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The transition from infancy to adulthood is common to all normal members of the human species. William Shakespeare, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, and your mother all followed the same general course that characterized your own development; a familiar path that is governed by the combined action of heredity and environment. Adolescence is the period between reproductive maturity and the assumption of adult responsibilities. Its beginning is marked by puberty, the period of sexual maturation that transforms a child into a physical adult. A major concern during this phase of life is the need to establish an independent identity, gender identity and decisions made at this time can have lasting effects on the task.
Long before the emotional and social conflicts that are associated with adolescence erupt, hormonal changes being to have their effect on a young persons body. These changes trigger the maturation of the reproductive organs and the development of secondary sex characteristics, such as facial hair in males and breasts in females, a process that generally takes about four years to complete. Although the timing of these changes varies considerably with the individual, it is believe in our society that puberty usually begins between the ages of ten and twelve in girls and twelve and fourteen in boys. With physical maturation, the urges associated with sexual maturity arise. But the first forays into dating are not associated with sexual maturation itself but with peer pressure.
The sexual maturation heralded by puberty transforms the child physically into an adult. But whether the child is assigned the social status of adulthood after puberty depends on the culture in which she or he lives. In our society it is usually believed that children who have passed through puberty are not yet considered adults. Instead, they enter a transitional period that lasts until they are at least seventeen or eighteen years old. As adolescents come under the influence of their peers, conflicts may develop between the values of their parents and those of their friends. The relative influence parents and peers exert on the lives of adolescents depends on several factors, including the adolescents maturity relative to his or her age, the parent-adolescent relationship, and the particular issue involved.
But usually adolescents regard their parents and peers as different reference groups for different aspects of their lives. School and classmates play a crucial role in a childs development. Peers are more influential in areas related to social norms, such as dress, taste in music, and the use of drugs and alcohol. Although the adolescence has not yet assumed adult responsibilities, many usually begin to work at part-time jobs. Working usually makes adolescents more personally responsible. Like adults, adolescents have strong desire to be recognized and accepted by their peers.
Although the impotence of social acceptance has declined somewhat in the past two decades, more than 8 out of 10 teenagers feel that being liked and accepted by ones peers is very important. It is important to mention that the adolescents popularity at school and other institutions is partially dependent on his or her personality. As I mentioned before, school, teachers, classmate and the schooling atmosphere in whole play a crucial role in a childs development. And a relevant model for understanding factors influencing adolescence is an ecological perspective by Brofenbrenner. This ecological models takes into consideration the connections between people and their environments.
In this model, a childs behavior is influenced by the multiple levels of influence. According to Brofenbrenner's theory children are located within not just one "environment" but within a number of "nested" environments or levels. Each of these is a social "system" with its own dynamics, rules, discourses, and relationships and each one has its own influence. Brofenbrenner's ecological model divides environmental influences on a childs behavior into four levels that interact with each other. First one is Microsystems that refer to the most often surroundings and contexts in which a child participates directly and every day, such as family, peers, and school. The next level is known as meso systems.
This is the level of interaction between mesosystam that is parents and their involvement at school. It also involves such surroundings as peers groups, church and other institutions. Another level is the exo system that refers to forces within the larger social system in which the individual exists and which children dont experience directly. This may include the media and community influences.
And the forth level which is the most distal one is the macro system, which includes culture, society, laws and government. Each level influences the others, and if one changes it also causes changes in other levels. The ecological systems theory is useful for the concept of resilience because it highlights the complexity of children's experiences. It also explains that some adolescents have some systems like classroom or school in common with their peers and some systems are quite diverse (home, parent. ) And this leads to different outcomes and behaviors of adolescents.
Bibliography Marshal, Davies. (1981) Parental and peer influence on adolescents lives. New York: Random House 1981 Eastwood, Atwater. (1988) Adolescence, 2 nd edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Brofenbrenner, U. , & Morris, P. A. (1998). The ecology of developmental processes. In W.
Dance (Series Ed. ) & R. M. Lerner (Vol. Ed. ), Handbook of Child Psychology: Vol. 1. Theory (5 th ed. ).
New York: Wiley.
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