b. Adolescence is a stage in which young people typically develop a strong pride in their cultural identity—whether they are male or female. c. Males who are strongly identified with their cultural identity often have their masculinity questioned.
Identity development of an adolescent is influenced by external factors, such as their environment, culture, religion, school and the media.
Young people’s identities are shaped by lots of factors — family, cultural and societal expectations, experiences with institutions like school and the media, and friends. Young people also take active steps and make choices that shape their identity. They select the environments and people they want to be around.
Continuing shifts in the social, cultural, economic, and technological contexts in which today's adolescents are developing require thoughtful consideration as to how, when, and where adolescents can find and act upon ideas and issues they find meaningful.
d. Johnny: "The fetus generally develops into a male unless one of the female hormones is present."
b. Dorota: "Researchers know more about male development than female development."
a. does not begin until the child is about 1 year old and has developed basic language skills.
c. Fathers are more likely than mothers to want a boy as their last child.
c. many adult intersexuals emphasize that intersexed children should not be forced into either a male or a female gender category.
And they reflect on all of this while working to figure out who they are. Adolescent identity is developed, in part, based on relationships and feedback received from others. As young people move from early to late adolescence ...
This shift can be prompted by an experience — sometimes positive, sometimes negative — that creates just enough conflict to get them thinking about their place in the world. Or it can come when youth begin noticing that how they act with their friends may be different than how they act with family.
During adolescence, teens with a strong connection to a particular identity may engage in activities to deepen their understanding or connection to this aspect of themselves. This may include joining clubs or organizations related to this aspect of their adolescent identity.
Not only are teens working to create a meaningful sense of self overall, they may also be trying to understand themselves in relation to different aspects of identity — gender, religion, race, sexuality, and others.
Among the profound and exciting changes taking place in adolescence is the process of self-discovery. Our teens are working to figure out who they are, making adolescent identity development a central feature of teen life. Young people’s identities are shaped by lots of factors — family, cultural and societal expectations, experiences with institutions like school and the media, and friends. Young people also take active steps and make choices that shape their identity. They select the environments and people they want to be around. They adjust their beliefs and behaviors based on feedback. And they reflect on all of this while working to figure out who they are.
As teens use online spaces to project themselves to virtual audiences, they may do so in a way that seems inconsistent or out-of-character with how you see them. The feedback teens receive through their self-portrayals online is part of the process of identity development.
How tweens and teens see themselves is going to be shaped in part by how others — you, peers, teachers, siblings — see them. They may also be influenced by how teens “like them” are portrayed in the media. For some teens and in some settings, the range of “possible selves” seems endless. For others, it may be limited by lack of access to opportunities or by stereotypes about expected outcomes. Both ends of this spectrum can be challenging, but consistent support from parents empowers teens as they envision themselves in the present and future.
Increased functional autonomy and movement toward independence (e.g., being legally of age to obtain a driver’s license and to be employed) is an additional social-developmental change during adolescence that is pertinent to ERI development (Lerner, Freund, DeStefanis, & Habermas, 2001). The construction of a peer group that is distinct from the adult world is an important manifestation of increased autonomy (Brown, 1990). Because of this increase in functional autonomy and the influence of peers in early adolescence, in particular, younger adolescents may rely more on peers for constructing ERI than do older adolescents. Increased resistance to peer pressure beginning in middle adolescence (Steinberg & Monahan, 2007) and increased independence in decision making, however, may lead middle and older adolescents toward more exploration about their ethnicity, rather than relying solely on tacit agreement with parental or peer socialization influences.
Although the content of ERI during adolescence involves some of the features from childhood (e.g., centrality, affect), it also evolves to include an understanding of a common fate or shared destinybased on ethnic or racial group membership, and that these shared experiences differ from the experiences of individuals from other groups (Syed & Azmitia, 2008). These dimensions of ERI content are not relevant during earlier developmental periods, as children typically do not have the social exposure combined with the cognitive capabilities to understand other people’s perspectives (Quintana, 1994). Indeed, scholars have suggested that it is not until adolescence that individuals possess the abstract and counterfactual thinking skills necessary to consider identity issues (Marcia, 1994).
Whereas ERI during childhood is concerned with ethnic categorization, knowledge, and behaviors, and ERI during adolescence is focused on affective, cognitive, and exploratory processes that imbue ERI with a sense of personal meaning, ERI during young adulthood reflects an expansion of the life domains in which ERI may be potentially relevant (Azmitia et al., 2008; Syed, 2010). Unlike other developmental periods that are characterized by dramatic changes in cognitive abilities that determine which components of ERI will emerge at certain developmental periods, during adulthood most cognitive abilities are fully online. What is probably most unique about this developmental phase, however, is that individuals begin to think about the intersections among their multiple important identity domains, consistent with notions from Erikson (1968). No longer is ERI considered in isolation, but also how it intersects with gender identity, social class identity, national identity, career identity, and political identity, as examples (Bowleg, 2008; Syed, 2010). Thus, over time, ERI becomes increasingly integrated with other aspects of the self to create a coherent overall identity (Erikson, 1968).
Identity development takes place in specific socio-cultural, political, and historical contexts. As an example, consider recent cultural and political shifts regarding same-sex relationships in the United States: in the period of one generation there has been dramatic social change regarding understanding and awareness of LGBTQ lives and issues. For context, consider that less than 20 years ago, marriage between same-sex couples was just beginning to be recognized anywhere in the world (the first country to do so was the Netherlands in 2001); less than 20 years later, 25 countries have legalized same-sex marriage, and recent surveys show that most young people in the United States approve of same-sex marriages ( Pew Research Center, 2015 ). Moreover, the identity language and labels used among youth who are often placed under the umbrella of LGBTQ have continued to rapidly evolve. A growing number of LGBTQ youth say they have a nonbinary gender identity (i.e., neither male nor female) or sexual identity (e.g., pansexual, bisexual, queer) ( Hammack, 2018 ). Indeed, young people appear to be leading a movement toward challenging existing categories and constructing new identities.
The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth.
Pubertal status is inherently confounded with age, because older adolescents are more likely to have attained advanced pubertal status. Pubertal timing, on the other hand, refers to how mature an adolescent is when compared to his or her same-sex peers who are of the same age.
The arrival of puberty has other social consequences, such as changing dynamics and maturing relationships with parents, siblings, and peers, as well as the emergence of peer relationships with adults. Pubertal maturation is associated with a higher incidence of sexual harassment, both by peers of the same gender and across genders (McMasters et al., 2002; Petersen and Hyde, 2009; Stattin and Magnusson, 1990). Social consequences may be exacerbated among youth experiencing early pubertal timing.
The concept of “autonomy” implies independence, which generally is accepted as a core value among cultures oriented toward individualism. In contrast, one might expect youth from cultures oriented toward collectivism and interdependence to be more inclined toward harmonious, less conflictual relationships with parents and a lower desire for individuation. However, evidence suggests that teens in many cultures, both those labeled “individualist” and those labeled “collectivist,” strive to develop autonomy, and levels of parent-teen conflict are similar in immigrant and nonimmigrant families ( Fuligni and Tsai, 2015; Tsai et al., 2012 ). Studies of youth from multiple ethnic backgrounds in the United States, including those who are U.S.-born and those from immigrant families, show that most adolescents express a desire to have control over personal choices ( Phinney et al., 2005 ). Importantly, while youth across cultural backgrounds identify autonomy as important, there can be culturally relevant variations in how autonomy is defined. For example, some adolescents from Asian American heritage groups describe autonomy through the lens of “interdependence” ( Russell et al., 2010 ).
A dolescence is a period of significant development that begins with the onset of puberty 1 and ends in the mid-20s. Consider how different a person is at the age of 12 from the person he or she is at age 24.
The distinctive role for early pubertal timing suggests that the heightened sexual circumstances of puberty may be especially challenging for girls whose lives have already been disrupted by adverse early experiences , yet also suggests a potential opportunity for intervention and resilience, particularly in later adolescence, once pubertal development is complete. However, the vast majority of research in this area has focused solely on girls, and we know very little about whether maltreatment is also associated with earlier pubertal timing in boys.