When are you considered a grown up?  Is it when you own your own car or house?  When you live on your own and have bills?  When you have a family to take care of?  What exactly makes you qualified to make adult decisions?  Why is it that our younger generation is trying their best to speed up the process?  Why do we have girls in middle school who want to have babies of their own, and boys who don’t think about the consequences of their actions?  As scary as it is, the kids who don’t think about the consequences and are in the doctor’s office crying with the results are more comforting than the 10 and 11 year old girls who want to have a baby, or the high school girls and boys who feel like they have to have sex once they get to high school, if they haven’t started already.  This is definitely not the same world I grew up in, the one where I thought my parents would kill me if I even went into a boy’s room at the age of 14.  Now there are pregnant girls in the majority of high schools across America.  Some girls even have goals like having two or three kids before they graduate.  I can’t imagine having children and trying to go to high school.  I give credit to those who are able to pull it off…but it really makes me wonder what kind of life they are going to have after that.  I have seen one high school student step up and really take responsibility and became a great mom who worked and took care of her own child…but mostly I see parents turning into grandparents at such an early age that they just go ahead and adopt their grandchild, sometimes even officially.  It’s great for families to help each other out, but I’m really afraid that some areas of the country are sending a message to kids that it’s ok to mess around because your parents or aunts or uncles will bail you out when you end up in over your head.  I don’t understand why kids want to grow up so fast, they will have plenty of time to make adult decisions when they are adults…..that is if they stop trying to make them when they are too young and a lot of times getting themselves into dangerous situations. 

In all fairness though, there are plenty of people who are legally adults, that you really wonder how they made it this far…and some 13 year olds that have seen things that I may never see in my life, experienced more heart break than any person should have to….so really, what makes you an adult…what makes you mature enough to live your own life and decide your own fate???