What does the age of consent mean?

The age of consent means that you can have consensual at that certain age. So yes if your state's age of consent is 16 then 16-17 year olds can have . That also means that a 16 and a 15 year old can not. And statutory is that falls under the guidelines of the age of consent. Its very interesting that you mentioned parent's having to deal with the job because the government - a long time ago - had a term "parens patriae" where the government can take action against things they believe parents are not doing a good job at. The issue of kids having at a young age was something the government believed parents were not doing a good job controlling.