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While yesterday I had never heard of this girl, today I got up praying that she would be ok, and overjoyed that she has been found alive. For anybody who hasn’t followed the story, she is a 16 year old from California who has been attempting to set the world record for youngest solo sail around the world.

I’ve also read many articles today about the story, which show that public sentiment is clearly against the parents right now. The majority of people think the Sunderlands must be nuts, and that they are willfully endangering the life of their child.

So on the one hand, it is ok to send 18 year olds off to war, or off to colleges like the University of Virginia where that lacrosse player was so hideously murdered by a guy on the boy’s team, but to allow your 16 year old daughter to undertake this incredibly bold adventure which she has trained for years to do, can only be nuts.

I think a huge problem in our society is actually the opposite: the overprotection and low expectations placed on teens, along with the supposed “right of passage” that kids are somehow supposed to go off to college and party their brains out for the first year or two, and come out unscathed and more “grown up”.  The idea that young adults are too young and dumb to bear any real responsibility, or to understand risk, is a dangerous mindset that helps create a culture of irresponsible and morally bankrupt young adults.

For most of human history, women have been mothers in their mid teens. Young men have gone to war; have gone to work. In harsher economic times people simply did not have the luxury to baby their teens, and expect so very little of them as many people do today.

We dined at a friend’s house recently, a lovely guy who appears to try hard at being a single dad to his two teens. Yet as a successful lawyer, he also makes sure they have every hip tool at their disposal; iphones, wii’s, cars, and some spending money. The result?  A 14 year old daughter who cannot or will not look an adult in the eye or introduce herself, and spent the night chattering away on her iphone, when she wasn’t fighting with her brother. And a 19 year old son who cannot hold down a job, and bombed out of school at the local university. Yet by comparison these guy’s kids aren’t all that bad.

The culture of low expectations, combined with the “kids will be kids” attitude and the widespread tolerance and even encouragement for teen drinking such as the rampant binge drinking that occurs on college campuses, is one of the biggest societal problems that we face today.

And why does Abby Sunderland create so much anger among parents? IMHO it is not because they are “walking the walk” and doing everything possible to keep their own teens out of danger. No, it has more to do with the fact that so many of them treat their own children like large infants, and the idea that somebody else’s child may really be mature enough to undertake a challenge like this, underscores just how immature their own children really are.