - Drive a car, tried for crimes in an adult court.
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> Age 18 - Buy alcohol, vote, leave parental home of your own accord.
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> Age 21 - Drive a heavy goods vehicle.
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> I know that in the US, at least, the car driving age is something like 14 or 15 depending on the state. Also, the legal age for alcohol is 21.
>
> It has always seemed that in Britain, the most commonly accepted age of adulthood has been 18. Why it should be so, I don't know. You have more legal freedom going from 15 to 16 here than from 17 to 18, but still 18 seems to be the age at which people say, "Oh you're an adult now."
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> There doesn't seem to be any real point to this post, other than that, even in the West, different cultures have differing ideas of adulthood and what it means to achieve it.
>
> Beasty

As you said, it varies in every state in the U.S., except for the voting age. I think that remains constant at 18 wherever you go. 18 is when the law says you are an adult, but I know more than a few 18 year old children and one or two 12 year old adults.