1. Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural Approach Chapter 9
Dating, Love, & Sexuality
Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural Approach by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett. Copyright © 2004 by Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

2. Chapter Overview Sexual activity
Cultural standards with regard to sex before marriage
Sexual scripts for males and females
Sexuality among gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents
Problems in adolescence (e.g. contraception, pregnancy, abortion, parenthood)
Sex education programs

3. Boys and girls may go out simply as friends.
The Art of Dating ….
Teens now are more likely to go out in mixed-gender groups without any specific pairing up.
Boys and girls may go out simply as friends.
Prior to the women’s movement, dating was much more formalized and gender roles were much more sharply drawn in the West.

4. Developmental Patterns in Dating The American Experience
Most adolescent girls begin dating around age 12 or 13
Most adolescent boys begin dating around 13 or 14
By age 15 about 20% of adolescents say they have “gone with” someone
Dating before among American adolescents tends to follow a developmental sequence of four steps:
Adolescents in same-gender groups go to places where they hope to find other-gender groups
Adolescents take part in social gatherings arranged by adults, such as parties
Mixed-gender groups arrange to go to some particular event together, such as a movie
Adolescent couples begin to date as pairs in activities such as movies, dinners, concerts and so on

5. Why adolescents date Recreation Learning Status Companionship Intimacy
Fun and enjoyment
Learning
Becoming more skilled at dating interactions
Status
Impressing others according to how often one dates and whom one dates
Companionship
Sharing pleasurable activities with another person
Intimacy
Establishing a close emotional relationship with another person
Courtship
Seeking someone to have as a steady partner

6. Constructing Ideas: Dating in Emerging Adulthood
Dating tends to change as adolescents enter emerging adulthood.
What quality to emerging adults look for in the people they date? (remember to differentiate between males and females)
From your experience, recall differences between
your dates as and adolescent and emerging adult

7. Dating Scripts Proactive Script Reactive Script
Males tend to follow this type of script
Includes:
initiating the date
deciding where they will go
controlling the public domain (driving the car)
initiating sexual contact
Reactive Script
Females tend to follow this type of script
Focuses on:
Private domain (grooming & dress)
Responding to the male’s gestures in the public domain
Responding to his sexual initiatives

8. Sternberg’s Theory of Love
Different types of love involve combining three fundamental qualities of love in different ways
These three qualities are:
Passion
Involves physical attraction and sexual desire
Intimacy
Feelings of closeness and emotional attachment
Commitment
The pledge to love someone over the long run, through the ups and downs that are often part of love

9. Sternberg’s 7 Forms of Love
Passion
Intimacy
Commitment
Liking No
Yes
Infatuation
Empty Love
Romantic Love
Companionate Love
Fatuous
Consummate Love

10. Applying Sternberg to Adolescence
In most adolescent love relationships, commitment is either missing or highly tentative
The absence of long term commitment in adolescence means that there are two principal types of adolescent love: infatuation and romantic love
Keep in Mind …..
In industrialized countries people are not likely to get married until they are in at least their mid- to late twenties
Under these circumstances it is understandable that adolescents’ love relationship would not involve commitment as much as passion or intimacy

11. Adolescent Passion in Non-Western Culture
Of 186 traditional cultures representing 6 distinct geographical regions around the worlds – it was found that there was evidence that young people fell passionately in love in all but one of the cultures
However …. This does not mean that young people in all cultures are allowed to act on their feelings of love
On the contrary … romantic love as a basis for marriage is a fairly new cultural idea

12. Falling in Love Consensual validation
People like to find in others an agreement, or consensus, with their own characteristics
Finding this consensus supports, or validates, their own way of looking at the world
People of all ages tend to have romantic relationships with people who are similar to them in characteristics such as:
Intelligence
Social class
Ethnic background
Religious beliefs
Physical attractiveness

13. Attachment Styles
Attachment styles between lovers have been found to resemble the parent-child attachment styles
Secure
Characterized by emotional support and concern for the partner’s well-being
Anxious-ambivalent
Characterized by overdependence on the romantic partner along with insensitivity to the partner’s needs
Anxious-avoidant
Involve keeping emotional distance from the romantic partner and inhibiting self-disclosure

14. Brown’s Model of Adolescent Love
Bradford Brown (1999) has proposed a developmental model of adolescent love that recognizes the important role played by peers and friends
Brown’s model contains four phases:
Initiation phase
First tentative explorations of love which are usually superficial, brief and often fraught with anxiety, fear, and excitement
Status phase
Begin to gain confidence in their interaction skills with potential romantic partners
Adolescents remain acutely aware of the evaluations of their friends and peers
Affection phase
Adolescents come to know each other better and express deeper feelings for each other
Being to engage in more extensive sexual activity
Bonding phase
The romantic relationship becomes more enduring and serious – partners begin to discuss the possibility of a lifelong commitment
This phase usually occurs in emerging adulthood rather than adolescence

15. When Love Goes Bad
How can adolescent egocentrism and the personal fable contribute to feelings of breaking up?

16. Breaking Up – Understanding Emerging Adults
Based on a study of 200 college couples for 2 years (Hill, Rubin, & Peplau, 1979)
45% of the couples had broken up
Those who had broken up
reported lower levels of intimacy and love
were less likely to be similar on characteristics such as age, SAT scores and physical attractiveness
were less balanced (one partner indicated substantially more commitment to the relationship than the other)
Women were more likely to end the relationship
Rejected men tended to be lonelier, unhappier and more depressed than rejected women
Rejected men found it harder than rejected women to accept the end of the relationship and to stay friends

17. Choosing a Marriage Partner
The Study: 10,000 young people in 37 countries from all over the world (Africa, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, & North and South America)
The Findings:
Highest Ranking
Mutual attraction
High Rankings:
Dependable character
Emotional stability & Maturity
Pleasing disposition
Lowest Ranking:
Religious & political backgrounds
Low Rankings:
Good financial prospects
Having a lot of money
The sharpest cross-cultural division was on the issue of chastity

18. Arranged Marriages
Although romantic love is found in all cultures, it is not considered the proper basis of marriage in all cultures
Marriage has more often been seen as an alliance between two families rather than as the uniting of two individuals
The most important considerations in an arranged marriage is the other family’s status, religion and wealth
Globalization is having an effect on how young people are beginning to value individual chose and the pursuit of happiness
Today in most Eastern cultures the “semi arranged marriage” is the most common practice

19. Cohabitation
In the U.S. as well as Northern Europe cohabitation before marriage is now experienced by at least two thirds of emerging adults
The percentage is highest in Sweden where nearly all young people cohabitate before marriage
In the U.S. cohabitation tends to be brief and unstable
In contrast, cohabitating couples in European countries tend to stay together as long as married couples

20. Adolescent Sexual Activity
Males
Females
Masturbation
Majority of boys begin about age 13
90% by age 19
33% of females reported masturbating by age 13
60% to 75% by age 20
Necking and Petting
60% of 13 year olds had kissed at least once
20% reported touching a girl’s breast
By age 18, 77% reported penile touching
73% of 13 year olds had kissed at least once
35% reported having their breast touched
By age 18, 60% reported vaginal touching
Sexual Intercourse and Oral Sex
Before 1965, 25% of boys reported having intercourse
After 1965, 54% of boys reported having intercourse
Before 1965, 10% of girls reported having intercourse
After 1965, 52% of girls reported having intercourse

21. Ethnic Differences
The proportion of high school students in grades 9-12 who had intercourse is:
Lowest for White adolescents (49%)
Somewhat higher for Latino adolescents (58%)
Highest for African American adolescents (73%)
Research has indicated that Asian Americans are considerably less likely to engage in sexual activity in adolescence compared with any other major American ethnic group

22. Cultural Beliefs and Adolescent Sexuality
Restrictive cultures:
Place strong prohibitions on adolescent sexual activity before marriage
Strict separation of boys and girls in early childhood through adolescence
Some countries will even include the threat of physical punishment and public shaming for premarital sex
Usually more restrictive for girls than boys
Semi-restrictive cultures:
Have prohibitions but they are not strongly enforced and are easily evaded
If pregnancy results from premarital sex, the adolescents are often forced to marry
Permissive cultures:
Encourage and expect adolescent sexuality
Sexual behavior is encouraged even in childhood and the sexuality of adolescence is simply a continuation of the sex play in childhood

23. Sexual Scripts
Different cognitive frameworks for understanding how a sexual experience is supposed to proceed and how sexual experiences are to be interpreted
Examples:
Boys are expected to “make the moves”
Girls set the limits on how far the sexual episode is allowed to progress

24. Sexually Active Adolescents
Characteristics of non-virgins
Similar self-esteem as virgins
Similar overall life satisfaction as virgins
More likely to be early maturing
Tend to have lower levels of academic performance and academic aspirations
Adolescents who have sex early (15 years old or younger)
Early users of drugs and alcohol
More likely to be from single parent households
More likely to have grown up in poverty

25. Sexual Harassment
Includes a wide range of behaviours from mild harassment such as name calling, joke and leering looks to severe harassment involving unwanted touching or sexual contact
It is estimated that over half of American women will experience sexual harassment at some time during their professional live
Date Rape is one form of sexual harassment that takes place when a persons, usually a woman, is forced by a romantic partner, date, or acquaintance to have sexual relations against her will
15% of adolescent girls and 25% of emerging adult women have experienced date rape
Alcohol plays a big part in date rape on college campuses

26. Sexual Harassment Percentage of male and female students
having ever experienced various forms
of sexual harassment

27. Sexual Harassment

28. Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Adolescents
The degree of confusion and anxiety is often multiplied
They are exposed almost entirely to heterosexual models of dating, love and sex
The “presumption of heterosexuality” is part of their socialization from parents, friends, school and media
It is important to note:
Distinguishing between having homosexual experiences and having a sexual orientation is important.
A high percentage of adolescents and emerging adults (predominantly males) report some kind of sex play but only about 2% of adolescents become adults with a primarily homosexual orientation.

29. Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Adolescents
It is during adolescence that most gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) people become fully aware of their sexual orientation
Coming out
beginning at an average age of 14 for gay males and a year or two later for lesbians
Involves a person’s recognizing his or her own sexual identity and then disclosing the truth to friends, family and others
Homophobia
Fear and hatred of homosexuals
Because of this phenomenon, coming to the realization of a GLB identity can be traumatic for many adolescents

30. Contraceptive Use and Nonuse
Two types of countries have low rates of teenage pregnancy:
Those that are permissive about adolescent sex
Those that adamantly forbid adolescent sex
Restrictive Countries
Japan
South Korea
Morocco
Adolescents are strongly discouraged from even dating
It is rare for boys and girls to spend time alone together
Permissive Countries
Denmark
Sweden
Netherlands
They have explicit safe sex campaigns.
Adolescents have easy access to contraception

31. Birth, Abortion, and Pregnancy
Notice how high the pregnancy rate is in the U.S.
Compare this to Canada where sexual activity rates are the same but the pregnancy rate is about half

32. Facts about the “Facts of Life”
About 40% of pregnancies to American adolescents end in abortion
14% of adolescents miscarry
Of the children who are born, only about 5% are put up for adoption
…. That means
about 50% of adolescents raise their own children (sometimes with the help of the father but most often with the help of the adolescent mother’s own mother)

33. Teen Birth Rates
In recent years, birth rates have become highest of all among Latina adolescents
Black teens are twice as likely as White teens to get pregnant

34. What about Mom? Twice as likely to drop out of school
Less likely to go to college or become employed
Less likely to get married
More likely to get divorced if they get married
Do they catch up? (a sample of 300 mothers)
Five years after given birth teenage mothers still lagged behind their peers in educational, occupational and economic progress
After 18 years
25% were still on welfare
25% had succeeded in making it into the middle class
A majority had eventually completed high school
33% had completed at least some college education

35. What about Dad?
Being a teenage dad is related to a variety of negative outcomes
More likely to become divorced
Lower level of education
Lower paying job
More prone to drug and alcohol use
More likely to violate the law
More feelings of anxiety and depression
Interesting Footnote:
Like adolescent mothers, the problems of adolescent
fathers often began prior to parenthood

36. What about Baby?
Children born to adolescent mothers face a higher likelihood of a variety of difficulties in life
Babies are more likely to be born premature
Lower birth rate
Premature and low birth rate are related to a variety of physical and intellectual problems
Greater likelihood of behavioral problems
School misbehaviour, delinquency and early sexual activity
It is important to note:
These problems are not just due to having an adolescent mother but also due to the fact that most adolescent mothers are not only young and unmarried but poor as well

37. Sexually Transmitted Diseases
By age 24, one in three sexually active Americans have contracted an STD
Two thirds of all STDs occur in people who are under 25 years old
Two important characteristics of STDs
Asymptomatic
People show no symptoms of the disease
They are especially likely to infect others because neither they nor others realize that they are infected
Latency Period
There may be years between the time people are infected and the time they being to show symptoms
During this time they may be infecting others without either themselves or their partners being aware of it

38. Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Chlamydia
Most common STD
Highest rates among 15 to 19 year olds
Leading cause of female infertility
Gonorrhoea
Caused by bacteria that thrive in the moist mucous membranes of the body
Very easily passed along during sex
Females are at least twice as likely as males to become infected
Herpes Simplex
Caused by a virus
Has two variations: herpes simplex I and herpes simplex II
Highly infectious (75% of persons exposed to an infected partner will become infected)
There is no cure for herpes

39. Sexually transmitted diseases
HIV/AIDS
Strips the body of its ability to fend off infections
The body is highly vulnerable to a wide variety of illnesses and diseases
90% of cases of HIV in the U.s. result from intercourse between homosexual or bisexual partners
Outside the U.S. HIV/AIDS is spread mainly between heterosexual partners
Has a long latency period (tend to by asymptomatic up to 5 years)
AIDS is the leading cause of death worldwide among persons 25 to 44 years old
10 of every 11 new HIV infections worldwide come from Africa
The mortality rate for people who have AIDS remains extremely high

40. Sex Education
Americans agree that rates of premarital pregnancy and STDs in adolescence are serious problems that must be reduced
However there is vehement disagreement about what is the best solution
One side: comprehensive sexuality education
Other side: abstinence promotion

41. Sex Education 10 characteristics that make programs work
Focus narrowly on reducing one or more sexual behaviors
Base the program on theoretical approaches for other risky behaviours
Give a clear message about sexual activity and contraceptive use
Provide basic, accurate information about risks and methods
Include activities that teach how to deal with social pressures
Model and provide practice in negotiation and refusal skills
Use a variety of teaching methods
Incorporate behavioral goals specific to age, culture and sexual experience
Run the program over a sufficient period of time
Train teacher, youth workers and peer leaders who believe in the program