Different cultures have distinct methods of sexual socialization, categorizing them as restrictive, semi-restrictive, or permissive. Positive sexual development in adolescents involves accepting bodily changes, understanding sexual arousal, recognizing the voluntariness of sexual activities, and practicing safe sex.
A majority of teenagers report having been sexually harassed in school, and a significant minority of young people mainly females are forced to have sex against their will. Adolescence that have been sexually abused show higher than average rates of academic difficulties Anxiety, fears, and depression are more likely to engage in risky behavior.
About 6% of boys and 13% of girls report having same sex attraction, ad non-heterosexual orientation, or engaging in same-sex activity during adolescence. The higher rate of psychological and behavioral problems observed among sexual minority youth results from their being harassed by peers and adults.
Evidence suggests that early sexual activity is more common among teenagers growing up in single parent households and is associated with high rates of problem behaviors, such as drugs and alcohol use.
Risky Sex and its Prevention
Sexual education that combine information about how to practice safe sex with practical instruction and how to avoid unwanted and unplanned sex can be effective. In contrast, abstinence-education has been shown to be entirely ineffectivee.
Teenagers are not harmed psychologically by aborting their pregnancy, but studies of the consequence of child bearing indicate the short and long term problems for the teenage mother may be considerable.
About half of new teenage pregnancies result in birth of child who is raised by a teen parent. The majority of their pregnancies are aborted.
The US has the highest rate of teen child bearing in the industrial world. About 75,000 american teenagers become pregnant annually due to risky sexual behavior.
Sexual Activity During Adolescence
Most adolescence believe that sexual intercourse is acceptable before marriage as long as its within the context of a loving and intimate relationship.
The proportions of individuals who have had sexual intercourse before entering high school has risen significantly in recent decades
One-third of all American 14 year-olds and two-thirds of all american 18 year-olds have had sexual intercourse.
Ch.11 - 13
Ch. 13- Psychosocial Problems in Adolescence
Internalizing Problems
Coping with stress by trying to change the source of stress or to adapt to the problem, is generally more effective than coping through distraction or avoidance.
In general, the effect of stress is exacerbated if it is accompanied by other stressors, if the adolescents lacks sufficient internal or external resources, or of the teen had poorly developed coping skills.
For some teens, exposure to stress result in physical or psychological difficulties, but for others it may not effect at all.
Externalizing Problems
It is important to distinguish between life-course-persistent offenders, whose antisocial behavior begins before adolescence and continues into adulthood, and adolescence-limited offenders, whose antisocial behavior typically begins and ends during the teenage years.
Although the juvenile crime rate has declined from its peak in the early 1990's, adolescents still account for a disproportionately high number of crimes, including violent crimes.
Antisocial behavior takes three forms: authority-related conflicts, covert antisocial behavior, and overt antisocial behavior. Within each of these types there are predictable patterns of progression from less serious to more serious forms.
Substance Use and Abuse
The most promising interventions for substance abuse problems in adolescence are those social environment as well as the individual.
There is a clear need to distinguish between experimentation with alcohol and marijuana, that has not been shown to be harmful, and regular or heavy us, which has.
New brain research indicate that the potential for addiction and for other harmful physical consequences is significantly greater when the first use of substances occurs before the age of 14.
Nature and Covariation
Adolescents who are high in negative affectivity are more likely to suffer from depression, feel anxious, and report other symptoms of distress.
There are three categories of problems in adolescence, which are, substance abuse, internalizing problems. and externalizing problems.
Adolescents who engage in delinquency are more likely than their peers to be truant, to engage in precocious sexual behavior, and to commit acts of aggression.
Ch. 12- Achievements
Educational Achievement
Dropouts are more likely than their peers to be foreign-born Hispanic youth, to come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, to come from single-parents homes, and to have had a poor record of educational achievement throughout their school years.
The low level of educational achievement among American youth in general has been a concern for several decades. Although some gains in scores on standardized tests of achievements were reported during the mid-1980's, with the expectation of early adolescents math sore, achievement by and large has not improved since then.
Studies indicate that there are ethnic differences in educational achievement above and beyond those attributable to socioeconomic status
Environmental Influences on Achievement
Researchers now understand that patterns of achievement are the result of a cumulative process that includes a long history of experience and socialization in school, in the family in the peer groups, and in the community.
Their friends who support academic achievements perform better in school than do peers whose friends disparage doing well in school.
Adolescents perform better and are more engaged in school when they come from homes in which their parents value and except scholastic success, practice authoritative parenting, and provide a home environment that is high in culture capital.
Achievement Motives & Beliefs
Teachers can help improve their students achievements that create environments that stress mastery over performance, by helping students attribute their success and failures to how that intelligence is malleable rather than fixed.
Some students perform poorly because they have ben led to believe that members of their ethnic group or gender are inherently less able than others, the "Stereotyping threat."
A strong need for achievement is facilitated by parenting that combines the basic elements for success/ Adolescents need for achievement and their fear of failure work together to pull them toward or repel them from achievement situations.
Adolescent Issues in Sexuality
Cultures vary in their approach to sexual socialization and the way children and adolescence are taught about sex. Societies generally fall into one of the 3 categories. Restrictive, Semi-Restrictive, or Permissive.
Four aspects of positive sexual development in adolescence are accepting ones changing body, accepting ones feelings of sexual arousal, understanding that sexual activity is voluntary, and practicing safe sex.
The transition of the individual into new social role gives new meaning to sexual behavior in the eyes of individuals, society and social institutions and it provides new motives for establishing sexual relationships.
