It’s difficult for people to understand now, but that used to be considered adulthood.
I’m old, and my parents were old when I was born. My aunts and uncles would have been born from 1905 to the early 1930s. Most of them finished school at grade 8 at 13 or 14 and moved from home shortly after. By 16 it was common to be living in a boarding or rooming house and working a job. The invention of “teenager” as a distinct phase of life is largely a post-second world war phenomenon and is inextricably linked to the change of literacy from grade 8 to a highschool education, and now college. Along with that educational shift there has been a change in what we consider a “child”.
It’s difficult for people to understand now, but that used to be considered adulthood.
I’m old, and my parents were old when I was born. My aunts and uncles would have been born from 1905 to the early 1930s. Most of them finished school at grade 8 at 13 or 14 and moved from home shortly after. By 16 it was common to be living in a boarding or rooming house and working a job. The invention of “teenager” as a distinct phase of life is largely a post-second world war phenomenon and is inextricably linked to the change of literacy from grade 8 to a highschool education, and now college. Along with that educational shift there has been a change in what we consider a “child”.