I'm going to make my way through this essay and kick back at where I think I disagree... this is one of the first places where I think we need some sort of world-wide understanding of what constitutes childhood. At the moment we don't. This means the age of consent in your country (18) and the age of consent in my country (16) are at odds, not just with each other but with other places in the world. We cannot have a rational discussion about whether people are developed, developing or nearly complete without some sort of agreement about what that looks like in practice. I think the age of consent should be set at 18 - along with voting, going to war, driving and marriage. This means we don't get things like the Prince Andrew loophole - or paedophiles swanning off to other places in the world where child-brides are within the law. Humanity needs a universal form of child protection - which is also why my mouth opened in shock later on in the article about the girl who got married at 13. That is NOT legal here in the UK. Not even a little bit. Someone would be going straight to jail for even attempting that sort of shenanigans.