Adolescence has long been recognized as a period of heightened risk-taking and, accordingly, a stage that requires special oversight from adults.Nevertheless, expectations regarding this period—and views of how adolescents should be treated—have varied. A common subject of social commentary is that young people today begin adolescence too early and leave it too late.2 The decline in the age of onset of menarche for girls—from approximately age 17 in 1830 to just under age 13 by the middle of the twentieth century (Susman et al., 2010)—as well as the challenges of achieving financial independence in the current U.S. economy both support the idea of a protracted adolescence. This idea that adolescents undergo a protracted period of development is not unique to modern times, however. As early as 1563 an English statute decreed that all craftsmen should complete an apprenticeship of at least 7 years because “until a man grows into 23 years, he for the most part, though not always, is wild, without judgment and not of sufficient experience to govern himself”