Introduction

• Adolescents face four major tasks:
1. Establishing a personal identity - a sense of an integrated, coherent, goal-directed self.
2. Achieving a new level of closeness and trust with peers.
3. Acquiring a new status in the family.
4. Moving toward a more autonomous stance toward the larger world (schoolwork, employment, financial independence, future roles, career choices).

• How Stormy Is Adolescence?
1. Psychologists have disagreed about the extent of adolescent stress and conflict. It now appears that conflict with parents varies across age, issue, and individual, with most adolescents getting along well with their parents. Families that functioned well before pubertal onset usually continue to function well.
2. Early adolescence is marked by more turmoil for the adolescent and their families than middle and late adolescence.
3. Three patterns of development for boys have been identified (and a similar range has been identified for girls, with early adolescence being more difficult for self-esteem):
• Tumultuous growth (25%) - filled with conflict and crisis.
• Surgent growth (33%) - periods of reasonably smooth adjustment interspersed with negative periods (anger, defiance, immaturity).
• Continuous growth (25%) - self-assurance, sense of purpose, mutual respect between parents and child.
4. Mundane issues are the main sources of conflict between adolescents and parents.
• A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Adolescence
  The turmoil experienced by adolescents in Western nations is partly due to the demands of modern society, with their relatively long and unclear transition to adulthood. In contrast, the transition to adulthood in many non-Western cultures is clearly marked by puberty rites, or rites of passage, to mark entry into new adult roles. Children anticipate these rites for years in advance and know exactly when they will be considered adults.
  

• The Self-Concept During Adolescence
1. During adolescence, the self becomes more integrated, past and future roles begin to be connected, and self-reflection becomes possible.
2. Changes from Middle Childhood to Adolescence
• During adolescence, self-concepts become more differentiated.
• Self-concepts become more individuated.
• Adolescents begin to focus on how they interact with others, focusing more on traits that define their place and manner of operating in the social network.
• View the self as more self-reflective.
• Think of the self as a coherent system made up of diverse but integrated parts.
• Table 14.1 illustrates some of these changes in the self-concept.
3. Changes from Early to Late Adolescence
• Older adolescents have a more sophisticated understanding of self than do younger adolescents.
• Older adolescents can unify or integrate contradictory aspects of the self. As self-understanding becomes more complex, self-consciousness wanes.
4. The Declining Fragility of the Self
• Young adolescents' sense of self is often fragile. They are unsure of the validity of the new self and become more protective of self.
• This is linked to other beliefs and behaviors of early adolescents, such as the imaginary audience and personal fable.
• Fragility is linked to conformity of dress issues in adolescence, helping to hide their fragile sense of individual uniqueness while expressing belongingness to a group.
• Fragility underlies the young adolescent's tendency to fantasize different roles.
• The decline in self-consciousness is accompanied by a growing ability for accurate self-appraisal, including one's personal weaknesses as well as one's strengths.
• The Concept of Personal Identity
1. Establishing a personal identity involves personally discovering a structure of abilities, beliefs, and past experiences regarding the self. The process of identity formation typically includes selecting and preparing for a career, reevaluating religious and moral beliefs, working out a political ideology, and adopting social roles, including those related to sexuality, marriage, and parenthood.
2. James Marcia states that identity refers to a structure of abilities, beliefs, and past experiences regarding the self. The less developed the structure, the more the confusion experienced.
3. Identity formation builds upon self-concept development, and is related to changes in cognitive abilities experienced during adolescence.
4. The social construction of identity formation emphasizes the role of interpersonal relationships in the development of a personal identity.
5. Erikson called the difficulty that adolescents encounter in establishing a personal identity an identity crisis. Adolescents are caught in the middle of two changing systems: the biological system and the social system.
6. Individual Differences in Identity Formation
• Marcia identified four patterns of identity status.
• Identity diffusion - not engaged in active exploration of roles and values, no serious commitments to an adult identity
• Foreclosure - commitment to a set of roles and values without going through a period of crisis.
• Moratorium - in the midst of actively exploring options for a personal identity, but have not made commitments yet.
• Identity achievement - occurs when a person commits to a particular set of roles and values following a period of active exploration. Identity achievement is seldom reached before late adolescence or early adulthood.
• Across the adolescent years, there is a fairly steady increase in the percentage of young people who can be classified as identity achievers and a decrease in the percentage who are in a state of identity diffusion.
• Identity achievers tend to have the highest self-esteem, followed by those in moratorium, those who adopt foreclosure, and those in identity diffusion. Achievers are more goal-oriented, choose more demanding college majors, show greater cognitive sophistication, and take more personal responsibility for their actions.
• For Erikson, two sets of ingredients are needed to consolidate an optimal sense of personal identity: 1) must carry forward an inner confidence about competence and ability to master new tasks (prior stage resolutions) and 2) have ample opportunity to experiment with new roles, both in fantasy and in practice, coupled with support from parents and other adults.
7. Group Differences in Identity Formation
• Gay and lesbian adolescents, as a group, have to contend with more social disapproval than their heterosexual peers. Openness about homosexuality is related to higher self-esteem.
• Identity development proceeds differently for men and women. Girls' identity and the social domain are intertwined more than for boys. Girls are more worried about balancing family and career.
• Minority youth are confronted with two often-conflicting sets of cultural values-those of their ethnic community and those of the larger society. Minority adolescents appear more likely to avoid or cut short identity exploration than non-minorities.

• The cognitive advances of adolescence make possible a deeper, more mature understanding of others.
• Involvement with peers becomes increasingly critical to progress in self-understanding.
• Peer group membership contributes to the development of personal identity.
• Friendships with same-sex peers pave the way for romantic relationships.
• Advances in Understanding Others
  Advances in self-understanding are accompanied by a growing sense of what others are like. Understanding of others is usually at roughly the same level as self-understanding.
  
• The Nature of Adolescent Friendships
1. Compared with younger children, adolescents have a greater capacity for mutual understanding, a stronger desire for self-disclosure, and an increased capacity for intimacy. This results in a deeper commitment to friendships. There is a greater need for and capacity for keeping confidences. Words like trust, faith, and believe are key in their descriptions of what friendships are about.
2. Increased intimacy and commitment appear in early to mid-adolescence. In later adolescence, they are better able to coordinate a broader range of friends. Friendships no longer need to be so exclusive. Patterns of friendships come closer to those found among adults.
3. Gender Differences
• Gender differences in adolescent friendships include girls' more frequent intimate interactions with same-sex friends and their more intimate knowledge of their friends.
• Compared with boys, girls also report about twice as many disagreements with friends and longer-lasting negative feelings following a disagreement. Boys have more conflicts with friends regarding pressure to do things while girls report more conflicts regarding betrayal.
4. Peer Intimacy and Identity
• Erikson proposed that identity was a prerequisite to true intimacy, while Sullivan argued that identity is a product of intimacy.
• Intimacy and identity may continue to influence each other in a cyclical way, with advances in identity development promoting deeper intimacy and deeper intimacy leading to further identity consolidation.
• Changes in the Nature of Peer Groups
1. The importance of being in a group and conforming to group norms increases in early adolescence.
2. The two major adolescent group structures are the clique (a close-knit group of a few friends who are intimately involved with each other) and the crowd (a larger, less exclusive, and more loosely organized group). Crowds are identified by the interests, abilities, attitudes, style of dress, and other personal characteristics shared by their members. Crowds are made up of cliques.
3. Older adolescents are more likely to characterize crowds by their general dispositions or interests, which mostly are based on reputation than actual behavior.
4. Membership in cliques peaks in early adolescence. By late adolescence, the crowd boundaries begin to disintegrate and more emphasis is placed on romantic relationships and specific friendships.
5. Dexter and Dunphy in Australia conducted a classic study on clique and crowd formation. The stages of such formation are described in Table 14-4 (precrowd stage, loosely formed crowd, mixed-sex clique, fully developed crowd, loosely linked groups of couples).
• Dating and Sexual Activity
1. Dating and sexual activity are usually offshoots of crowd activities. 90 % are dating by age 16.
2. Sexual experimentation usually does not begin until mid-adolescence. Couples are not usually involved on an emotional level.
3. In late adolescence, opposite-sex relationships become as intimate as same-sex relationships. May facilitate further development of empathy and prosocial behavior.
4. Adolescent sexual activity has increased over the last 40 years, with much of the increase occurring from the 1960s to the 1980s. For girls the rate quadrupled and for boys the rate doubled during these decades. The increase was accompanied by an increase in teen pregnancies.
5. Rate of sexual intercourse remains relatively low in early adolescence but increases substantially through middle and late adolescence (60% report having had sexual intercourse by 12^th grade); rates vary for region and ethnicity.
• The Relative Influence of Peers
1. High school students spend more than twice as much time with peers as with parents and other adults.
2. As they become more autonomous of parents, they become more dependent upon peers, who become important sources of intimacy.
3. The peak of conformity to peer group beliefs and behaviors comes in early adolescence, and declines by age 16 or 17, to no more than seen in middle childhood by ages 19 to 21. This is related to the imaginary audience phase.
4. Throughout adolescence, level of conformity depends on status in the peer group. Middle status peers are more conforming than low- or high-status adolescents. The source of peer influence also makes a difference in whether an adolescent conforms (stronger influence by friends than acquaintances).
5. Peer influence does not replace parental influence; instead, peers and parents seem to influence different aspects of an adolescent's life. Peers have the greatest influence in matters dealing with status in the peer group and outweigh parental influence in matters such as smoking cigarettes and marijuana. Feelings of closeness to family influences likelihood of conformity.

• The family remains a critical context for development during adolescence.
• The Changing Family Structure
1. Family roles and interaction patterns must change to accommodate adolescent development. Hypothetical reasoning skills usher in the adolescent's push for increased independence and a greater say in family decisions.
2. Adolescents have a new understanding of parent-child relationships and parental authority. By late adolescence, they see mutual tolerance and respect as the basis of interactions between themselves and their parents. No longer do they simply accept parents' dictates.
3. Most parents make appropriate changes in response to these pressures from their children.
4. Mothers are closer to their teens than fathers are.
5. Changes in patterns of family interaction with greater symmetry in the parent-child relationship often involve conflict and stress, especially in early adolescence. Parents' appraisal of the child's cognitive capacities lags behind the child's development. Later see a more symmetrical family power structure.
6. Parents at mid-life may find the changes of adolescence particularly hard to deal with.
7. Parental stress is generally low when children are between the ages of 10 and 12, peaks at ages 14 to 15, and declines in late adolescence. Parental satisfaction shows a similar trend.
8. High parent-child conflict in early adolescence does not indicate a family is not functioning well-it is a normal part of the family realignment process. Total absence of conflict is actually more worrisome-might indicate foreclosure in identity development.
• Parenting Patterns and Adolescent Development
1. As power relationships in the family become more symmetrical, the tasks of parenting change. Parents must respond to their children's new ways of thinking and new strivings for autonomy, self-expression, and influence. Parents must give their children increasing responsibility while still providing guidance and involvement.
2. Many aspects of parenting style that were important earlier remain important in adolescence. Authoritative or democratic style of parenting promotes identity development. A family atmosphere of support, with an acceptance of conflict and a willingness to compromise, seems most positive for adolescent development.
3. Authoritarian parenting is more likely to be associated with positive outcomes for Asian-American adolescents than for European-American adolescents.
4. Adolescents whose parents responded to their feelings, accepted disagreements, and initiated compromises were more likely to perform at a relatively high level on 1) exploring alternatives regarding the self, and 2) perceiving and coordinating different points of view. Spills over into relationships with peers.
• Bidirectional Influences
  Adolescents have impacts on parents and family-interaction patterns, as well as being influenced by them. Timing of puberty influences parent-child conflict, and boys and girls elicit different parental behavior during adolescence.
  
• The Impact of Divorce on Adolescents
1. Adolescents from divorced and remarried families are at increased risk for behavior problems, drug use, early sexual activity, adolescent pregnancy, and poor school performance, even when income is controlled for.
2. Divorce can prompt a sleeper effect.
3. During adolescence there are continuing differences in the effects of divorce on males and females, just as during the childhood years. Girls are more likely to experience academic difficulties, distress, and dissatisfaction with the family's situation, whereas boys are more likely to show problem behaviors.
4. Studies of teenagers in single-parent homes show that it is not simply the absence of a father that has negative effects, it is the meaning attached to the loss of the father.

• Adolescents at School
1. Secondary schools give students increasing responsibility and expose them to greater peer diversity, but the secondary school environment may also be a negative influence on development due to the peer culture.
2. Grades typically drop during adolescence, especially if students are under stress such as adjustment to a new school.
3. Adolescents vary in their beliefs about their own abilities and the role of effort in success or failure. Those with a strong belief in the importance of their own efforts are said to have an internal locus of control. Adolescents who believe that nothing they do will make a difference are said to have an external locus of control.
4. Gender also influences achievement at school. Girls are often socialized away from feelings of instrumental competence and toward feelings of helplessness when confronted with a challenge. They are more likely to attribute failure to immutable factors.
• Adolescents at Work
1. Another setting in which adolescents can experience success or failure is the workplace. About 60% of high school sophomores and 75% of high school seniors have a part-time job, averaging 16 to 20 hours a week, most in retail or food service. Employment rates vary by income and ethnic groups.
2. A job can contribute to adolescents' self-esteem and personal identity, increase their sense of responsibility, and help them move further toward independence. However, it can also have negative impacts on schoolwork and peer relationships.

• The various aspects of individual development fit together in a coherent way. There are close links between the quality of parent-child relationships, peer relationships, and school functioning.
• There is also coherence in the course of individual development over time, with connections between how well a youngster functions in adolescence and how well he or she functioned in earlier developmental periods. During adolescence, some become better adjusted than they were before, while for others the opposite is true. Developmentalists see these changes as understandable reactions to changes in the environments in which the youngsters grow. Most enter adulthood prepared to face the demands and challenges.