Professor X is a Jerk!! At least, that is what we are told way back in the 1988 by an adolescent Kitty Pryde, fresh from an adventure in outer space where an insectoid alien had implanted parasitic alien spawn within all the captured X-men. Upon their return, the mean nasty bald Professor X wanted to send Kitty to the New Mutants, a theoretically non-combative team of students, because he believed that allowing a teen-aged girl to run around with a mutant super hero group was irresponsible. Boy did she show him in the end.
Like most readers of my age group, I grew up in the 80s with a mad crush on Kitty Pryde. At the time, spunky teen heroes like Kitty, the New Mutants, and the Teen Titans resonated with me, though I never really saw the connection. In my mind, there was never any question about whether these child superheroes were even children (specially since they frequently were drawn with better developed bodies than any of the teens I went to school with.) The fact that they should have been in high school was about as relevant to me as the fact that Kid Flash had red hair. They lived without parental supervision, they tackled adult bad guys, they never seemed to go to high school, and they never cussed or snuck a quick cigarette in the back yard when the adults werent looking – how much more adult could you get?
Now, 20 years later, its almost cliché that Teen Superheroes die. We readers voted to kill Jason Todd. We made a catch phrase of “Poor Dead Doug.” And the Teen Titans have a long hallway of statues commemorating all the Titans that have died – and oh boy are there a lot of them. If fact, the current run of Teen Titans started off with a story where an possessed Deathstroke blows off Kid Flash’s knee cap with a shot gun to illustrate the point that kids shouldn’t be allowed to dress up in costume and try to be super heroes.
Today, the news cycle is dominated by Abby Sunderland and her failed attempt to solo pilot a boat around the world. A lot of speculation is being made about the quality of her parents for allowing their 16 year old daughter to undertake such an adventure. Some feel that it was ok because Abby is an accomplished sailor in her own right, and by certain accounts very mature for her age. Others feel her parents actions border on criminally endangering a minor. I find myself instantly flashing back to those halcyon days of the 80s, and my relief that Kitty wouldn’t be forced to leave the Xmen.
But now I am an adult, and I tend to see the world a bit differently. Maturity is one of those qualities that is impossible to quantify, so we tend to use Age as a replacement since it is so easy to measure and –quantum theories aside – the passage of time is a universal constant. Its not a perfect system, I will admit, but it generally works. But should we forget about Maturity entirelly? As someone who was allowed to drop out of school and forge his own path by his parents, I place a heavy stock on maturity, and I don’t want to see any one else stiffled by the “parental yoke” needlessly. Perhaps we should take maturity into account and in many cases allow our children to follow their dreams, safe in the thought that they will do so in an appropriate manner.
Therefore we have a standard we can use to evaluate all the Abby Sunderland’s in our lives. It is simple and elegant and effective. If a teen aged child wishes to take advantage of their level of maturity to embrace a decision with lifelong, if not life ending consequences, measure that decision against other possible decisions with similar consequences. For instance, if your daughter wants to sail alone around the world, ask yourself if you would trust and respect your daughter’s decision if it conflicted with yours on any of these things we as adults make decisions on:
- Whether or not to have sex, and with whomever they want, possibly even with multiple persons simultaneously or serially, even if those people are of a radiacally different age or race, the same gender, or relatively unknown except in the most superficial way to your child.
- To see a “doctor” and be prescribed the use of medical marijuana.
- To have an abortion or to bear an unwanted child against your better judgement.
- To move out of the house entirelly and live in a small studio apartment in a less than favorable neighborhood with other friends whose names you probably don’t know.
- To discontinue school and not pursue any kind of further education, including trade schools and apprenticeships.
- To consume alcohol of any kind desired by the teenager in any quantity they so desire.
- To single handely raise a child.
These are all decisions that we, as adults, have made, though perhaps some of them we gave so little thought to that we never realized we were making the decision. And likewise, in most cases, these are certailny decisions that, though we may not support them, we do not feel that was have a choice but to respect another adult ‘s sovereign right to make these decisions. And if you cant say that you completely trust your son or daughter to make any of these decisions, maybe you shouldn’t trust them completely on the other decisions either.
And maybe Professor X wasn’t really such a jerk after all.