ch 11

• Factors influencing development in adolescence

  • Genetic/biological
  • Environmental/social
• Adolescents experienced thousands of hours of interactions with parents, peers, and teachers during childhood, but now they face dramatic biological changes, new experiences, and new developmental tasks
• Relationships with parents


  Take a different form in adolescence
• Moments with peers


  Become more intimate in adolescence
• Dating


  Occurs for the first time in adolescence
• Sexual exploration and possibly intercourse

  Occur in adolescence
• Adolescent's thoughts


  Become more abstract and idealistic
• Biological changes


  Trigger a heightened interest in body image
• Adolescence has both continuity and discontinuity with childhood
• In 1904, G. Stanley Hall proposed the "storm-and-stress" view of adolescence as a turbulent time charged with conflict and mood swings
• When Daniel Offer and his colleagues (1988) studied the self-images of adolescents in several countries, at least 73 percent of the adolescents displayed a healthy self-image
• Public attitudes about adolescence emerge from a combination of personal experience and media portrayals, neither of which produces an objective picture of how normal adolescents develop
• Many adults measure their current perceptions of adolescents by their memories of their own adolescence
• Adolescence is not best viewed as a time of rebellion, crisis, pathology, and deviance
• Adolescence


  A time of evaluation, of decision making, of commitment, and of carving out a place in the world
• Most of the problems of today's youth are not with the youth themselves
• What adolescents need is access to a range of legitimate opportunities and to long-term support from adults who care deeply about them
• Acting out and boundary testing are time-honored ways in which adolescents move toward accepting, rather than rejecting, parental values
• Researchers have found that a majority of adolescents are making the transition from childhood through adolescence to adulthood in a positive way
• Ethnic, cultural, gender, socioeconomic, age, and lifestyle factors influence the life trajectory of each adolescent
• Today's adolescents are exposed to a complex menu of lifestyle options through the media, and many face the temptations of drug use and sexual activity at increasingly young ages
• Too many adolescents are not provided with adequate opportunities and support to become competent adults
• Youth benefit enormously when they have caring adults in their lives in addition to parents or guardians
• Relationships with caring adults are powerful when youth know they are respected, that they matter to the adult, and that the adult wants to be a resource in their lives
• Only 20 percent of U.S. 15-year-olds reported having meaningful relationships with adults outside their family who were helping them to succeed in life
• The well-being of adolescents should be one of America's foremost concerns
• Adolescents who do not reach their full potential, who make fewer contributions to society than it needs, and who do not take their place in society as productive adults diminish our society's future
• Puberty is not the same as adolescence
• Puberty


  A brain-neuroendocrine process occurring primarily in early adolescence that provides stimulation for the rapid physical changes that take place during this period of development
• Male pubertal characteristics in order of development

  • Increase in penis and testicle size
  • Appearance of straight pubic hair
  • Minor voice change
  • First ejaculation
  • Appearance of kinky pubic hair
  • Onset of maximum growth in height and weight
  • Growth of hair in armpits
  • More detectable voice changes
  • Growth of facial hair
• Female pubertal characteristics in order of development

  • Breasts enlarge or pubic hair appears
  • Hair appears in the armpits
  • Female grows in height and hips become wider than shoulders
  • Menarche (first menstruation)
• Initially, a girl's menstrual cycles may be highly irregular, and she may not ovulate during every menstrual cycle or at all until a year or two after menstruation begins
• No voice changes comparable to those in pubertal males occur in pubertal females
• By the end of puberty, a girl's breasts have become more fully rounded
• During early adolescence, girls tend to outweigh boys, but by about age 14 boys begin to surpass girls
• In early adolescence girls tend to be as tall as or taller than boys of their age, but by the end of the middle school years most boys have caught up or surpassed girls in height
• The growth spurt occurs approximately two years earlier for girls than for boys
• The mean age at the beginning of the growth spurt is 9 for girls and 11 for boys
• The peak rate of pubertal change occurs at 11½ years for girls and 13½ years for boys
• During their growth spurt, girls increase in height about 3½ inches per year, boys about 4 inches