As a father of three fairly young kids, I often think about how much responsibility is age appropriate. Two weekends ago we attended the bar mitzvah of a friend’s son. It was at a reform temple and much of the service was in English, which meant that I could follow it. I am a big fan of the message of personal responsibility that’s at the heart of bar mitzvah. It is striking to me though how much less responsibility we seem to be giving children today than when I was growing up. It starts with simple things such as how kids get around. Door-to-door service by parents is the norm even over extremely short distances. Unsupervised outdoor play is non-existent. Homework has become a family affair with many projects clearly the results of extensive parental assistance (to put it mildly). It seems unreasonable to expect kids to grow into responsible teenagers when they are not given responsibility early on. Watching John Adams on HBO last Sunday, I was momentarily struck by the fact that John Quincy Adams was sent off as a secretary for Francis Dana’s mission to St. Petersburg, Russia at the age of 14. But then I remembered that traditionally in Europe, apprenticeship began at that age (and meant living away from home). It also prompted me to do a tiny bit of research. It appears that at the time bar mitzvah originated, life expectancy was at best into the early 30s. That suggests that historically it was pretty much a necessity for kids to become adults much earlier than today and begs the question whether kids were simply unprepared back then with their childhood cut tragically short or whether we are artificially extending childhood today.
