大象传媒

Growing up is never easy - but young people around the world are shaping their own destinies as never before. Michael Gallagher reports.

"The downside of protection is the loss of autonomy; and the challenge is to find a balance between recognising emerging autonomy and providing appropriate protection." So says children's rights specialist Gerison Lansdown, neatly summing up the dilemma at the heart of our transition from childhood to adulthood: should young people be subject to restrictions imposed for their safety by adults, or should they be free to make their own choices, and - inevitably perhaps - suffer as a result?

...If children can be adults and adults children, it follows that our assumptions about what constitutes mature behaviour might also be questioned

The question is all the more complex given that growing up is hardly a predictable affair. There is precious little science to help us work out the rate at which a young person is likely to mature in psychological or emotional terms, though the more plentiful physical data underline the fact that it can be a roller-coaster ride.

There are vast differences in the ability of children after puberty to guide their new, more powerful selves through the next few turbulent years. For this reason, the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that young people be entitled to additional, protective rights until the age of 18. The idea of remaining officially a child for almost two decades is a catch-all solution, designed to reduce risks for the most vulnerable. Yet it hardly describes the experiences of many young people.


Throughout the world, young people are increasingly demanding recognition of their needs and abilities. Youth parliaments now operate from Bahrain to Botswana, and there are some extraordinary developments in Latin America and South Asia, where children are becoming genuinely engaged in the running of their own communities. "They're running their own child clubs, their own unions, their own councils, their own committees - and beginning to have a serious impact on local policy-making," says Lansdown. For many of the latter children, empowerment is not about exercising abstract rights, still less about escaping parental restrictions. These are active, contributing members of the community; it is only logical that they should be finding a voice to match their very adult responsibilities.


Indeed, we might choose to see contribution and independence as key indicators of de facto adulthood: the degree to which these describe a child's life indicate the extent to which he or she has assumed an adult role, even if it is not always recognised as such.
This leads to a number of conundrums. In the West, the principles of rationality and individualism dictate that offspring are brought up to be independent in thought and deed. Yet, largely thanks to lengthy education, Western children are kept utterly dependent upon their parents long after many of their counterparts in the South. There, the situation can be reversed: older family members may well be dependent upon the child for income or labour; yet children often grow up in patriarchal societies, which attach little importance to their views. In parts of Africa, meanwhile, a grown man may not be acknowledged as fully adult if he cannot provide for others. One might be a 'child' at the age of 40!


Given this huge variety of abilities and experiences, it is almost impossible to reconcile young people's autonomy and protection without reference to the individual concerned. And, notwithstanding the UN's definition of childhood, there are many under-18s whose ability to contribute and take responsibility we should, perhaps, be celebrating. Gerison Lansdown suggests that such young people demonstrate that autonomy and protection can actually go hand in hand: "Part of protecting children is empowering them," she says. "Allowing them to take responsibility for themselves and giving them the confidence to learn what are acceptable risks and to learn to protect themselves. Silencing children is not a way of protecting them."

Michael Gallagher is a 大象传媒 World Service radio producer. His work has taken him to more than 60 countries and has frequently involved family and social issues. His for Generation Next, presented by Robin Lustig, will air from 4 - 8 December.