Adolescents Will Again Establish ________________________ After the Changes of Puberty Slow Down.

Chapter vii. Growing and Developing

seven.3 Adolescence: Developing Independence and Identity

Learning Objectives

1. Summarize the physical and cognitive changes that occur for boys and girls during boyhood.
2. Explain how adolescents develop a sense of morality and of self-identity.

Adolescence is defined as the years betwixt the onset of puberty and the beginning of adulthood. In the past, when people were likely to marry in their early 20s or younger, this period might have lasted just 10 years or less — starting roughly between ages 12 and 13 and catastrophe by historic period xx, at which time the kid got a job or went to piece of work on the family unit farm, married, and started his or her own family. Today, children mature more slowly, move away from home at afterward ages, and maintain ties with their parents longer. For case, children may go away to university but yet receive fiscal support from parents, and they may come abode on weekends or fifty-fifty to live for extended time periods. Thus the period betwixt puberty and machismo may well terminal into the late 20s, merging into adulthood itself. In fact, information technology is appropriate now to consider the period of boyhood and that of emerging adulthood (the ages between 18 and the center or belatedly 20s) together.

During adolescence, the kid continues to grow physically, cognitively, and emotionally, changing from a kid into an developed. The body grows rapidly in size, and the sexual and reproductive organs get fully functional. At the same time, as adolescents develop more advanced patterns of reasoning and a stronger sense of self, they seek to forge their own identities, developing important attachments with people other than their parents. Particularly in Western societies, where the need to forge a new independence is critical (Baumeister & Tice, 1986; Twenge, 2006), this period tin can be stressful for many children, as it involves new emotions, the need to develop new social relationships, and an increasing sense of responsibility and independence.

Although adolescence can be a time of stress for many teenagers, most of them weather the trials and tribulations successfully. For example, the bulk of adolescents experiment with alcohol sometime before loftier school graduation. Although many will have been drunkard at least once, relatively few teenagers will develop long-lasting drinking bug or permit alcohol to adversely affect their school or personal relationships. Similarly, a great many teenagers break the law during adolescence, simply very few young people develop criminal careers (Farrington, 1995). These facts do not, all the same, mean that using drugs or alcohol is a skillful idea. The use of recreational drugs can accept substantial negative consequences, and the likelihood of these issues (including dependence, addiction, and even encephalon harm) is significantly greater for young adults who begin using drugs at an early age.

Physical Changes in Adolescence

Adolescence begins with the onset of puberty, a developmental period in which hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the trunk, culminating in sexual maturity. Although the timing varies to some degree across cultures, the average age range for reaching puberty is between nine and 14 years for girls and between 10 and 17 years for boys (Marshall & Tanner, 1986).

Puberty begins when the pituitary gland begins to stimulate the production of the male person sex hormone testosterone in boys and the female sexual practice hormones estrogen and progesterone in girls. The release of these sex activity hormones triggers the evolution of the primary sexual practice characteristics, the sexual practice organs concerned with reproduction (Figure 7.8, "Sexual activity Characteristics"). These changes include the enlargement of the testicles and the penis in boys and the evolution of the ovaries, uterus, and vagina in girls. In addition, secondary sexual activity characteristics (features that distinguish the 2 sexes from each other only are not involved in reproduction) are also developing, such as an enlarged Adam's apple, a deeper voice, and pubic and underarm hair in boys, and enlargement of the breasts and hips and the appearance of pubic and underarm hair in girls (Effigy 7.8, "Sex Characteristics"). The enlargement of breasts is unremarkably the start sign of puberty in girls and, on boilerplate, occurs between ages 10 and 12 (Marshall & Tanner, 1986). Boys typically begin to abound facial hair between ages xiv and 16, and both boys and girls experience a rapid growth spurt during this stage. The growth spurt for girls ordinarily occurs before than that for boys, with some boys continuing to abound into their 20s.

Figure 7.8 Sex Characteristics. Puberty brings dramatic changes in the body, including the development of primary and secondary sex activity characteristics.

A major milestone in puberty for girls is menarche, the showtime menstrual menses, typically experienced at around 12 or 13 years of age (Anderson, Dannal, & Must, 2003). The age of menarche varies substantially and is adamant by genetics, equally well every bit by diet and lifestyle, since a certain amount of body fat is needed to attain menarche. Girls who are very slim, who engage in strenuous athletic activities, or who are malnourished may brainstorm to menstruate later. Fifty-fifty afterward menstruation begins, girls whose level of body fatty drops beneath the critical level may stop having their periods. The sequence of events for puberty is more anticipated than the historic period at which they occur. Some girls may brainstorm to grow pubic hair at historic period x but not achieve menarche until historic period 15. In boys, facial hair may non announced until ten years subsequently the initial onset of puberty.

The timing of puberty in both boys and girls tin can accept significant psychological consequences. Boys who mature earlier attain some social advantages because they are taller and stronger and, therefore, often more than pop (Lynne, Graber, Nichols, Brooks-Gunn, & Botvin, 2007). At the same time, however, early-maturing boys are at greater run a risk for delinquency and are more likely than their peers to appoint in antisocial behaviours, including drug and booze utilise, truancy, and precocious sexual activity. Girls who mature early on may find their maturity stressful, particularly if they experience teasing or sexual harassment (Mendle, Turkheimer, & Emery, 2007; Pescovitz & Walvoord, 2007). Early-maturing girls are also more likely to take emotional problems, a lower self-image, and higher rates of depression, anxiety, and disordered eating than their peers (Ge, Conger, & Elder, 1996).

Cognitive Development in Boyhood

Although the most rapid cognitive changes occur during childhood, the brain continues to develop throughout adolescence, and even into the 20s (Weinberger, Elvevåg, & Giedd, 2005). During adolescence, the brain continues to form new neural connections, just also casts off unused neurons and connections (Blakemore, 2008). Every bit teenagers mature, the prefrontal cortex, the surface area of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning, and problem solving, also continues to develop (Goldberg, 2001). And myelin, the fat tissue that forms around axons and neurons and helps speed transmissions between different regions of the brain, also continues to grow (Rapoport et al., 1999).

Adolescents often seem to act impulsively, rather than thoughtfully, and this may be in part because the development of the prefrontal cortex is, in general, slower than the development of the emotional parts of the brain, including the limbic organization (Blakemore, 2008). Furthermore, the hormonal surge that is associated with puberty, which primarily influences emotional responses, may create potent emotions and lead to impulsive behaviour. It has been hypothesized that adolescents may engage in risky behaviour, such as smoking, drug use, dangerous driving, and unprotected sexual activity, in role because they have not yet fully acquired the mental ability to adjourn impulsive behaviour or to brand entirely rational judgments (Steinberg, 2007).

The new cerebral abilities that are attained during boyhood may also give rise to new feelings of egocentrism, in which adolescents believe that they can do annihilation and that they know improve than anyone else, including their parents (Elkind, 1978). Teenagers are likely to be highly self-conscious, often creating an imaginary audience in which they feel that anybody is constantly watching them (Goossens, Beyers, Emmen, & van Aken, 2002). Considering teens think so much about themselves, they mistakenly believe that others must be thinking well-nigh them, too (Rycek, Stuhr, McDermott, Benker, & Swartz, 1998). It is no wonder that everything a teen'south parents do suddenly feels embarrassing to them when they are in public.

Social Development in Adolescence

Some of the most of import changes that occur during adolescence involve the further development of the self-concept and the development of new attachments. Whereas young children are most strongly fastened to their parents, the important attachments of adolescents movement increasingly away from parents and increasingly toward peers (Harris, 1998). As a upshot, parents' influence diminishes at this stage.

According to Erikson (Table 7.1, "Challenges of Development as Proposed by Erik Erikson"), the main social job of the boyish is the search for a unique identity — the ability to answer the question "Who am I?" In the search for identity, the adolescent may experience office confusion in which he or she is balancing or choosing amongst identities, taking on negative or undesirable identities, or temporarily giving up looking for an identity altogether if things are not going well.

Ane approach to assessing identity development was proposed by James Marcia (1980). In his approach, adolescents are asked questions regarding their exploration of and commitment to issues related to occupation, politics, faith, and sexual behaviour. The responses to the questions allow the researchers to classify the adolescent into i of four identity categories (see Table 7.4, "James Marcia's Stages of Identity Development").

Table 7.iv James Marcia's Stages of Identity Development. Adapted from Marcia (1980).</explanation

[Skip Table]
Identity-improvidence status	The private does not have firm commitments regarding the issues in question and is not making progress toward them.
Foreclosure status	The individual has non engaged in any identity experimentation and has established an identity based on the choices or values of others.
Moratorium status	The individual is exploring various choices merely has non nevertheless made a clear delivery to any of them.
Identity-achievement status	The individual has attained a coherent and committed identity based on personal decisions.

Studies assessing how teens pass through Marcia'due south stages bear witness that, although most teens eventually succeed in developing a stable identity, the path to it is not always like shooting fish in a barrel and there are many routes that can exist taken. Some teens may simply adopt the beliefs of their parents or the start office that is offered to them, perhaps at the expense of searching for other, more promising possibilities (foreclosure condition). Other teens may spend years trying on dissimilar possible identities (moratorium status) before finally choosing 1.

To help them work through the procedure of developing an identity, teenagers may well endeavor out dissimilar identities in different social situations. They may maintain one identity at dwelling and a different type of persona when they are with their peers. Eventually, most teenagers do integrate the different possibilities into a single cocky-concept and a comfortable sense of identity (identity-achievement status).

For teenagers, the peer group provides valuable information most the self-concept. For instance, in response to the question "What were y'all similar as a teenager? (east.g., cool, nerdy, awkward?)," posed on the website Answerbag, 1 teenager replied in this style:

I'm even so a teenager now, simply from 8th-9th course I didn't really know what I wanted at all. I was smart, so I hung out with the nerdy kids. I still do; my friends hateful the world to me. But in the middle of 8th I started hanging out with whom you may telephone call the "cool" kids…and I likewise hung out with some stoners, simply for diversity. I pierced various parts of my body and kept my grades up. At present, I'g just trying to find who I am. I'm fifty-fifty doing my sophomore yr in Red china so I can get a meliorate view of what I want. (Answerbag, 2007)

Responses like this one demonstrate the extent to which adolescents are developing their self-concepts and cocky-identities and how they rely on peers to help them do that. The author hither is trying out several (perhaps conflicting) identities, and the identities whatsoever teen experiments with are divers by the grouping the person chooses to exist a part of. The friendship groups (cliques, crowds, or gangs) that are such an important part of the adolescent experience allow the young developed to endeavor out dissimilar identities, and these groups provide a sense of belonging and acceptance (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). A big part of what the adolescent is learning is social identity, the part of the cocky-concept that is derived from one'southward group memberships. Adolescents ascertain their social identities according to how they are similar to and differ from others, finding meaning in the sports, religious, school, gender, and ethnic categories they vest to.

Developing Moral Reasoning: Kohlberg's Theory

The independence that comes with adolescence requires contained thinking as well as the development of morality — standards of behaviour that are more often than not agreed on within a culture to be correct or proper. Just as Piaget believed that children's cognitive evolution follows specific patterns, Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) argued that children learn their moral values through active thinking and reasoning, and that moral evolution follows a series of stages. To study moral development, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to children, teenagers, and adults, such as the following:

In Europe, a adult female was nigh death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. Information technology was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, merely the druggist was charging 10 times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $400 for the radium and charged $4,000 for a minor dose of the drug. The sick woman'south husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to infringe the money and tried every legal means, but he could but get together about $ii,000, which is one-half of what it price. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell information technology cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from information technology." And then, having tried every legal ways, Heinz gets desperate and considers breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.

1. Should Heinz steal the drug? Why or why not?
2. Is it actually correct or wrong for him to steal the drug? Why is information technology correct or wrong?
3. Does Heinz have a duty or obligation to steal the drug? Why or why not? (Kohlberg, 1984)

Watch: People Being Interviewed Well-nigh Kohlberg's Stages [YouTube]: http://www.youtube.com/v/zY4etXWYS84

Every bit you can come across in Table 7.v, "Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Reasoning," Kohlberg concluded, on the basis of their responses to the moral questions, that, as children develop intellectually, they laissez passer through three stages of moral thinking: the preconventional level, the conventional level, and the postconventional level.

Table 7.5 Lawrence Kohlberg'due south Stages of Moral Reasoning.

[Skip Tabular array]
Age	Moral Stage	Description
Young children	Preconventional morality	Until well-nigh the age of nine, children focus on self-interest. At this stage, punishment is avoided and rewards are sought. A person at this level will argue, "The homo shouldn't steal the drug, as he may go caught and go to jail."
Older children, adolescents, most adults	Conventional morality	By early on adolescence, the child begins to care nearly how situational outcomes bear upon others and wants to please and exist accustomed. At this developmental stage, people are able to value the expert that can exist derived from belongings to social norms in the form of laws or less formalized rules. For example, a person at this level may say, "He should not steal the drug, as anybody will run into him as a thief, and his wife, who needs the drug, wouldn't desire to be cured considering of thievery," or, "No matter what, he should obey the constabulary considering stealing is a crime."
Many adults	Postconventional morality	At this stage, individuals utilize abstract reasoning to justify behaviours. Moral behaviour is based on self-chosen upstanding principles that are generally comprehensive and universal, such as justice, dignity, and equality. Someone with self-called principles may say, "The man should steal the drug to cure his married woman and then tell the authorities that he has washed and then. He may take to pay a penalisation, simply at least he has saved a man life."

Although research has supported Kohlberg'south idea that moral reasoning changes from an early emphasis on penalization and social rules and regulations to an emphasis on more general ethical principles, as with Piaget'south arroyo, Kohlberg's stage model is probably too simple. For one, children may use higher levels of reasoning for some types of issues, but revert to lower levels in situations where doing and then is more than consistent with their goals or behavior (Remainder, 1979). Second, it has been argued that the stage model is particularly appropriate for Western, rather than non-Western, samples in which allegiance to social norms (such as respect for dominance) may be particularly of import (Haidt, 2001). And there is oftentimes little correlation betwixt how children score on the moral stages and how they behave in real life.

Perhaps the most of import critique of Kohlberg'due south theory is that it may describe the moral development of boys ameliorate than it describes that of girls. Carol Gilligan (1982) has argued that, considering of differences in their socialization, males tend to value principles of justice and rights, whereas females value caring for and helping others. Although there is fiddling evidence that boys and girls score differently on Kohlberg's stages of moral development (Turiel, 1998), it is truthful that girls and women tend to focus more on issues of caring, helping, and connecting with others than do boys and men (Jaffee & Hyde, 2000). If you don't believe this, inquire yourself when you last got a give thanks-you note from a man.

Key Takeaways

• Adolescence is the period of time between the onset of puberty and emerging adulthood.
• Emerging machismo is the period from age 18 years until the mid-20s in which young people brainstorm to course bonds outside the family, attend university, and find piece of work. Fifty-fifty so, they tend not to be fully independent and take not taken on all the responsibilities of machismo. This phase is most prevalent in Western cultures.
• Puberty is a developmental period in which hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the body.
• The cognitive cortex continues to develop during boyhood and early machismo, enabling improved reasoning, judgment, impulse control, and long-term planning.
• A defining aspect of boyhood is the evolution of a consequent and committed cocky-identity. The procedure of developing an identity tin can accept time simply most adolescents succeed in developing a stable identity.
• Kohlberg's theory proposes that moral reasoning is divided into the post-obit stages: preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional morality.
• Kohlberg's theory of morality has been expanded and challenged, especially by Gilligan, who has focused on differences in morality between boys and girls.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Based on what you lot learned in this affiliate, exercise you think that people should exist allowed to drive at age 16? Why or why not? At what age do you lot call back they should be immune to vote and to beverage booze?
2. Remember near your experiences in high school. What sort of cliques or crowds were there? How did people limited their identities in these groups? How did you use your groups to define yourself and develop your own identity?

References

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