Gwyn Williams

(originally prepared for 'Youth Workers Unplugged')

There has been considerable discussion in the media recently about the drinking age. Because drinking is associated with adulthood, both popularly and legally, the question of just what an adult is becomes quite an important one. The Youth & Family Project is a research project based in the Anthropology Department at Victoria University and we have been looking at, amongst other things, the way young people become adults. I would like to bring up a few points that come out of our research that I think are relevant to the debate.

At the moment there is little consistency in the law's approach to adulthood. In a way you could say you are an adult at 20 as far as drinking is concerned, but at 18 as far as voting is concerned. But maybe you don't become an adult at 18 you just get new rights? In any case the list goes on: you can consent to sex at 16, be tried in the adult courts at 17, get the minimum wage at 20, etc. At 20 your parents can no longer make decisions about you and yet for student allowance purposes you are not considered independent of your parents until you are 25.

In each of these cases your legal status changes when you reach a certain age. This means that on your birthday you are granted new rights. So on your eighteenth birthday, and not a day earlier, you are allowed to vote. On your twentieth birthday you gain the right to buy alcohol and drink in pubs. When you turn 20 you become an "adult". The transition from youth to adulthood occurs all of a sudden, from one day to the next, bang.

The people we have interviewed however, both young people and adults, tend to see becoming an adult as a gradual process rather than a black and white transition. And they don't define adulthood just in relation to the law. In fact they often see all the legal ages as irrelevant to adulthood. When asked what defines a person as an adult the teenagers and parents we have talked to mention things such as independence, responsibility and maturity. A person develops maturity and becomes increasingly responsible and independent with age, as they gradually become adults. These qualities can't be matched up with a specific age which clearly marks a divide between youth and adulthood and young people are well aware of this. Different individuals mature at different rates. Young people stress that becoming an adult is all about personal development and individual difference.

Children start learning to be "independent" and "responsible" from the moment they are born. Around the age of 15-16 though, many teenagers are granted a considerable amount of independence that they weren't previously allowed by adults - notably by parents and teachers. They are treated as being more responsible and also treat themselves as more responsible. They are expected to be independent and are allowed freedoms that had been unavailable to them up till then - the right, for example, to go out at night with only minor restrictions; increased independence in school work away from the overseeing eye of the teacher. They are free to make their own decisions about these things. The most obvious example of teenagers acting like adults comes from the world of paid work. A lot of teenagers have jobs and so have responsibilities towards others in the context of the workplace. They are increasingly treated as young adults and are acting like adults too. And they pay their taxes like everyone else. "Adult" in this sense means that a person acts maturely, independently and responsibly and often within adult domains.

I guess I should get onto alcohol and drinking. Part of the issue with alcohol (like other drugs) is the effects it has and the contexts it's used in. Our interviewees link it to having a good time, having fun, getting a buzz, getting wasted, escaping from problems and so on. These things are all directly related to alcohol and are talked about in a positive way usually. They are good things to do for many teenagers as well as for many older people.

But the other side of the coin is that alcohol is dangerous. It is linked to social problems like broken homes and drink driving. It is important then to control the use of alcohol. And so the law basically says drinking is for adults. You can drink in pubs at the age of 18 but only if you're supervised by a parent. The idea is that if you're not an adult you can't handle it - you're not mature and responsible enough. People think "adults" should be able to control themselves. They are expected to be able to handle the dangers of alcohol by being responsible about it - by not drinking and driving or not drinking excessively for example. But the problem is that lots of adults over 20 don't act responsibly and don't control their drinking. The people we've interviewed think that whether you can handle it or not doesn't depend on how old you are but on how mature and responsible you are. In other words on how adult you are. As I said before this has a lot to do with personal, individual development - something the law ignores.

So alcohol is associated with adulthood - along with maturity and responsibility and independence. They all get mixed up together. If you are adult and mature and responsible you should be able to drink. It's just that the law sees adulthood in black and white terms (you become an adult and are allowed to drink unsupervised in pubs from your twentieth birthday onwards) while everything around us defines adulthood in a much more complex way than this. We learn early on that we are young adults because we are responsible for ourselves, independent and free to make decisions pertaining to our own lives. And yet the law denies teenagers, who see themselves and are seen by others as young adults, the right to participate in adult activities such as drinking.

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