Chapter 3 Social Transitions pages 69 PDF

Preview

Summary

valanne...

Description

Chapter 3 Social Transitions pages 69-94 What events in your life told you—and others around you—that you were no longer a child and had finally become an adolescent? Was it when you turned 13? Finished elementary school? Went to your first boy–girl party? Were allowed to be out at the mall without an adult? And what signaled, or will signal, that you are an adult? Turning 18? Turning 21? Getting your first full-time job? Getting your driver’s license? Graduating from college? Getting your first apartment? Getting married? Each of these social transitions is not just an event. Each is also a source of information—to the person and those in his or her life—about the person’s stage of development. Parents may treat their children differently once they start high school, even if their appearance and behavior haven’t changed. Neighbors might look at a child who has grown up next door differently once they see him or her driving. Adolescents may feel differently about themselves once they have started working at a “real” job. In all societies, adolescence is a period of social transition for the individual. Over the course of these years, people cease to be viewed by society as children and come to be recognized as adults. This chapter is about the ways in which individuals are redefined during adolescence and the implications of this process for psychological development. Although the specific elements of this social passage from childhood into adulthood vary across time and place, the recognition that the individual’s status has changed—a social redefinition of the individual—is universal. In this chapter, we will look at a third fundamental feature of adolescence—changes in the way in which society defines who that person is and determines what rights and responsibilities she or he has as a consequence. Along with the biological changes of puberty and changes in thinking abilities, changes in social roles and social status constitute yet another universal feature of development during adolescence. As you will read, some theorists have argued that the nature of adolescent development is far more influenced by the way in which society defines the economic and social roles of young people than by the biological or cognitive changes of the period. The study of social transitions in adolescence provides an interesting vehicle through which to compare adolescence across different cultures and historical epochs. Puberty, after all, is pretty much the same everywhere (although its timing and meaning may vary from place to place). Abstract thinking and logical reasoning don’t differ from one society to the next (although what people think and reason about certainly does). The social transitions of adolescence are not the same, however. Although the existence of a social passage from childhood into adulthood is universal, huge differences exist between the processes of social redefinition in industrialized society and those in the developing world. In examining some of these differences, you will come to understand better how the way in which society structures the transition of adolescents into adult roles influences the nature of psychosocial development during the period. Social Redefinition and Psychosocial Development Like the biological and cognitive transitions of adolescence, the social transitions have important consequences for the young person’s psychosocial development. In the realm of identity, for example, attainment of adult status may transform a young woman’s self-concept, causing her to feel more mature and to think more seriously about future work and family roles. Similarly, an individual may feel older and more mature the first time he reports to work, goes into a bar, drives without an adult in the car, or votes. In turn, these new activities and opportunities may prompt self-evaluation and introspection. Becoming an adult member of society, accompanied as it is by increases in responsibilities and freedom, also has an impact on the development of autonomy, or independence. In contrast to the child, the adolescent-turned-adult faces a wider range of decisions that may have serious long-term consequences (Woolard & Scott, 2009). An individual who has reached the drinking age, for example, must decide how to handle this new privilege. Should he go along with the

crowd and drink every weekend night, follow his parents example and abstain from drinking, or chart a middle ground? And in return for the privileges that come with adult status, the adolescent-turned-adult is expected to behave in a more responsible fashion. For example, receiving a driver’s license carries with it the obligation of driving safely. The attainment of adult

status provides chances for the young person to exercise autonomy and to develop a greater sense of independence. Changes in social definition often bring with them changes in relationships with others. Social redefinition at adolescence is therefore likely to raise new questions and concerns for the young person about intimacy—including such matters as dating and marriage. Many parents prohibit their children from dating until they have reached an “appropriate” age, and not until the age of majority (the legal age for adult status) are individuals allowed to marry without first gaining their parents’ permission. In certain societies, young people may even be required to marry when they reach adulthood, entering into a marriage that may have been arranged while they were children (Schlegel, 2009). Page 71 Changes in status at adolescence also may affect sexual development. In contemporary society, for example, laws governing sexual behavior (such as the definition of statutory rape) typically differentiate between individuals who have and have not attained adult status. One problem continuing to face contemporary society is whether sexually active individuals who are not yet legal adults should be able to make independent decisions about such matters as abortion and contraception (Woolard & Scott, 2009). Finally, reaching adulthood often has important implications in the realm of achievement. In contemporary society, people can hold informal jobs, like babysitting, when they are still young, but it is not until adult work status is attained (typically at age 15 or 16 in the United States) that young people can enter the labor force as full-time employees. And not until young people have reached a designated age are they permitted to leave school of their own volition. In less industrialized societies, becoming an adult typically entails entrance into the productive activities of the community. Together, these shifts are likely to prompt changes in the young person’s skills, aspirations, and expectations.

The Elongation of Adolescence Adolescence is longer today than it has ever been in human history. Deciding how we define a stage of life—when it begins and when it ends—is inherently subjective. Experts use puberty to mark the beginning of adolescence because it’s easy to measure, has obvious consequences (like sexual maturation), and is universal. In societies that have formal rites of passage, puberty has long been used to indicate when people are no longer children. We may lack formal initiation ceremonies in modern society, but we still use puberty to mark the passage into adolescence. Getting consensus on when the period ends is harder. Although there are a few objective biological boundaries between adolescence and adulthood—for instance, the point at which people stop growing taller or when they can bear children—these somehow just don’t feel right. Some people finish their growth spurts when they’re as young as 12 or 13, and some can even become a parent at this age, but few of us, at least in today’s world, feel comfortable labeling a 13-year-old as an “adult.” That’s why we tend to use some sort of social indicator to draw the line between adolescence and adulthood, like attaining the age of legal majority, starting a full-time job, or moving out of one’s parents’ home. Reasonable people may disagree about which social indicator makes the most sense, but they would probably agree that a cultural marker of adulthood makes more sense than a biological one. This is why experts define adolescence as beginning in biology and ending in culture. Of all the possible markers of the beginning and end of adolescence, menstruation and marriage are probably the best ones to use in order to see if adolescence actually has gotten longer. Both are widely experienced, and we can date both of them accurately. For most women, menarche is a memorable event, and one whose date is regularly recorded in doctors’ files. Scientists in the Western world have been keeping track of the average age of girls’ first menstruation since about 1840, and we have a very good idea of how the advent of puberty has changed since then. There is no comparable pubertal

event for boys that screams, I am a man, but the ages at which males and females within the same society go through puberty are highly correlated. Even though girls typically go through puberty a year or two before boys, in societies in which puberty is early for girls, it comes early for boys, too.

The age at which people marry is even more reliably documented than the age of menarche. Government officials have long noted how old people are when they take their wedding vows, and as a consequence we have accurate statistics about marriage that go back for centuries. This is certainly not to say that one must be married in order to be an adult, only that changes in the average age of marriage are useful for tracking historical trends. Trends in the age at which people complete their schooling, begin their careers, or set up independent households would also be fine ways to track historical changes in the transition into adulthood, but we haven’t kept very good official records of these for nearly as long we’ve been recording marriages. And although getting married, leaving school, starting a career, or setting up a home do not all take place at the same age, they tend to move in lockstep from one generation to the next. When the average age for getting married rises over time, so do the others.

The stage of adolescence has been lengthened by an increase in the age at which people make the transition into adult roles. The age of marriage has risen steadily over the past 50 years.© Studio Zanello/Streetstock Images/Getty Images RF Page 72

In the middle of the nineteenth century, adolescence lasted around 5 years—that’s how long it took girls to go from menarche to marriage in the mid-1800s. At the turn of the twentieth century, the average American woman got her first period between fourteen and fifteen and married when she was just under 22. In 1900, adolescence lasted a little less than 7 years. During the first half of the twentieth century, people began getting married at a younger age, but the age of puberty continued to decline. This froze the length of adolescence at about 7 years. In 1950, for example, the average American female went through menarche at around 13-1/2 and married at 20. From 1950 on, though, things changed. The drop in the age of puberty continued, but people started marrying later and later. Each decade, the average age of menarche dropped by about 3 or 4 months, whereas the average age at marriage rose by about a year. By 2010, it took 15 years for the average girl to go from menarche to marriage (Steinberg, 2014). As we shall see, the passage from adolescence into adulthood today is especially difficult for young people growing up in poverty, in part because social institutions that once

enabled poor youth to make a successful transition into adulthood no longer provide sufficient support (Settersten, Furstenberg, & Rumbaut, 2005). In today’s economy, making a smooth and successful transition into adult work and family roles is challenging enough for individuals who graduate from college, but it has become

incredibly difficult for those who only complete high school and almost impossible for those without a high school diploma. The lengthening of adolescence as a developmental period has had important implications for how young people see themselves, relate to others, and develop psychologically. Consider just a few examples:  Parents used to “launch” their children from home very close to the age of puberty. As a consequence, individuals spent very little time living under the same roof with their parents once they had become sexual beings. In contemporary society, however, individuals live with their parents long after they have become sexually mature. What impact might this have on parent−child relationships?  Adolescents today probably aren’t any less emotionally mature than they were 100 years ago—if anything, growing up under many of the pressures that people face today may have made them more mature at a younger age. But because the financial cost of living independently has increased so rapidly, adolescents’ economic “maturity” (that is, their ability to support themselves without help from their parents) lags far behind their psychological maturity (that is, their ability to behave responsibly). What implications does this have? How does it feel to be an adult psychologically but a child financially?  One of the main reasons that adolescence has been lengthened is that much more formal education is now necessary in order to make a successful transition into adult work roles. School, however, is not something that all individuals enjoy equally. How might forcing all adolescents to follow the same pathway into adulthood benefit some but not others?

Adolescence as a Social Invention Many writers, often referred to as inventionists, have argued that adolescence, as a period in the life cycle, is mainly a social invention (e.g., Fasick, 1994). They point out that, although the biological and cognitive changes characteristic of the period are important in their own right, adolescence is defined primarily by the ways in which society recognizes (or does not recognize) the period as distinct from childhood or adulthood. Our images of adolescence are influenced by the fact that society draws lines between adolescence and childhood (for instance, the boundary between elementary and secondary school) and between adolescence and adulthood (for instance, the age at which someone can vote). Inventionists stress that it is only because we see adolescence as distinct that it exists as such. They point to other cultures and other historical periods in which adolescence has been viewed very differently. Many of these theorists view the behaviors and problems characteristic of adolescence in contemporary society, such as delinquency, as a consequence of the way that adolescence is defined and young people are treated, rather than the result of the biological or cognitive givens of the period. As you know, this is an entirely different view from that espoused by writers such as G. Stanley Hall, who saw the psychological changes of adolescence as driven by puberty and, as a result, by biological destiny. Page 73

The “Invention” of Adolescence Have there always been adolescents? Although this may seem like a simple question with an obvious answer, it is actually a very complicated issue. Naturally, there have always been individuals between the ages of 10 and 20, or who just passed through puberty, or whose frontal lobes were still maturing. But according to the inventionist view, adolescence as we know it in contemporary society did not really exist until the Industrial Revolution of the mid-nineteenth century (Fasick, 1994). In the agricultural world of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, children were treated primarily as miniature adults, and people did not make precise distinctions among children of different ages (“child” referred to anyone under the age of 18 or even 21). Children

provided important labor to their families, and they learned early in their development the roles they were expected to fill later in life. The main distinction between children and adults was based not on their age or their abilities but on whether they owned

property (Modell & Goodman, 1990). As a consequence, there was little reason to label some youngsters as “children” and others as “adolescents”—in fact, the term adolescent was not widely used prior to the nineteenth century.

The Impact of Industrialization With industrialization came new patterns of work, education, and family life. Adolescents were among those most dramatically affected by these changes. First, because the economy was changing so rapidly, away from the simple and predictable life known in agrarian society, the connection between what individuals learned in childhood and what they would need to know in adulthood became increasingly uncertain. Although a man may have been a farmer, his son would not necessarily follow in his footsteps. One response to this uncertainty was that parents, especially in middleclass families, encouraged adolescents to spend time in school, preparing for adulthood . Instead of working side by side with their parents and other adults at home, as was the case before industrialization, adolescents became increasingly more likely to spend their days with peers, being educated or trained for the future. This led to the increased importance of peer groups and youth culture, defining characteristics of modern adolescence we take for granted today that were not prominent until the early twentieth century. Inventionists point out that the redefinition of adolescence as a time of preparation rather than participation also suited society’s changing economic needs (Fasick, 1994). One initial outcome of industrialization was a shortage of job opportunities, because machines were replacing workers. Although adolescents provided inexpensive labor, they were now competing with adults for a limited number of jobs. One way of protecting adults’ jobs was to remove adolescents from the labor force, by turning them into full-time students. To accomplish this, society needed to begin discriminating between individuals who were “ready” for work and those who were not. Although there was little factual basis for the distinction, society began to view adolescents as less capable and more in need of guidance and training—legitimizing what was little more than age discrimination. Individuals who earlier in the century would have been working next to adults were now seen as too immature or too unskilled to carry out similar tasks—even though the individuals themselves hadn’t changed in any meaningful way. A less cynical view of the events of the late nineteenth century emphasizes the genuine motivation of some adults to protect adolescents from the dangers of the new workplace, rather than the selfish desire to protect adults’ jobs from teenagers. Industrialization brought with it worrisome changes in community life, especially in the cities. Many factories were dangerous working environments, filled with new and unfamiliar machinery. The disruption of small farming communities and the growth of large urban areas was accompanied by increases in crime and “moral degeneracy.” Child protectionists argued that young people needed to be kept away from the labor force for their own good. In addition to the rise of schools during this time, the early twentieth century saw the growth of many organizations aimed at protecting young people, such as the Boy Scouts and other adult-supervised youth clubs (Modell & Goodman, 1990).

The Origins of Adolescence as We Know It Today It was not until the late nineteenth century—little more than 100 years ago—that adolescence came to be viewed as it is today: a lengthy period of preparation for adulthood, in which young people, in need of guidance and supervision, remain economically dependent on their elders. This view started within the middle class— where parents had more to gain by keeping their children out of the labor force and educating them for a better adulthood—but it spread quickly throughout society. Because the workplace has continued to change in ways that make the future uncertain, the idea of adoles...