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Creating a profile of a developmental stage of the lifespan In this essay, I am going to discuss the developmental stage of the adolescent aged from 12 to 20 years old from the physical development like puberty and sexual maturity, the social development like peer pressure, popularity and rejection in school and the issues surrounding them like juvenile delinquency and gangs, eating disorders like obesity, anorexia nervosa and bulimia. I will also be touching on the causes of these issues. Physical Development during adolescence Between the ages of 12 to 20 is considered the most life changing, awkward and exciting stage of a human beings life as they will go through the physical changes which might cause them to have some embarrassing moments. Physical and sexual maturation are processes set in motion by the genes and executed by hormones. Most males and females feel most awkward during this stage as it is during this time that physical attraction between the two sexes will develop and they become more conscious of their own appearance. Adolescents experienced the most dramatic physical changes during this stage as their body undergoes a range of transformation from child to adult.
What they are experiencing is called puberty, the process of biological change that results in an individuals attaining sexual maturity and becoming capable of producing a child. (Sigelman and Rider, 2006, p. 130) As the level of growth hormones circulating in the body increases, the adolescent growth spurt is triggered. Girls peak growth for height is around 12 years while for boys it is 13. 4 years. Both sexes will return to a slower rate of growth after experiencing that peak of growth spurt. Both sexes develop muscles rapidly but boys usually gain a greater proportion of muscle mass than girls. Girls will gain extra fats in the breasts, hips and buttocks while boys will develop broader shoulders. The sexual maturity part will follow, whereby it refers to the ability for a male to father a child and a female to carry a fetus to term.
The primary sex characteristics like the testes and penis in males will develop around the age of 11 and a half years old while the ovaries, uterus and vagina in females will develop around 12 and a half years old. Secondary sex characteristics like breasts development for girls and changes in voices for boys plus the development of body hair for both sexes will also follow. Social relationship during adolescence During early adolescence, friends or peer group becomes the focal point of social relationships for youths. (Kail and Cavanaugh, 2000, p. 256) They usually start with a clique which are basically a small group consisting of 3 to 6 children of the similar age, sex, race and attitudes who are friends. Friends within the clique will spend time together talking, gossiping about mutual friends or school mates.
They tend to dress alike, act alike and talk alike too. At the age of 13, which is the age that most adolescents goes from Primary school to Secondary school, they will have to face a transitional change of changing schools and meeting or making new friends as the former classmates or school mates which they knew since primary school might not be going to the same secondary school. In a new environment, an adolescent will have to learn to adapt quickly and make new friends all over again. It can be quite stressful for them at first but normally, they will be able to adapt and get settle in fairly fast. It is also around this time from the age of 13 to 17 in secondary school that they will make friends who might last throughout their life.
To a teenager, friends matter a lot to them as friends provides assurance, understanding, moral support, advice and immediate acceptance which help to ease the uncertainty and insecurities that they face during the adolescent years. Being able to share inner feelings of happiness or disappointment will enables the adolescent to deal with their emotional ups and downs better. In a peer group, they usually establish norms which are the standard behavior that applies to all the members within the group. (Kail et al, 2000, p. 257) Groups will pressure members to conform to these norms. This irresistible and harmful force is called peer pressure.
This kind of peer pressure might be positive or negative. It is positive if peers are urged to do community services or participate in school activities together. It is considered negative if peers were to ask each other to try stealing from stores or fight with other groups of adolescences. To conform to peer pressure in early adolescence can be very disruptive and they might be judged by their teachers or treated as an outcast. In every school, there are bound to be popular and unpopular teenagers. According to research, social skill is the most important factor which determines a persons popularity.
Popular teenagers are found to be usually better at initiating conversations with other people and they are also better at integrating themselves into an ongoing conversation or play session. Unpopular or rejected teenagers tend to be socially unskilled, timid, withdrawn, disruptive or aggressive. For those rejected teenagers, being rejected repeatedly might cause them to drop out of schools, join gangs or suffer from psychopathology. Peer rejection can be traced in part to the influences of parents, according to Banduras social cognitive theory. (Seifert, Hoffnung and Hoffnung, 2000, p. 260) As a kid, teenagers will observe their parents response to social situations and they will imitate these responses later in life.
Thus if their parents typical response to interpersonal relationship is with aggression or intimidation, they will imitate them and this will hamper the development of their social skills in the long run. The consequences of the lack of social skills will be their classmates or school mates shunning them. Academically, their grades will also suffer and they are seen as a failure in school. Such adolescents normally have a higher risk of going into depression or become a juvenile delinquent to feel accepted. Right now I will go into the issues surrounding adolescents like juvenile delinquency and gangs, eating disorders like obesity, anorexia nervosa and bulimia.
Juvenile delinquency and gangs Juvenile delinquency refers to a pattern of destructive or antisocial activities and lawbreaking offences committed by adolescents. (Seifert et al, 2000, p. 411) Many juvenile delinquent youngsters belong to gangs and their age are usually from 12 to 20 years old. They normally commit petty offences like shop theft, playing truant, fighting among different gangs and running away from home. In a gang, there is usually a gang leader and clear role expectations for its other members. Traditionally gang members are usually adolescent males but in recent years, there has been increased female involvement. The recent case of a video being circulated online showing four girls beating another girl in a staircase landing are examples of girl gangs in Singapore.
Being in a gang provide social supports for those alienated youths who faced insecurity, uncertainty and they also provide alternative forms of economic opportunities. This kind of gangs offers a form of identity, belonging, status and power and most importantly, protection from all those people who used to shun them in the past. In Singapore as youth arrests accounted for 19 per cent of total persons arrested, thus in order to reduce and prevent delinquency, a curfew has been set at 11 pm starting from this year. If teenagers were spotted unnecessarily exposing themselves to crime risk or bad influence by loitering in crime-prone areas such as quiet, secluded spots late at night, a warning letter will be sent to their parents informing them of their childs whereabouts on that night. Whether this form of enforcement on the part of the police will provide any long term effects will remains to be seen as it is still too early to judge. Eating Disorders- Obesity In Singapore as the standard of living goes up, people have better spending power.
Parents nowadays give their children more money to spend as both parents are likely to be working. There is a lack of control when it comes to what their children are eating as they are not are...
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