When are children no longer children?

I would like to continue this theme that Anne and Russ were discussing earlier and expand upon that. When we talk about children, we think of age or a lack of mental or social development. For the children who went to battle school, they were young, very young in fact, but their minds were beyond the normal thinking level for someone their age. We assume, in modern society, that children should have time to be innocent and to enjoy their childhoods. However, in many areas around the world there are peoples and places that have no time for children. Children have to become adults quickly. I started thinking about this last night when I went to see the new film of Marie Antoinette. She was given away in marriage at age 14 and expected to produce an heir to the thrown of France within the following year. Granted, 14 is older than any of the children we experience in Ender's Game, but it proves the fact that the concept that children should remain innocent is a recent idea. While it is nice to think that we might have created a world in which our children and future generations might thrive, where they would not have to worry about working toward sustaining their families till a little later, this is not always the case.

I also do not think that war is the reason children have to grow up quickly. I think war makes growing up a sudden process, where a person becomes an adult or perishes from a lack of ability to survive. But for Ender and his friends, they become adults quickly without experiencing the harsh realities of war. While there is a general threat of attack from the Buggers, Ender grows up because he has a mind that is capable of understanding his situation in perspective to others. In the opening chapters, when Ender is surrounded by a group of bullies, Ender knows instinctively how to stop his opponents. This is a survival tactic, not someone who has lived through the devastation of war and been torn apart by it.

Children are only children because they are shielded away from how adults view their present situations. Responsibilities, even something as simple as chores, force children to grow up. This is why child geniuses exist amongst us. Because of their aptitude they are taught as an adult would be instructed and therefor learn extraordinarily quickly. If all children were forced into rigorous instruction at very young ages they too would likely come to have brilliant minds, if not quite as amazing as the prodigies. Age is not what defines children, it is responsibility and survivability that determine maturation into an adult.