Reduction of the age of majority to 18 | EUROtoday

AWhen the Bundestag determined 50 years in the past to decrease the age of majority from 21 to 18, many anxious in regards to the penalties. How would schooling, relationships and client habits change? In the times and months earlier than the vote on March 22, 1974, commentators painted this in quite gloomy colours. The “Stuttgarter Zeitung” predicted growing dropout charges at excessive colleges. After all, mother and father gained't be capable to do something about it sooner or later if their eighteen-year-old son decides to drop out of faculty shortly earlier than graduating from highschool. In the “Welt” it was mentioned: “If your eighteen-year-old daughter marries an obvious scoundrel, you will be powerless to face this inevitable tragedy from now on.” And the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” warned in regards to the transactions that eighteen-year-olds have been allowed to do any further: In the long run, mother and father might “do their “Don't let your offspring cram things out when they have carelessly signed a purchase agreement for the stereo system, the booking of a trip to the Orient or the check for the new leather jacket.”

One facet significantly anxious commentators on the time: the proper to face for election. Although eighteen-year-olds had already been granted the proper to vote two years earlier, that means they have been allowed to vote, an creator within the “Tagesspiegel” argued that the proper to be elected needs to be left at 21 years of age – whatever the age of majority. Because, he wrote: “Even those who are precocious at 18 years of age have hardly reached the level of training that would enable them to cope with the increasingly complicated legislative task.” The creator admitted that that is precisely why it isn’t to be anticipated , “that with the lowering of the age limit for passive voting rights, an invasion of teenagers into the Bonn Federal Palace begins”.