Sexual consent
In most Australian states and territories, the age at which you can legally consent to have sex is 16 years. The exceptions to this are South Australia and Tasmania, where it's 17 years. When someone has sex with a person under the age of consent, they might have committed a serious offence.
There are some differences between Commonwealth laws and state and territory laws. In some jurisdictions, 'these laws only apply to images of children and young people under 16 or 17' years, whereas Commonwealth laws apply to young people up to 18 years (eSafety Commissioner, 2020).
In Australia, most people stay with their parents until they are at least 18 years old and your parents will remain your legal guardians until then. For more information about when you can legally leave home visit the Youth Law Australia website.
If you are 16 years old and above, you can legally have sex (or do another sexual activity) with another person who is 16 years or older as long as you both agree to it.
Section 3(1) of the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1997 (Tas.) defines a child as a person under 18 years of age.
In the United States, a child becomes an adult legally when they turn 18 years old. However, “adults” can mean different things when you ask different people. Let's find out what it means to become an adult according to parents, the law, and science.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) defines a child as everyone under 18 unless, "under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier".
Full criminal responsibility from age 12, with a juvenile judiciary system for offenders aged between 12 and 18 who can be sentenced to a maximum of 3 years of imprisonment in separate juvenile jails.
The maximum penalty the Children's Court can impose for any one offence is two years in detention, and, for more than one offence, three years in detention. Any sentence of detention will be in a Juvenile Justice centre – the Children's Court cannot send a young offender to prison.
But there are exceptions. Angola and the Philippines both set the age of consent at 12, which is the lowest in the world.
Teenagers (15-17 years of age)
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines child as, "A human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.” This is ratified by 192 of 194 member countries.
Most states have set the age of 18 as the age of majority. However, Nebraska (§43-2101) and Alabama have set 19 as the age of majority. Mississippi is the only state which has set the age of majority at 21 (S1-3-27).
The United Nations defines youth as persons between the ages of roughly 15 and 24, with all UN statistics based on this range, the UN states education as a source for these statistics.
Your son may be thinking about their future and goals. They may be a little more realistic about where they are going in life. Or they might still have their head in the clouds about what they want to do and be. Emotionally, your son will be more independent than ever.
Adolescence is the transitional stage from childhood to adulthood that occurs between ages 13 and 19. The physical and psychological changes that take place in adolescence often start earlier, during the preteen or "tween" years: between ages 9 and 12.
It provides guidelines to parents and says a child aged 10-12 years can be left for up to 12 hours but not between 10pm and 6am. They must have a back-up adult available and can look after one or two other smaller children.
It is important to understand that it is not a crime for children under 16 to have sex! The law criminalises people who have sex with under-16-year-olds. So, if an 18-year-old is having consensual sex with a 15-year-old, the 18-year-old is guilty of an offence and the 15-year-old is the victim.
In an ideal world, teenagers aged between 17 and 20 should be in bed by midnight and wake up at 11am. “You shift later wake times in early adolescence and early adulthood.
Japan Panel Calls for Raising Minimum Age of Sexual Consent to 16. Tokyo, Oct. 24 (Jiji Press)--A Japanese government panel on Monday proposed raising the minimum age of sexual consent, stipulated under the criminal code, to 16 from the current 13.
In Western Australia, the age of consent is 16 years for both males and females. Anyone under the age of 16 is said to be a child who cannot consent to sex or sexual behaviour, even if they agree.