The difference between ... Age of Consent & Age of Majority

The Age of Majority

“The age of majority is the legally defined age at which a person is considered an adult, with all the attendant rights and responsibilities of adulthood."

The age of majority is the age defining legal adulthood. At majority, a minor becomes an adult, assuming legal control over their person, actions, and decisions, and ending parental right. Parental control and the duty to support a child legally end at this age. The person can now handle his or her own affairs.
If you did get your parents’ permission to marry, you would become a legal adult, too.

This general age boundary relates mostly to property laws. It includes the right to freely manage and dispose of your goods, buy and sell properties and sign rental contracts. On the other hand, once you reach the age of majority, you can be charged with failure to pay debts, or other contractual obligations.

In Dutch history the age of majority was 25 during the middle ages, except for some regional differences. A boy remained in his father’s guardianship until he was emancipated on attaining maturity. A girl remained in her father's guardianship until she married, at which point she passed into the guardianship of her husband(‘s family).
In the early 19th century the age of majority was 21. The French Napoleonic Code also set a required marital minimum age of 18 years for men, and 15 for women in The Netherlands.
As of 1838 - with the introduction of the Civil Code - the Dutch law stated that the age of majority was 23, and the marital age for women was raised to 16. Usually, from the age of 7 a child would start to contribute to the household. From helping out in the house to labour and farming. Between the ages of 14 and 18, you were considered a fully-fledged worker.
In the early 20th century the age was back to 21. In 1985 the age of majority was set at 18 (or an earlier date in the case of marriage).

Note: Many Ages of License coincide with the Age of Majority to recognise the transition to legal adulthood, but they are nonetheless legally distinct concepts.

The Difference Between ... is a series explaining the differences between two genealogical concepts

The Age of Consent

“The age of consent is defined as the age at which someone is considered by the law to be old enough to agree to have sex with someone else of the age of consent."

Throughout history the Age of Consent has been used with additional meanings, such as the age at which a person becomes competent to consent to marriage, but consent to sexual activity is the modern meaning of the term. Consequently, an adult who engages in sexual activity with a person younger than the age of consent, is unable to legally claim that the sexual activity was consensual, and such sexual activity is considered child sexual abuse.

Longevity ~ Elisabeth van Dongen-Kranendonk (98)

As a child, my mother regularly sent me to a farm, half a kilometer away along the dike, to buy eggs. The Van Dongen family had chickens.
Another memory I have is that, as a child, I could distinguish the tractors of the various farmers in the area, not only because of different brands, but also because of different driving styles. Van Dongen was one of the farmers I could hear driving up from the small road in the polder.

Among the death notices I recently found in the attic of my parents' house, I came across a card for the mother of the Van Dongen I knew, who turned out to have lived to be well over 98 years old!

Elizabeth “Betje” Kranendonk was well over 98 years old when she passed away on September 20, 1997, in Strijen at the “Avondrust” care center, now known as “Hoge Weide”. She is buried in the small cemetery of Cillaarshoek, where various members of the Bos family have also found their final resting place.

For privacy reasons, I have cut out the section regarding the remaining family members.

Betje married Pieter van Dongen in Maasdam on November 3, 1921. He was born in Maasdam on August 29, 1897, as the son of Cornelis van Dongen (1850-1927) and Krijna Noordermeer (1859-1922). Therfore, it's not surprising that they named their two children Cornelis and Krijna.

In the last five years of the 19th century, only one Elisabeth Kranendonk was born in the entire Hoeksche Waard. In Maasdam, on December 13, 1898, Cornelis Kranendonk (1867-1928) and Neeltje Hoogvliet (1870-1957) had a daughter named Elisabeth. Neeltje lived to be well over 87 years old, so Betje inherited her mother's good genes.

Treasure Trove Thursday - My Father's Botanical Notebook

evaporation test

My father, Teunis Pieter Bos, was born on 10 May 1929 in Cillaarshoek, and passed away in Strijen on 19 June 2021. His father, my grandfather, had started a horticultural business, so he send my father to the horticultural school in Barendrecht. Recently, on the attic of my parents' house, I found a pile of my father's yellowed notebooks, dating from the time he was studying in Barendrecht. To my surprise, it turned out my father could draw very beautifully. I didn't know that, because my father was always busy working on the farm. After he finally “retired” around the age of 88, he did a lot of cycling. At home, he solved Sudoku puzzles. I've never seen him drawing anything.

My father once told me that he couldn't go to school during the last year of the Second World War, because the school was in Barendrecht, which is on the other side of the Oude Maas River. The Allied Forces had advanced to the main Dutch rivers in September 1944, but they were unable to cross at Arnhem. As a result, the island of Hoeksche Waard was heavily shelled by the Allied Forces during the last winter of the war. They had liberated North Brabant, but the Germans still occupied the Hoeksche Waard.

This post shows two drawings my father made in a notebook about botany.

strawberry plant