Chapter Introduction

CHAPTER 16
Adolescence: Psychosocial Development

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What Will You Know?

  1. Why might a teenager be a jock one year and a nerd the next?

    According to Erikson's fifth psychosocial crisis—identity versus role confusion—adolescents must work through the complexities of finding one's own identity. Experimenting with various aspects of the self, such as identifying with jocks one year and nerds the next, is a common, healthy approach to developing a secure identity.

  2. Should parents back off when their teenager disputes every rule, wish, or suggestion they make?

    Parents should relax. Disputes are common because the adolescent's drive for independence, arising from biological as well as psychological impulses, clashes with the parents' desire to maintain control. Each generation misjudges the other: Parents think their offspring resent them more than they actually do, and adolescents imagine their parents want to dominate them more than they actually do. Unspoken concerns need to be aired so both generations better understand each other. Some bickering may indicate a healthy family, since close relationships almost always include conflict. The parent–child relationship usually improves with time.

  3. Who are the best, and worst, sources of information about sex?

    Sex education begins at home, with every study showing that parental communication influences adolescents' sexual behavior. When parents are silent, forbidding, or vague, adolescent sexual behavior is strongly influenced by peers. The strongest peer influence is what peers say they have done, not something abstract. Sex education programs that engage adolescents' emotions more than logic can be particularly effective, as can role–playing with other teens and frank discussions with parents. The worst sources of information about sex often come from the media. The Internet is a common source. Unfortunately, Web sites are often frightening (featuring pictures of diseased sexual organs) or mesmerizing (containing pornography), and young adolescents are particularly naive.

  4. Should we worry more about teen suicide or juvenile delinquency?

    Both are cause for concern. Although suicidal ideation during adolescence is common, completed suicides are rare. The U.S. annual rate of completed suicide for people aged 15 to 19 is less than 8 per 100,000, yet even one teenage suicide is too many. It is one of the very few causes of death that increase with SES.

    As with suicidal ideation, many adolescents break the law. Life–course persistent offenders are cause for concern, as these young people break the law before and after adolescence, as well as during it.

  5. Why are adolescents forbidden to drink and smoke, when adults are allowed to do so?

    Many researchers find that drug use before maturity is particularly likely to harm body and brain growth. Most worrisome is drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes before age 15, because early use escalates. That makes depression, sexual abuse, bullying, and later addiction more likely. Therefore, efforts to prevent drinking and smoking in adolescence are evident in most countries.

  1. Identity

    Not Yet Achieved

    Four Arenas of Identity Formation

  2. Relationships with Adults

    Parents

    a view from science: Parents, Genes, and Risks

    Other Adults

  3. Peer Power

    Peers and Parents

    Peer Pressure

    Romance

    Sex Education

  4. Sadness and Anger

    Depression

    Delinquency and Defiance

  5. Drug Use and Abuse

    Variations in Drug Use

    Harm from Drugs

    opposing perspectives: E-Cigarettes: Path to Addiction or Healthy Choice?

    Preventing Drug Abuse: What Works?

It’s not easy being a teenager, as the previous chapters make clear, but neither is it easy being the parent of one. Sometimes I was too lenient. For example, once my daughter came home late; I was worried, angry, and upset, but I did not think about punishing her until she asked, “How long am I grounded?” And sometimes I was too strict. For years I insisted that my daughters and their friends wash the dinner dishes until all my children told me that none of their friends had such mean mothers.

At times, parents like me ricochet. When our children were infants, my husband and I had discussed how we would react when they became teenagers: We were ready to be firm, united, and consistent regarding illicit drugs, unsafe sex, and serious law-breaking. More than a decade later, when our children actually reached that stage, none of those issues appeared. Instead, unanticipated challenges caused us to react, sometimes in ways that surprised us. My husband said, “I knew they would become adolescents. I didn’t expect us to become parents of adolescents.”

This chapter is about adolescents’ behavior and their relationships with friends, parents, and the larger society. It begins with identity and ends with drugs, both of which might appear to be the result of personal choice but actually are strongly affected by other people. I realize now that my children’s actions and my reactions were influenced by personal history (I washed family dishes as a teenager) and by current norms (their friends did not).