1. The Adolescent in society
Chapter 6

2. Adolescence in our society
Adolescence is not a universal phenomenon.
It is an invention of modern society.
Adolescence is defined as the period between normal onset of puberty and the beginning of adulthood.
Puberty is the physical maturing that makes an individual capable of sexual reproduction.

3. Adolescence in our society
In American society adolescence is considered to run from age 12 to 19.
In pre-industrial societies, people go directly from childhood to adulthood.
They typically have ceremonies to celebrate this known as puberty rites.
This usually occurs around 13-14
Ceremonies include tattooing, filing of teeth, FGM, ect…signify adulthood
They then take on roles of an adult

4. Adolescence in our society
In the US adolescence did not exist prior to the Civil War.
Before the Civil War, children were treated like small adults.
Three factors in the development in adolescence.
Education
Exclusion from the workforce
Juvenile- justice system

5. Adolescence in our society
There are 5 main characteristics of adolescence:
Biological growth & development
Undefined status
Increased decision making
Increased pressures
Search for self

6. Adolescence in our society
Biological Growth and Development
The onset of puberty is found in every society
This means it is universal
We see physical growth in height and weight
Development of primary and secondary sex characteristics

7. Adolescence in our society
Undefined status
Expectations for adolescence is usually vague.
Some adults treat adolescents as adults, while others treat them as children.
For example you can get married at 16 with parental consent, but you cannot vote until you are 18.

8. Adolescence in our society
Increased decision making
Unlike children who have all their decisions made for them, you start making your own decisions.
You get to decide what courses to take in school.
What sports/clubs you participate in.
Whether or not you want to go to college.

9. Adolescence in our society
Increased Pressure
Typically adolescents are caught between parental pressure and peer pressure.
Adolescents also have pressure to do well in school.
Adolescents also have pressure to go along with the latest fashions and fads
There is pressure to form relationships
Some adolescents have the pressure of having a job.

10. Adolescence in our society
The Search for Self
Adolescents are old enough to think about themselves and what they want in life.
Anticipatory socialization is learning the rights, obligations, and expectations of a role to prepare for assuming that role in the future.
Jobs
Dating
Club membership

11. Teenagers and Dating
Dating is the meeting of people as a romantic engagement.
Dating is found in societies that allow someone to choose their marriage partners.
Some countries still arrange marriages
Dating did not emerge in American society until around WWI.

12. Teenagers and Dating
Prior to the rise of dating in the US, interaction between men and women was restricted to courtship.
Courtship differs from dating in that courtship’s express the purpose of marriage.
The main goal of dating is entertainment and amusement.
Dating sometimes leads to marriage

13. Teenagers and Dating
The rise of industrialization contributed greatly to the development of dating in the US
Moving away from farms to cities meant that men did not have to have land to marry.
This made people less dependent on their parents for economic security.
Free public secondary education also helped pave the way for dating.
Most public schools were coed.

14. Teenagers and Dating
The trend towards dating also emerged due to the rise of technology that gave young people more freedom
Automobiles
Telephones
The emergence of women in the work force also helped in dating.
Single men and women were in closer proximity.

15. Teenagers and Dating
Willard Waller conducted a sociological analysis of American dating patterns.
He concluded that casual dating was a form of entertainment, status attainment, and had little to do with mate selection.
Partners are picked based on looks, clothing, and popularity

16. Teenagers and Dating
Waller also found that status attainment is a form of homogamy.
Homogamy is the tendency of individuals to marry people who have social characteristics similar to their own.

17. Teenagers and Dating Why Date?
Dating serves several important functions in adolescence.
Entertainment
Socialization
Role behaviors
Basic psychological needs
Status attainment
Spouse selection

18. Challenges of Adolescence
Teenagers face important developmental tasks.
These tasks include:
Carving out an identity
Planning for the future
Becoming more independent
Developing close relationships
Most teens accomplish these tasks, while others do not.
Most sociological research on teenagers focus on issues such as
Teenage sexual behavior
Drug abuse
Suicide

19. Challenges of Adolescence
Teenage sexual behavior varies widely from society to society.
Some preindustrial societies allow adolescents to engage in sex before marriage.
Ex: Trobianders of the South Pacific
In most Western societies, most follow traditional sexual norms and have norms against premarital sex.
Many of these are beliefs are an outgrowth of Victorian and Puritan views of sexual morality.
These beliefs held up until the 1960’s

20. Challenges of Adolescence
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the development of the birth control pill caused the development of a youth counterculture.
The Feminist movement
Aka the “sexual revolultion”
This also led to the increase of in adolescent sexual behavior due to changing norms.

23. Challenges of Adolescence
The teenage birthrate is higher in America than in other industrialized societies.
Pregnancy rates have fallen among teens due to a push for sex ed in the s.
Social scientists have developed a number of explanations for why adolescents engage in sex.
Social, economic, and subcultural factors most often explain this.
Family income
Parents’ marital status
Religious participation

24. Challenges of Adolescence
In general, teens from higher income, two parent households are less likely to engage in sexual activity compared to those from low-income, single parent households.
Teens who practice religion are more likely to abstain from sexual activity than those who are not religious.
Teens who have friends that engage in premarital sex are more likely to also engage in sexual activity compared to those who have friends that abstain.
Early sexual behavior is also tied to risk taking behaviors such as delinquency and drug use.

25. Challenges of Adolescence
Consequences of early sexual activity include teen pregnancy and STDS
The CDC found that less than 1/3 of teenagers who are sexual active use birth control on a regular basis.
On average, one million teenage girls become pregnant.
Teen pregnancy has a number of negative consequences such as:
babies with low birthrates
Teen parents are less likely to finish high school
Teen parents tend to earn less money in their lifetime
Children of teen parents are more prone to learning difficulties
Children of teen parents have an increased risk becoming teen parents themselves

28. Challenges of Adolescence
Drugs use dates back to the written histories of ancient Greece where they smoked opium
The Aztecs used hallucinogens
Heroin and cocaine use for non-medical purposes was common in the ’s and early 1900’s
Cocaine was an ingredient in widely used products such as:
Soft drinks (Coke)
Cough medicine
Headache powder

31. Challenges of Adolescence
Every year more violence associated with drug trafficking continue to grow.
A lot of the violence is due to turf wars between rival gangs who traffic drugs.
Adult criminal gangs control the drug trafficking in the US, but they use children and teens as “foot soldiers”.
Children as young as 9 or 10 are used as lookouts
In time these children rise in the gang hierarchy and eventually become drug dealers

32. Challenges of Adolescence
Crack cocaine is a smokable form of cocaine that is highly addictive.
With the introduction of crack, drug related juvenile violence skyrocketed in the mid 1980’s.
Heroin is now a rising epidemic in the US.

36. Challenges of Adolescence
The chief factors of teen drug use are:
Having friends who use drugs
Having social and academic problems
Living in a hostile and rejecting family setting

37. Challenges in Adolescence
The use of drugs and alcohol are contributing factors to other adolescent problems such as suicide.
The rate of suicide among young people has dramatically increased over the past few decades.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 – 24
Motor vehicle deaths and homicide are the other two main causes of death for deaths in this age group.

39. Challenges in Adolescence
When you think of the causes and consequences for suicide we tend to think of the individual, we typically associate suicide with depression.
However, sociologists are interested in the social causes of suicide.
According to Durkheim, social integration or the degree of attachment to social groups or to society as a whole is a major factor in suicide.
People with high and low levels of social integration are the groups with high suicide rates.

40. Challenges in Adolescence
Individuals with high levels of social integration sometimes put the needs of the group members needs before their own personal needs.
For example, the Inuit in the Artic will walk into the wild to die once they become a burden on the group.
Individuals with low levels of social integration who commit suicide are more common that those with high levels of integration.
Low levels of social integration are usually due to periods of social disorganization.

41. Challenges in Adolescence
Social disorganization result from factors such as:
Rapid social change
Increased geographical mobililty
War
Natural disasters
Sudden changes in economic conditions
Social bonds that give individuals a sense of group solidarity, such as family ties and religion, tend to weaken during periods of social disorganization.

42. Challenges in Adolescence
Predictors of teenage suicide include:
Alcohol and/or drug use
Triggering events
Rejection, pregnancy, family crisis, ect
Age
Sex
Females are 3 x as likely to attempt suicide compared to males, but males are more likely to succeed in suicide.
population density
Unpopulated areas have higher rates of suicide
Family relations
Cluster effect
A well publicized suicide can trigger a “copy-cat” effect