By:

Jaydel Mae E. Cal

• Discussed identify formation in adolescence.

• Describe adolescence sexuality

• Characterize changes in adolescents relationships with family and

peers.

• Describe adjustment problems of adolescents and strategies for

intervention and risk reduction.
A central concern during adolescence is the search for identity. Which has
occupational, sexual, and values components. Erik Erikson described the
psychosocial conflict of adolescence as identity versus identity confusion.

The virtue that should arise from this conflict is fidelity.

Ethnicity- is an important part of identity. Minority adolescents seem to go

through stages of ethnic identity.

Identity- according to erikson, a coherent conception of the self, made up of

goals, values, and beliefs to which a person is solidly committed.
Adolescents who resolve the identity crisis satisfactorily, according
to erikson, develop the virtue of fidelity

• Fidelity- sustained loyalty, or sense of belonging that results from

the successful resolution of Eriksons identity versus identity
confusion psychosocial stage of development.

• Identity versus identity confusion- eriksons fifth stage of

psychosocial development in which an adolescent seeks to
develop a coherent sense of self. Also called identity versus role
confusion.
Identity statues- marcias term of ego development that depend on the
presence or absence of crisis and commitment.

James Macia, in research based on Eriksons theory described four

identity statuses;

• Identity achievement
• Foreclosure
• Moratorium
• Identity diffusion
• Identity achievement- identity status that described by Marcia, that is
characterized by commitment to choices made following a crisis, a period
spent in exploring alternatives

• Moratorium- in which a person is currently considering alternatives (in crisis)

and seems headed for commitment.

• Identity diffusion- is characterized by absence of commitment and lack of

serious consideration of alternatives

• Foreclosure- in which a person who has not spent time considering

alternatives (that is, has not been in crisis) is committed to other peoples
plans for his or her life.
The four categories differ according to the presence or
absence of crisis and commitment, the two elements
Erikson saw as crucial to forming identity.

• Crisis- marcias term for period of conscious decision

making related identity formation.

• Commitment- term for personal investment in an

occupation or system of beliefs.
• Applying Marcia's model

• Cultural socialization- refers practices that teach

children about their racial or ethnic heritage,
promote cultural customs and traditions, and foster
ethnic and cultural proud.
• Seeing oneself as a sexual being

• Recognizing one's sexual orientation

• Forming romantic or sexual attachments

These are all parts of achieving sexual identity.

Although this process is biologically driven, it's expression is in part culturally

defined.
Sexual orientation- focus of
consistent sexual, romantic, and
affectionate interest, either
heterosexual, homosexual, or
bisexual.

It is in adolescence that a person's

sexual orientation generally becomes
more clear.

Teens may hold varying identity

statuses as they form their sexual
identity.
The prevalence of homosexual orientation varies widely.
Depending on whether it is measured by sexual or romantic
attraction or arousal or by sexual behaviour or sexuality identity.

Many young people have one or more homosexual experiences, but

isolated experiences or even occasional attractions or fantasies do
not determine sexual orientation.

Sexual Orientation seems to be at least less partly genetic.

 Much research on sexual
orientation has focused on
efforts to explain homosexuality.

Although it once was considered

a mental illness, several
decades of research have found
no association between
homosexual orientation and
emotional or social problems.
Imaging studies have found striking similarities of brain structure and function
between homosexuals and heterosexuals of the other sex.

Brains of gay men and straight women are symmetrical, whereas in lesbians
and straight men the right hemisphere is slightly larger.

Also, in gays and lesbians, connections in the amygdala, which is involved in

emotion, are typical of the other sex.
Despite the increased acceptance of homosexuality in the United States, many adolescents who openly
identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual feel isolated. They may be subject to discrimination and violence.

Others may be reluctant to disclose their sexual orientation, even to their parents for fear of strong
disapproval or a rupture in the family.

Many gay and lesbian adolescents experience identity confusion.

According to national surveys, 42.5 percent of never-married 15 to 19 year olds
have had sex and 77 percent of young people in the U.S have had sex by age
20.

The average girl has her first sexual intercourse at 17, the average boy at 16,
and approximately one fourth of boys and girls report having had intercourse by
age 15.

Though teenage boys historically have been more likely to be sexually

experienced than teenage girls, trends are shifting. In 2011, 44 percent of 12th
grade boys and 51 percent of girls in that age group reported being sexually
active.
Two major concepts about
adolescent sexual activity
are the risk contracting:

1. Sexually transmitted
infections (STI)

2. Pregnancy

Parental monitoring can

help reduce these risks.
Why do some adolescents become sexually active at an early age?

Factors:
• Early Puberty
• Poverty
• Poor school performance
• Lack of goals
• A history of sexual abuse
• Parental neglect
• Cultural or family patterns of early sexual experience
The absence of a father, especially early in life, is a strong factor. For those
teens in two parent families, having fathers who know more about their friends
and activities is associated with delays in sexual activity.

Teenagers who have close, warm relationships with their mothers are also likely
to delay sexual activity, especially if they perceive that their mothers would
disapprove.

Generally, an involved and engaged relationship with teens is associated with

decreases in risk of early sexual activity.
Example: Participating in in regular family activities
Other reasons teenagers give for not yet having had sex
are that it is against their religion or morals and that they do
not want to get pregnant.

One of the most powerful influences is the perception of

peer group norms. Young people often feel under pressure
to engage in sexual activities (especially boys).
As U.S adolescents have become more aware of the risks
of sexual activity, the percentage who have ever had
intercourse has declined, especially among boys. However,
noncoital forms of genital sexual activity, such as oral and
anal sex and mutual masturbation, are common.

Many heterosexual teens do not regard these activities as

“sex” but as substitutes for, or precursors of, sex, or even
abstinence.
The use of contraceptives among
teenagers has increased since
the 1990's.

The best safeguard for sexually

active teens is regular use of
condoms, which give some
protection against STI's as well
as against pregnancy.
Where do teenagers get information about sex?
Adolescents get their information about
sex primarily from friends, parents, sex
education in school, and the media.

Sex education programs have been

stressing abstinence until marriage.

There are also programs that encourage

abstinence but also discuss STI
prevention.

Unfortunately, many teenagers get

much of their “sex education” from the
media, which present a distorted view of
sexual activity.
- are diseases spread by sexual contact.

The chief reasons for the prevalence of STI's among teenagers

include:

• early sexual activity

• multiple partners
• failure to use condoms or to use them regularly and correctly
• for women: a tendency to have sex with older partners
Human Papilloma Virus (HPV): The most common STI. Genital warts,
the leading cause of cervical cancer in women.

Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea: The most curable STI's. These diseases,

if undetected and untreated, can lead to severe health problems,
including, in women, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID), a serious
abdominal infection.

Genital herpes simplex: Is a chronic, recurring, often painful, and highly

contagious disease. It can be fatal to a person with a deficiency of the
immune system or to the new-born infant of a mother who has an
outbreak at the time of the delivery.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, is transmitted through bodily fluids,
usually by sharing intravenous drug needles or by sexual contact with an infected partner.

The virus attacks the body's immune system, leaving the person vulnerable to a variety of fatal
diseases.

Symptoms of AIDS include extreme fatigue, fever, swollen lymph nodes, weight loss, diarrhea,
and night sweats.

Before: After:
More than 7 in 10 adolescent girls in the
United States have been pregnant at least
once before the age of 20.

Programs that focus on teen outreach also

have had some success. Such programs
generally combine comprehensive sex
education and access to family planning
services.

More than 90 percent of pregnant teenagers

describe their pregnancies as unintended.

Many of these girls grew up fatherless.

Research suggests contributing factors include:

• Having been physically, emotionally, or sexually abused

• Exposed to parental divorce or separation, domestic violence,
substance abuse, or a household member who was mentally ill or
engaged in criminal behavior

Teenage fathers, too, tend to have limited financial resources, poor

academic performance, and high dropout rates.
Teenage pregnancies often have poor outcomes.

Many of the mothers are impoverished and poorly educated, and

some are drug users. Many do not eat properly, do not gain enough
weight, and get inadequate prenatal care, or not at all.

Their babies are likely to be premature or dangerously small and are

at heightened risk of other birth complications.
• United States are many times
higher than other industrialized
countries, despite similar levels of
sexual activity.
• Compared with Europe

• Contraceptives are provided free to

adolescents in many countries.

• Adolescents with high aspirations

are less likely to become pregnant.
Age becomes a powerful bonding agent in
adolescence.

Adolescents spend more time with peers

and less with family.

Even as adolescents increasingly turn

toward peers to fulfil many of their social
needs, they still look to parents for a secure
base.

Those adolescents who have the most

secure attachment relationships tend to
have a strong, supportive relationships with
parents.
The teenage years have been
called a time of adolescent
rebellion.

Adolescence can be a tough time

for young people and their
parents.

Family conflict, depression, and

risky behaviour more common
than during other parts of the life
span.
 Negative emotions and
mood swings are most
intense during early
adolescence, perhaps due
to stress connected with
puberty.

By late adolescence,
emotionality tends to
become more stable.
One way to measure changes in adolescents' relationships with the important
people in their lives is to see how they spend their discretionary time.

Early adolescents often retreat to their rooms; they seem to need time alone to
step back from the demands of social relationships, regain emotional stability,
and reflect on identity issues.

Ethnicity may affect family connectedness.

Ex: African-American teenagers, Mexican and Chinese
Adolescents spend a growing proportion of
this down time engaged in consuming various
forms of media such as;

Watching television

Listening to music

Surfing the web

Playing video games

Watching movies
Relationships with parents during
adolescence are grounded largely in
the emotional closeness developed
in childhood.

Adolescent relationships with

parents, in turn set the stage for the
quality of the relationship with a
partner in adulthood.

Tensions can lead to family conflict,

and parenting styles can influence
the shape and outcome.
• Individuation:
It involves the struggle for autonomy and differentiation, or personal identity.

If you were like most teens, you probably listened to different music from your
parents, dressed in a different style of clothing, and felt it was reasonable to
keep certain thing private from them.

An important aspect of individuation is carving out boundaries of control

between self and parents, and this process may entail family conflict.

Thus, parents of young adolescents must strike a delicate balance between too
much freedom and too much intrusiveness.
Arguments most often concern control over everyday
personal matters:

• Chores
• Schoolwork
• Dress
• Money
• Curfews
• Dating
• Friends
• Authoritative parenting continues to foster healthy
psychosocial development.

• Overly strict, Authoritarian parenting may lead an

adolescent to reject parental influence and to seek peer
support and approval at all cost.
A large body of research shows that parental monitoring is
one of the most consistently identified protective factors for
teens.

Parental monitoring broadly involves keeping track of the

young person's activities.

Part of monitoring involves knowing what the teen is up to.

 Conflict in the home can affect the process of individuation.

Adolescents whose parents later divorced showed more academic, psychological, and behavioural
problems.
Adolescents living with their continuously married parents tend to have significantly fewer
behavioural problems than those in other family structures (single parent, cohabiting, or step
families).
An important factor is father involvement.
The impact of a mother's work outside the home may
depend on how many parents are present in the household.

Family economic hardship during adolescence can affect

adult well-being, especially if parents see their situation as
stressful and if that stress interferes with family
relationships and affects children's educational and
occupational attainments.
There are several trends in
sibling relationships across
adolescence.

In general, siblings spend

less time together.

Research has shown that

sisters generally report more
intimacy than brothers or
mixed pairs.

Sibling conflict declines

across middle adolescence.
An important influence in adolescence is the peer group. The peer group is a
source of affection, sympathy, understanding, and moral guidance; a place for
experimentation; and a setting for achieving autonomy and independence from
parents. It is a place to form intimate relationships that serve s rehearsals for
adult intimacy.
Dyadic (In childhood): most
peer interactions are one-to-
one, through larger groupings
begin to form in middle
childhood.

Cliques (adolescence):
structured group of friends
who do things together.

Crowd: a larger type of

grouping, which does not
normally exits before
adolescence, is based not on
personal interactions but on
reputation, image or identity.
The intensity of friendships and the
amount of time spent with friends may
be greater in adolescence than at any
other time.

Adolescents began to rely more on

friends than on parents for intimacy and
support.

Girls' friendships tend to be more

intimate than boys' , with frequent
sharing of confidences.

The increased intimacy of adolescent

friendship reflects cognitive as well as
emotional development.
Romantic relationships are a central part of
most adolescents' social worlds.

Romantic relationships tend to become more

intense and more intimate across
adolescents.

By age 16, adolescence interact with and

think about romantic partners more than
parents, friends, or siblings.

Relationships with parents and peers may

affect the quality of romantic relationships.
The parent's own marriage or romantic
relationship may serve as a model for their
adolescent child.
 Dating violence is a
significant problem in the
U.S. The most common
forms of dating violence are:

Physical: When a partner is

hit, pinched, shoved, or
kicked.
Emotional: when a partner is
threatened and verbally
abused.
Sexual: when a partner is
forced to engage in a non-
consensual sex act.
Antisocial behavior tends to run in families.

However, genes alone are not predictive of antisocial behavior.

Neurobiological deficits, particularly in the portions of the brain that

regulate reactions to stress, may help explain why some children
become antisocial.
Two types of antisocial behavior:
• Early-onset type: Begin by age 11,
which tends to lead to chronic juvenile
delinquency in adolescence.

• Late-onset type: It is milder. Beginning

after puberty, which tends to arise
temporarily in response to changes of
adolescence.

Late-onset adolescents tend to commit

relatively minor offenses.
The early-onset type(Bronfenbrenner's theory), is influenced by interacting
factors ranging from microsystem influences.

Examples:
• Poor parenting practices
• Parent-child hostility
• Peer deviance

Parents of children who become chronically antisocial may have failed to

reinforce good behavior in early childhood and may have been harsh or
inconsistent, or both in punishing misbehaviour.

The choice of antisocial peers is affected mainly by environmental factors.

The vast majority of young people who engage in juvenile
delinquency do not become adult criminals.

Delinquency peaks about age 15 and then declines.

However, teenagers who do not see positive alternatives or

who come from dysfunctional families are more likely to
adopt a permanently antisocial lifestyle.
Because juvenile delinquency has roots in early childhood, so should preventive efforts
that attack the multiple factors that can lead to delinquency.

Adolescents who have taken part in certain childhood intervention programs are less
likely get in trouble than their equally underprivileged peers.

Once children reach adolescence, especially in poor, crime-ridden neighbourhoods,

interventions need to focus on spotting troubled adolescent and preventing gang
recruitment.

Fortunately, the great majority of adolescents do not get into serious trouble. Those
who show disturbed behavior can- and should- be helped.
“Life would infinitely be happier if we could only be
born at the age of eighty and gradually approach
eighteen.”
-Mark Twain