Concepts of Adolescence

One of the things that was most interesting to me to read was that adolescence has not always existed as a separate category. During most of human history, children have undergone rites of passage or initiation that made them full-fledged adults in their society, rather than part-children, part-adults, like contemporary adolescents, or teen-agers have become.

In the last two centuries, however, adolescence has become a separate category and psychologists and sociologists have attempted to understand the characteristics and developmental contribution of that age. Adolescence is generally considered to start with puberty, about age 12 or 13 and may extend into the 20s. For the most part, however, adolescence is thought of as meaning the teen-age years, or the years until age 21.

Many writers since Freud have created developmental schemes or stage theories in which adolescence plays a particular role. As Carol Gilligan noted, most of these theories have been created by looking at male adolescents, this may mean that they are not as applicable to female adolescents, if they are valid at all. The intent in the following pages is to look at a few views of adolescence through a feminist lens in order to explore their appropriateness and usefulness for contemporary thinkers.

One of the most famous of the stage theorists is Erik Erikson. It is his model that offered the fullest look at human development from birth

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adolescence (Gilligan et al, 1990). While they perceive themselves equally valuable as young boys, that changes when they enter puberty. In that book, and her previous book, Gilligan contended that young girls develop differently than young boys. For her, the socialization route of young girls meant that they were primarily relational and that relationality undergirded their identity formation as well as their decision-making process. On the other hand, young boys were expected to be more principled, or rule-governed, and this undergirded their identity formation and decision-making process. Piaget's work emphasized that aspect of development, too. His focus was on cognitive development in particular, rather than the psychosocial aspects of development, but they still reinforced the valuing of certain skills and characteristics over others. Piaget's work was based on observation of children's behaviors, but it still was based on an inherently hierarchical and value-laden structure. At the top of the structure of behaviors was the formal operations and abstract thinking that the adolescent was capable of (Piaget, 1950). For Piaget, the development of formal operations essentially represented the final stage of development.

Category: Psychology - C