Chapter 10: Adolescence and Personality

Conceptual Problems: An Historical Overview:

• • “Adolescence” comes from Latin which means “to grow up” or “to come to Maturity”
  • It wasn’t until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution that is a term that was used more widely
  • Some scholars like Frank Musgrove who went far to claim that adolescent would be “invented” by Jean Jacques Rousseau in 1762
  • Once it was invented, the concept of adolescence has created its own reality
  • Even though the concept was invented by Rousseau or someone else, it was a certainly a by-product of industrialization and concomitant of sociocultural changes in the modern world, especially in the west
  • The earliest study on adolescence was undertaken by American psychologist G Stanley Hall through his well-known two-part work Adolescence (1904)
  • Hall’s conceptualization of adolescence was largely based on the biogenetic theory of recapitulation
  • Strongly influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, Hall would view that the stages of each individuals’ development correspond to those that occurred in the evolutionary history of mankind.
  • The 4 stages:
    1. The Infancy Stage (The First Four Years)
       • Children reenact the animal stage of the human race (crawling and the dominance of sensorimotor development)
    2. The Childhood Stage (Four to Eight)
       • One recapitulates the earliest epoch of human economic history-hunting/fishing societies (plays involving hide and seek, use of toy weapons, building the caves
       • The Preadolescent Stage (Eight to Twelve)
         • The early “savagery” stage of the human civilization is recapitulated by youth who are favorably disposed to learning and discipline (reading, writing, drawing, manual training, musical skills, foreign tongues, math skills etc.)
       • The Adolescence Stage (12 or 13-Puerty to the beginning of adulthood at ages between 22-25)
         • Which represents the turbulent and transitional stage of modern civilization. Hall would describe this stage toward maturity as a period of Strum and Drang (“storm and stress”) which is an inevitable biogenetic process or crisis everyone must go through in order to reach adulthood.
       • Given the pervasive patterns of stress and conflict among the adolescents in most of the industrialized societies, Hall’s characterization of adolescence as period of “storm and stress” is certainly understandable; however, it is really a universal phenomenon across all societies around the world
       • Hall’s biogenetic theory is thus considered today untenable from a cross-cultural perspective
       • When the puberty rites were over, girls became “women” and boys became “men” by virtue of social recognition and definition
       • Puberty Rites have lost their formal recognition and definition
       • Putting it this way, when does one actually become an adult?
         1. At age 16, when one gets their driver’s license
         2. At age 18 when one graduates from high school and can vote and join the army
         3. At age 21, when one obtains full legal rights as an adult in the United States
       • Supposed the last legal age which is 21, symbolizes the “real” adult’s status but adolescence begins with puberty at the age of 12, there lies nine long years of “no-man’s land” between childhood and adulthood in the American society.
       • Conceptual problems of adolescence are further compounded by worldwide variations in the age at which puberty occurs
       • Admittedly human growth per se is universal, but patterns of and problems in growth vary depending on social conditions and cultural forces
       • The study of adolescence needs to specify the relevant sociocultural context and its impact on the particular dimension or aspect of human development
       • There are of course other terms that are used in place of adolescence, “teenager”, “juvenile” and “youth”
       • As Muuss notes:
         1. “Teenager” is too restrictive in the term of age which is only the ages (13 to 19)
         2. Compare to the negative connotation of “Juvenile” which is (wild, immature, undisciplined, delinquent)
         3. “Youth” has been used by a number of American psychologist but with different meanings
       • Cross-cultural comparisons among adolescents’ problems in modern societies are made in the conclusion

• Developmental Aspects of Adolescence:
  • From sociological and ethnological points of views, adolescence is the first major transitional period in role socialization in most of the contemporary societies around the world
  • Roles, are generally defined and are expected patterns of behavior associated with one’s status or position given in society
  • As a marginal or limited status between childhood and adulthood, the adolescent roles are largely ambiguous and transient
  • Adolescents are no longer children in some roles but in other roles, they are still considered children because they are not adults yet
  • Social and cultural discontinuity means here abrupt or sudden changes in role relationships that the adolescent experience due mainly to a cultural conditioning that overly emphasizes the distinction between childhood and adulthood
  • Ruth Benedict would point out a half century ago that it is fact of nature that the child becomes a man (biological maturity), but the way which this transition is affected (social maturity) varies from one society to another
  • She would identify three contracts that occur in American culture between the individual’s role as the child and the adult
    1. 1: From non-responsible to responsible roles
    2. 2: From submission to dominance
    3. 3: “Sterile” to “fertile” sex relations
  • In this sense, puberty rites among “primitive” people may be considered as rituals that symbolically confirm social maturity of the individual for his/her success role accumulation and continuity, rather than role discontinuity
  • In absence of such a bridge for youth’s continuous journey toward adulthood, the adolescents in industrialized societies seem to dwell on their own island until they can go ashore to the land of the adult many years later, almost a decade of status/role discontinuity
• Adolescent Subculture:
  • Often people tend to think of “subculture” in negative terms, such as criminal subculture or drug subculture.
  • “Subculture” means simply the particular way of life among a certain group of people (subgroup) in a given society
  • There are a lot of subgroups in the United States distinguished by for example: race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, and life style in which can speak of a multitude of subcultures whether they are good or bad which would include the culture of an age-subgroup- The Adolescent Subculture
  • The Adolescent Subculture is a complex phenomenon, deviant behavior or counter-culture (rebellion against and sufficient component of subculture
  • What makes up the adolescent subculture can be best identified by what it does (functions) for adolescents
  • These functions of adolescent subculture generally include the following:
    1. It gives a sense of collective identity
    2. It satisfies the needs for primary group (close, intimate, affective) relations
    3. It provides a collective protection from adult controls
  • Hans Sebald would suggest eight most important elements of a subculture in terms of its general functions and specially related them to the adolescent subculture:
    1. Relatively unique (or uniquely accentuated) values and norms
    2. In-group lingo (argot) not shared with the larger society
    3. Distinct channels of (mass) communication not shared with or dependent on “outsiders”
    4. Unique styles and fads (including grooming, dress, gesture, and other behavioral patterns) that often results in subcultural ritual
    5. A sense of solidarity and esprit de corps (the cogency of in group verus out-group sentiments)
    6. Status criteria in terms of cognizing them and adhering to them in actual peer relationships (criteria for social prestige, leadership, and follower
    7. Influence and power of leaders enhancing the identity and esprit de corps of the collectivity (charismatic leadership/hero worship)
    8. Gratification of specific needs that larger social structure fails to provide (subcultural institutionalization of need fulfillment)
  • Some more interrelated components of the adolescent subculture can be added to the above list: Romantic Idealism, Counter-Culture, Toleration of Social Deviance in which a large but strong conformity to peer pressure:
    1. Romantic Idealism refers to emotions and attitudes that are largely based on one’s wishful perception or ideal picture of reality, rather than the reality per se.
    2. Counter-Culture movement is basically an expression of adolescent protest against existing cultural values and social norms of the adult world
    3. Toleration of Social Deviance would be “Deviant” activities can be observed among adolescents in all socioeconomic classes
  • Problem Aspects of Adolescent Socialization and Personality
    • Problems involved in this personality development of adolescence center around extensive changes or transitions that take place in this particular period of the life course, such as pubertal change, cognitive and affective development, peer relations and pressure, role ambivalence and the problem of ego identity, occupational preparation, aging parents, and impending separation from home environment etc.
    • As noted by several specialists in human development put it, “for young people these changes simulate further growth
    • For others, the changes may be overwhelming and lead to developmental decline or problems
    • Symptoms of the problem are usually identified as drug use, alcohol use, sexual behavior (premarital sex, pregnancy) school problems (declining achievement, “getting into trouble”, high school dropout), run away from home, vandalism, gang fights and other forms of delinquency, depression, self-destructive behavior, etc.
    • Causes of these symptoms, however, are not easily identifiable because they are deeply rooted in the structural context of the American adolescent’s life-course in general and are ramified into various branches depending on the individual’s particular life experience and unique adaptability
    • Those adolescent problems are a joint product of;
      1. Stress or challenges embedded in the structure of the adolescent life-course, such as changing role relationships in the varying context of family, school and friendship
      2. The individual adolescent’s particularly stressful life events, such as the loss of parent or the break up with friends
      3. The individual’s adaptive capacity and social support, such as one’s coping effectiveness (coping resources, styles, and efforts) and accessibility to primary-group support (Parents, Siblings, Close Friends)
    • Varying Contexts of Adolescent Stress-Solitude, Family, Peers and School
      • The concept stress has been a much-debated topic
      • Stress occurs to the extent that there is some mismatch actual or perceived between the person and his/her environment
      • In short, Stress is a perceived mismatch between environment and self that usually endangers one’s mental and/or physical well-being, rather than enhancing it
      • But when it comes to some mismatch, it may perceive as a “challenge” depending on the nature and extent of the mismatch may be perceived as a “challenge” depending on the nature and extent of the mismatch and the individual’s interpretation of the situation
      • The key to this dilemma is to understand the stress-challenge relationship in the terms of a continuum, rather than a mutually exclusive polarity
      • Problems of Solitude: The researchers found out, that on average, the adolescents spent one fifth (19%) of their waking hours with the family but only a small portion (4.8%) of the time was with one or both parents. More than half of their waking hours (52%) were spent with peers, 23% of time in the classroom and 29 percent with friends outside of class. (25.6%) of their waking hours were spent in solitude
      • They view this phenomenon of spending a quarter of waking hours alone by adolescents is consonant with the value placed on individualism in American culture, while in many cultures such daily solitude among teenagers is consider quite unnatural
      • Solitude this appears to be “normal” fact of life and an important part of growing up in America
      • Problem in the Family Context: Even though American adolescents spend fewer waking hours with family than they spend in any other major contexts of their life, solitude, peers and school would still have heavily dependent on family, particularly on parents (or parental surrogates) for emotional and material support
      • There are additional areas or sources of adolescent-parent conflict are well-reflected in adolescent’s attitudes toward their parents in which would detail both positive and negative ingredients in an adolescent/parent relationship:
        1. Listen and Understand
        2. Be Upfront and Honest
        3. Don’t Cop Out When Tough Subjects Come Up
        4. Trust Us and Lets Us Learn from Our Own Mistakes
        5. Don’t Live in the Past
        6. Discipline, But Don’t Dominate
        7. Compromise
        8. Show That You Love, Care, and Will be There
      • Problems in the Context of Peer Relations: Recent study on stressful life events among a large heterogeneous group of adolescents, personal evens ( such as breakups) have the most impact in all outcome behavior measures which would include physical and mental health, school grades, and deviance which would follow in turn by family related events such as parents getting divorced or getting separated to school related events such as getting suspended from school
      • Peer support does depend more on reciprocity and mutuality than parental support that peer relations are apt to produce pressure to conform to peer norms and expectations
      • The potentiality of producing a fear of social rejection and isolation is embedded in peer relations
      • Problems in the Context of School: School life is subjected to three dimensional pressures (or support) which are teachers, peers and parents
      • School is this multi-functional institution, which would be the term “school stress”
      • If everything goes well, school can be the most exciting place, if not, it is the worst place on earth  
    • Cross-Cultural Comparisons and Analyses
      • Japan has the longest school year among all industrialized nations around the world
      • They attend school 240 days a year, which includes Saturdays compared to Britain (180 days) and the United States
      • Mid-Adolescence Japanese students have had equivalent of roughly three to four years more schooling than their counterparts in the United States
      • At this point, we can certainly come to realize the importance of sociocultural factors in shaping the systems of knowledge, economy and socialization
      • Adolescent problems in the school context is largely culture-bond
      • No culture is totally “good” or “bad” in its own right two powerful industrial nations in the opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean have indeed lessons to learn from each other’s cultures for a better socialization of their youth which Americans have openness and creativity while Japanese have diligence and orderliness
      • Future cross-cultural studies on adolescent socialization and personality need to incorporate an extensive analysis of the problem involved in inter-societal culture diffusion or the acculturation process in the global context
      • However, no comprehensive and systematic study on adolescent socialization and personality has been attempted from cross-cultural perspectives