So should Abby Sunderland have attempted to sail around the world? Should her parents have let her? I’m sure plenty of people will argue endlessly, many on camera for news shows seeking high viewership ratings, of the particulars of this case of Abby’s age, her judgment, her family’s judgment, and her parents’ responsibility in their role as stewards.

I am more concerned about the “spin”, and the reinforcement of the prevailing conventional wisdom about the limits of the agency of youth and the responsibility of parents and other stewards of those youth to restrain and constrain the more prodigious among them from pursuing their dreams and strutting their stuff.

I guess the facts of this particular anecdote and the decisions that were made by Sunderland and her family are arguable. Maybe getting delayed and having to do the treacherous Cape navigation in the southern hemisphere winter was bad judgment. Maybe being driven by the notoriety of a place in the record books is not the best reason for launching an adventure. Maybe older youths should have significant limits imposed on them beyond what they would choose to impose on themselves.


But if we are going to have this discussion in the media, and also around a million water coolers, dinner tables and other private venues, there are certain bits of conventional wisdom regarding youth that I would like to call out as inappropriate to that discussion.

A sixteen-year-old is just a child

In no sense should the word “child” be applied to a person that age, except in the sense of progeny (“my daughter is the sixteen-year-old child of my first marriage”) or in the legal sense of being below our society’s agreed upon age of majority. No one who was trying to convey the reality of the situation would use the words “a child walked into my office” to describe the entry of person this age. They would surely use the “young man”, “young woman”, “adolescent” or some such label.

The arguments that I have heard that Sunderland’s parents “should not have let a child” attempt this feat or that they were guilty of “child abuse” are abusing this term, with all its connotations of labeling the person as immature, incompetent and “childish”.

Looking at human history prior to the Modern Era, adulthood was generally associated with puberty, on or around the age of 13. There is a remnant of this in the Bar (and now Bat) Mitzvahs of thirteen-year-olds in Judaism.

In fact, a quick scan in Wikipedia of the lives of famous people, finds a number of instances of sixteen-year-olds or younger assuming very significant adult tasks. Cleopatra forced her younger brother off their shared throne and took sole control of Egypt at around age sixteen. Joan of Arc at age seventeen led an army that successfully assaulted the British controlled city of Orleans (some historians say only as a rallying figurehead but others think she was the tactical brains of the operation as well). Napoleon was commissioned as a French artillery officer at age sixteen. Alexander Hamilton ran an import-export business at around age 15 for five months while the owner went to sea. More recently, Danika Patrick raced in British Formula 1 events starting at about the same age Sunderland attempted her feat.

In European culture, prior to the 19th Century, people were generally considered adults by the age of sixteen if not before. It was social reform movements (inspired by the Industrial Revolution and the exploitation of people it engendered) that in their zeal to legitimately protect young people from being exploited as industrial labor that the concept of childhood was extended and the age of majority was pushed to age eighteen. In a zeal for promoting and protecting the innocence of youth and the sanctity of the home reformers may have overdone their demotion of adolescents.

Risk Taking is Inappropriate for Youth

High profile risk taking for profit, glory and publicity is enshrined in Western culture since the Age of Exploration began the Modern Era. Columbus and the many that followed him were motivated by fame and money along with the pure spirit of adventure and discovery. The European Americans who ventured into or settled in the Western part of the North American continent were often motivated in similar ways. In the 20th Century there were the highly publicized races to be the first to reach the South Pole, ascend Mount Everest, or cross the Atlantic or circumnavigate the globe in an airplane.

It is a given and even celebrated that risk taking is in fact risky. Ferdinand Magellan and Amelia Earhart 400 years later lost their lives trying to circumnavigate the globe. Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition lost theirs in an unsuccessful race to beat Roald Amundsen’s to the South Pole.

In fact sharing the vicarious thrill of adventure and the associated risks is an important aspect of Western and particularly American culture. Along with that is the vicarious celebration of youthful prodigies in an array of areas including music, academics and sport. We thrill to the stories of young female Olympic athletes who dedicate their young lives to mastering and displaying their prodigious skills in the most challenging venues.

In a culture such as this, what is so different with Abby Sunderland trying to demonstrate her prodigious mastery of her craft by sailing around the world in less than ideal conditions? In my thinking, it is perfectly consistent with our zest for greater human development by continually “pushing the envelope” of human limits.

Maybe it would have been a better call if she had waited six months more for better weather conditions to return to the southern seas. Maybe she was caught up in the impulsiveness of an adolescent testing the boundaries. Maybe she and her family were intoxicated by the publicity and glory of possibly setting a record. Or maybe she was just following the narrative of the adventurer enshrined in our cultural history.

Whatever the mix of motives, I really believe we should think twice before we fault Sunderland or her family so completely and elevate a conventional wisdom that high stakes risk taking is completely inappropriate for older youth. Whenever I hear sentences beginning with, “No one under eighteen should…” or “Every parent must…”, I cringe at the dogmatic thinking that does not take into account and celebrate the amazing range of human capabilities and possibilities that can emerge in young and old.

Again, maybe it was a significant mistake to attempt the journey when she did, but trial and error is part and parcel of a culture that celebrates risk taking and enterprises that often end in failure. Rather than continuing to take risks, are we instead at risk of becoming a culture that plays it safe, rests on its laurels, and criticizes others that try to think or live outside the relative safety of “the box”, however that is defined?

And if Amelia Earhart had been found alive in the Pacific, would we have faulted her for the need to have perhaps a daring and dangerous rescue effort pluck her out of the ocean? Should we as a society have agreed that it was inappropriate for a woman to try a stunt like this? A person had already flown a plane around the world, so what was she trying to prove anyway?