Well, it is hard to define who is a child, and that definition has changed overtime.
Throughout history you had kids at very early ages who took on an enormous amount of responsibility:
caring for their families, going out to work, getting married very young.
I mean it was not so long ago that in this country girls got married regularly as young
teenagers.
But as we have industrialized, as we have become a wealthier nation, and as the world
is becoming wealthier, that age of maturity has gone higher and higher.
Physical development is an important and obvious marker.
But, it's not just physical maturity.
There's also emotional maturity and the ability to truly develop the skills one needs to assume
the responsibilities of adulthood.
In my community, you become an adult once you're circumcised, whether you are nine years,
whether you are ten years, whether you are 13 or 14.
Once the cut has been done to you, that symbolizes on that day and that minute that now you are
an adult so you can do anything an adult can do.
If it's giving birth, if it means getting married off, you can do anything.
You are now considered as an adult.
The distinction between childhood and adulthood has changed very quickly in a number of societies
as life expectancy increases, as economic development is defined much more in terms
of brain power than it is in terms of simple strength.
Take Afghanistan for example.
Over the course of the last twelve years, life expectancy in Afghanistan has increased
for girls from 47 years to 62 years in just a decade, and along with that is a recognition
that the need to empower girls to contribute throughout their lives outweighs any short-term
advantage to a family or a community from simply marrying off their children.
Today, most countries look upon 18 as an age of maturity.
It's both a legal age of maturity—it's the age at which kids, when they turn 18, assume
a number of legal rights—the right to vote, serve in the military, finish school.
Then there are other countries that are less developed, less modern, and the age of maturity
is still culturally considered to be younger than that.
So who is a child?
Well I think we can pretty much generalize that kids who are under the age of 12 and
13, they are children.
And over 18, they are adults.
But in between you do run up in some gray areas.