All countries distinguish between minors and adults for various legal purposes. Recent U.S. Supreme Court cases concerning the legal status of juveniles have consulted psychological science to decide where to draw these boundaries. However, little is known about the robustness of the relevant research, because it has been conducted largely in the U.S. and other Western countries. To the extent that lawmakers look to research to guide their decisions, it is important to know how generalizable the scientific conclusions are. This dissertation examines two psychological phenomena relevant to legal questions about adolescent maturity: cognitive capacity, which undergirds logical thinking, and self-regulatory capacity, which comprises individuals’ ability to restrain themselves in the face of emotional, exciting, or risky stimuli. Age patterns of these constructs were assessed in 5,227 individuals (50.7% female), ages 10-30 (M = 17.05, SD = 5.91) from eleven countries. There were three primary aims of this work. First was to replicate previous research on age patterns in cognitive capacity within the U.S.-only sample. Second was to replicate previous research on age patterns in self-regulatory capacity within the U.S.-only sample. Third was to extend analyses to include the other ten countries in the sample, and evaluate to what degree age patterns found in the U.S. generalize to other parts of the world. I explored age patterns in the U.S. using a variety of statistical approaches, including analysis of variance, regression, and piecewise regression to better understand how these analyses shape our conclusions regarding the age of maturity of cognitive capacity and self-regulatory capacity. Age patterns found in the U.S. were consistent with past research. Specifically, whereas cognitive capacity reached adult levels around age 16, self-regulatory capacity generally continued to mature beyond age 18. When extending the analyses to the other ten countries, I found that generally cognitive capacity matured prior to self-regulatory capacity, but there were numerous deviations from this pattern. For instance, some countries evinced no discernible age pattern in one or both composites (e.g., Kenya or Jordan), while in others self-regulatory capacity reached adult levels earlier than or at the same age as cognitive capacity, inconsistent with hypotheses. In sum, juveniles may be capable of deliberative decision making by age 16, but even young adults may demonstrate “immature” decision making in arousing situations. It is therefore reasonable to have different age boundaries for different legal purposes, at least in the U.S.: one for matters in which cognitive capacity predominates, and a later one for matters in which self-regulatory capacity plays a substantial role. Whether and how these results ought to inform policy in other countries, however, is unclear. / Psychology

This thesis deals with the functioning of the family in connection with the physiological and psychosocial development of children. It also describes the reasons why children are taken away from the family and the options of residential care. The first option is institutional care in orphanages and therefore we mention several organisations that offer projects to help these children in particular to have an easier entry to life after the completion of institutional care. The empirical part of this study analyses the background, the habits and also the preparation of young adults to leave the orphanage in two institutions: Primary school and Orphanage Přestavlky and Orphanage Klánovice. It includes personal life stories of several children not only from the two orphanages but also from children brought up in foster care. The main goal of this thesis was to find out whether the children brought up in orphanages have different vision of the future in comparison with children raised in foster care. The results of our open- ended interview survey are presented in the final part of this paper.

Between the late 1960s and early 1980s, state and federal lawmakers made a number of unprecedented changes to the minimum age laws that define the legal boundaries between childhood and adulthood in the United States. By altering the voting age and the legal age of majority during the early 1970s, legislators effectively lowered the legal age of adulthood from twenty-one to eighteen, and launched a broader, more wide-ranging debate over other minimum age laws that would preoccupy legislators for much of the decade that followed. These reforms can be grouped into two distinct stages. Early 1970s reforms to the voting age and age of majority placed a great deal of faith in eighteen- to twenty-year-old Americans’ ability to make mature, responsible decisions for themselves, and marked a significant departure from the traditional practice of treating young people as legal adults at the age of twenty-one. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, a second set of reforms revoked much of the faith that legislators had placed in the nation’s young people, raising some key minimum age limits – such as the drinking age – and expanding adults’ ability to supervise and control teenaged youth. This dissertation analyzes political and public debates over the legal boundaries between childhood and adulthood during the 1970s, focusing in particular on reforms to the voting age, the age of majority, the drinking age, and the minimum age laws that regulate teenagers’ sexuality. It seeks to explain how and why American lawmakers chose to alter these minimum age laws during the 1970s, and how they decided which age should be the threshold for granting young people specific adult rights and responsibilities. The dissertation suggests that legislators often had difficulty accessing information and expertise that they could use to make well-informed, authoritative decisions on the subject of minimum age laws. Instead, they often based their choices on broader public images and perceptions of the nation’s young people, and on their subjective experiences of interacting with American youth. Throughout the 1970s, a wide range of lawmakers, activists, and interest groups – including many young people – sought to control the legal boundaries between childhood and adulthood, both by lobbying lawmakers directly and by trying to alter public images and perceptions of the nation’s youth. During the early 1970s, some young activists, liberal lawmakers, and interest groups met with considerable success in their attempts to grant young people greater adult rights and responsibilities at earlier ages, successfully framing eighteen- to twenty-year-old youth as mature, responsible young people who were quite capable of shouldering adult rights and duties. But these positive perceptions of young people were short-lived. By the mid-1970s, they were being supplanted by much more negative and unsettling images of young people who were thought to be exhibiting “adult” behaviors too soon, and were portrayed as being both in danger and a danger to American society. As a result, lawmakers became increasingly focused on protecting and controlling young people in their late teens and early twenties, and on drawing clear, firm boundaries between childhood and adulthood. These shifts demonstrate that images and perceptions of American youth played a key role in shaping 1970s reforms to the legal boundaries between childhood and adulthood. Rather than the product of a sober, careful evaluation of young Americans’ capacity to make responsible decisions for themselves, these reforms were often the product of adult Americans’ visceral, emotional responses to shifting public perceptions of the nation’s youth. / History

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:16:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Andreia Agda Silva Honorato.pdf: 1479403 bytes, checksum: c1458d9c7294e45953a4aee221b5ec16 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-09-12 / This present work, The meaning of the moment of the teenagers left the shelter institution when they are in age of majority: and now? , Andreia Agda Silva Honorato authorship, it presents a study from teenagers stories that leave their daily in a shelter at Santo André city, that is called, the School home São Francisco de Assis, composed by eleven home, where these teenagers are certain to leave the institution when they are 18 years old by the reason of the age of majority. Up to June, 2003, this shelter belonged to the Social Worker Department and, due the contradictory and bureaucratic factories, it was assumed by the Education Department (unique case in Brazil). They are young people that experience insecurities moments while results of contrary actions for an emancipator pedagogy. Based on the overall goal of knowing and identifying which the objectives and subjectives factories that contribute to the leaving more autonomous in the non shelter institutional act by the age of majority reason, seeking to break or soften with the aspects that permeate this moment and prevent that this process has been lived in safer way security understood here for beyond the economic factories. This way, the specifics objectives from this search were: To know the meanings attributed by the own subjects of the search teenagers that live the prior of non shelter like, it appropriates of the methodology applied daily in different historical moments of the shelter to comprehend, how much these refer to the lived results by these teenagers in the left moment. Between these specifics objectives and, from the two first, the existence premise is that to socialize the results of this search, could the shelter, rethink its methodology, to invest truly in article 92, subsection VIII that advocated the gradual preparation for the non shelter institutional, even as, that will be this study, considering as motivation to the operators of the public policy. It still firms, the intention to propose methodologies that come to contribute with the teenagers that will leave the shelter, considering the results from the studied bibliographies, but, mainly, the look of those people that live in this condition. This theme explain by the big demand of the teenagers that live, lived and will still live this condition, as well as, by production scarcity about the shelter left by age of majority reason, once that the studies search discuss the shelter process or the shelter daily. For both, it was realized two surveys. The first is about the historical institutional, by interviews with publics employees that act in different moments as manager or technical of the shelter; and, the second were collected testimony of the teenagers that left and are almost leaving the shelter institution by the age of majority reason. This is a study search qualitative no liable to generalization and presents like reflection document from meanings assigned by own subjects / O presente trabalho, O significado do momento da saída de adolescentes de instituição de acolhimento ao completarem a maioridade civil: e agora? , de autoria de Andreia Agda Silva Honorato, apresenta um estudo a partir das histórias de adolescentes que vivem sua cotidianidade num abrigo da cidade de Santo André, Lar Escola São Francisco de Assis, composto por onze casas lares. Os adolescentes, que lá vivem, ao atingirem 18 anos de idade, são determinados a deixar a instituição por motivo de maioridade civil. Até junho de 2003, esse abrigo pertencia à Secretaria de Assistência Social e, decorrentes a fatores contraditórios e burocráticos, foi assumido pela Secretaria de Educação (único caso no Brasil). Os Jovens vivenciam momentos de insegurança como resultado de ações contrárias a uma pedagogia emancipatória. Este trabalho parte do objetivo geral de conhecer e identificar quais os fatores objetivos e subjetivos que contribuem para uma saída mais autônoma no ato do desacolhimento institucional, por motivo de maioridade civil, buscando romper ou amenizar com os aspectos que permeiam esse momento e impedem que esse processo seja vivido de maneira mais segura segurança entendida aqui para além dos fatores econômicos. Dessa maneira, os objetivos específicos desta pesquisa foram: conhecer os significados atribuídos pelos próprios sujeitos da pesquisa adolescentes que vivem as prévias do desligamento bem como apropriar-se das metodologias aplicadas cotidianamente em diferentes momentos históricos do abrigo, a fim de compreender o quanto elas remetem aos resultados vividos por esses adolescentes no momento de sua saída. Entre esses objetivos específicos a premissa existente é a de que, ao socializar os resultados desta pesquisa, possa o abrigo repensar sua metodologia, investir verdadeiramente no artigo 92, inciso VIII, que preconiza a preparação gradativa para o desacolhimento institucional, e que seja este estudo considerado como motivação aos operadores das políticas públicas. Firma-se, ainda, a intenção de propor metodologias que venham a contribuir com adolescentes que sairão do abrigo, considerando os resultados a partir das bibliografias estudadas, mas, principalmente, do olhar daqueles que vivem essa condição. Este tema justifica-se pela grande demanda de adolescentes que vivem, que viveram e que, ainda, viverão essa condição, principalmente, pelos resultados existentes dos que passaram por essa situação, bem como, pela escassez de produção sobre a saída do abrigo por motivo de maioridade civil, uma vez que os estudos pesquisados discutem o processo de acolhimento ou o cotidiano no abrigo. Para tanto, foram realizados dois levantamentos. O primeiro sobre a história institucional, por meio de entrevistas com funcionários públicos que atuaram em diferentes momentos, como encarregados ou técnicos do abrigo; e o segundo, em que foram coletados depoimentos de adolescentes que saíram e que estão prestes a sair da instituição de acolhimento por motivo de sua maioridade civil. Esta é uma pesquisa de estudo qualitativo, não passível de generalizações, e apresenta-se como instrumento de reflexão a partir dos significados atribuídos pelos próprios sujeitos

The child’s participation in any legal matter involving him/her is crucial whether received directly or indirectly through a legal representative. The significance of the child’s views in legal matters is accepted internationally and is entrenched in South African law. This is the main feature of the present research. In Roman law the paterfamilias was the complete antithesis of the best interest of the child with his paternal power entirely serving his own interests. The best interests of the child progressively improved his/her participatory rights and the dominance of paternal authority in Roman, Germanic, and Frankish law eventually gave way to parental authority and assistance in Roman-Dutch law. This advanced the child’s participation in legal matters and under Roman-Dutch law, his/her right of participation included legal representation by way of a curator ad litem. The child’s best interests were consistently viewed from an adult’s perspective and resulted in an adult-centred assessment of his/her best interests. Statutory intervention increased the child’s participatory and representation rights, however, the tenor of these items of legislation remained parent-centred. The Appeal Court later dispelled any uncertainty regarding the paramountcy with respect to the best interests of the child. During the 1970s in South Africa, the emphasis began shifting from a parent-centred to a child-centred approach in litigation between parents in cases involving their children. An open-ended list of factors comprising the best interests of the child accentuated this shift. Courts were encouraged to apply the paramountcy rule in legal matters concerning children and to consider the views of children in determining their best interests. The new democratic constitutional dispensation in South Africa, followed by the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter, obligated South Africa to align children’s rights with international law and standards. The South African Law Reform Commission set out to investigate and to formulate a single comprehensive children’s statute. The resultant Children’s Act 38 of 2005 is the most important item of legislation for children in private law in South Africa. The Children’s Act provides for the widest possible form of child participation in legal matters involving the child. It revolutionises child participation requiring no lower age limit as a determining factor when allowing the child, able to form a view, to express that view. The child’s right to access a court and to be assisted in doing so further enhances his/her participatory right. Effective legal representation is the key in ensuring that children enjoy the fundamental right of participation equal to that of adults in legal matters involving children. Comparative research of child laws in Australia, Kenya, New Zealand and United Kingdom confirms that South Africa is well on the way in enhancing children’s participatory and legal representation rights in legal matters concerning them. This illustrates that only the child’s best interests should serve as a requirement for the legal representation of children in legal matters. Continued training is essential to ensure the implementation of the Children’s Act and requires a concerted effort from all role-players. / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Private Law / unrestricted