In October 2013, two days before her 18th birthday, New Jersey teen Rachel Canning argued with her parents over their demands that she break up with a boyfriend, keep their curfew and abide withhousehold rules. Instead she moved to a friend’s home where she lived for the next several months. She sued her parents for financial support to complete her senior year at an expensive private school and for her anticipated college years.
In court the judge listened to both parties, called Canning, “a spoiled teen” and threw out her plea. Within days, Rachel Canning returned to live with her parents. The move did not include a financial settlement.
While the family settles down to finish Rachel’s senior year, the shock waves continue to roll across the globe at the chutzpah of an 18 year-old insisting she enjoy all the privileges of living under her parents’ roof while rejecting their rules and guidelines. In the middle of the torrent of postings on social media and blogs commenting on the situation, the News-Times received a news release. The news release reported that half of the 40,473 females, who were asked, said that “their eighteenth birthday marked the cutoff for financial assistance.
Many would of them would say, “Welcome to the club, Rachel.” Brandon Wade, founder and CEO of SeekingArrangements disagrees. “When over 15 percent of youth in America can’t find jobs, family support is vital for young women to succeed.”
He further states, without substantiation, that “America agrees that adulthood starts at age 26, so how can parents expect an 18 year old to provide for themselves, including the cost of tuition? These girls should be worrying about getting into college instead of facing financial burdens.”
Adulthood starts at age 26! Since when? At 18 young men and women can:
• Enter any branch of the military without their parent’s permission – and be on the battle front within the year.
• Vote in a local or national election.
• Get married without parental approval in all 50 states except Nebraska where the law is 19.
• Obtain a driver’s license without parental approval and, with some stipulations, rent a car or drive a semi-truck.
• Sign-up for a credit card and accrue massive debts.
• Stand trial as an adult – including a murder trial with the possibility of the death penalty.
Wade wants to help these young women by matching them in a mutually beneficial arrangement with older men – typically those over 35. He says the women are not adults, but he still considers these high school graduates old enough to enter into a financial arrangement with an older man – a Sugar Daddy.
Ironic isn’t it? If a teen drops out of school, runs away from her home and comes under the protection of a man she meets on the street, it is called prostitution. The man who connects the runaway with men ‘seeking comfort’ is called a pimp.
Take that same teen, give her a high school diploma and a desire to go to college without incurring debt or seeking gainful employment and Wade suggests he can help Canning – and others like her – find a Sugar Daddy.
Soliciting is never mentioned. No, this is an arrangement. The men, married and single, promise to pay the young women a certain amount each month in exchange for her time.
Sure, there is no shivering on a street corner in the cool of the evening while a pimp watches across the street. It’s all cleaned up via the Internet with the justification that college funds must be paid and the Sugar Daddy just wants to help pay for her apartment, college fees and/or expenses.
Perhaps prostitution is too harsh of a term. Call these young women concubines.
According to Wikipedia.com concubinage is “an interpersonal relationship in which a person (usually a woman) engages in an ongoing sexual relationship with another person to whom they are not or cannot be married. The inability to marry may be due to differences in social rank or because the man is already married. The woman in such a relationship is referred to as a concubine. Historically, concubinage was frequently voluntary by the woman or her family, as it provided a measure of economic security for the woman involved.”
Exactly what Wade suggested Canning needed if her parents would not fund her quest for the best in education.
No one knows exactly ‘why’ Canning moved back in with her parents after the court hearing. Perhaps she caved in to the reality that with any funding comes an agreement of cooperation with the one who writes the checks. Considering the option Wade offers, perhaps her parents household rules didn’t sound half bad.
(Joan Hershberger is a staff writer at the News-Times and author of “Twenty Gallons of Milk.” Email her at joanh@everybody.org)