Adolescence is both a biological process and a social-cultural transition. The juvenile organism undergoes a process of growth and maturation as it moves toward adult size and functional capacity, and, more or less concurrently, the individual must pass through a transition from the status and conduct of a child to the responsibilities of the adult.
“The suitable adjustment of these processes, each to the other, and the appropriate direction and timing of the demands made by adults upon the developing adolescent are important factors in the ease and adequacy of growing up in our culture” (Peckos, 1957, p. 77).While much of the basic culturization of the individual takes place the early years, it is obvious that important phases occur during the second decade when he is being inducted into adult living and being trained to take his place as an active participant in the group life. It is worth while to reiterate here the familiar statement that the human child has the longest infancy of all species; and to add that human adolescence is also significantly prolonged.
This prolonging of the maturizing process during both childhood and adolescence has immense significance for both the individual and society.During these years of growth and development, the child remains more or less plastic, capable of the learning and adaptation which are necessary for social living. As pointed out by various writers, man has made his adaptations, not by organic differentiation, but by developing the attitudes, ideas and tools we call culture, which each generation must learn anew from its predecessors (Kroger, 2004; Sebald, 1992). Through this repeated learning, with continuous modifications in what is learned, society has maintained its ability to evolve new social and cultural forms.It has become increasingly evident that the growth and development of the child is a more or less orderly sequence or process which, for convenience, we classify into various arbitrary steps or periods.
It is also clear that each individual child moves through this sequence at his or her own rate of progress and attains dimensions of structure, function, and behavior that are idiomatic to the individual. Thus, while we observe a certain order and regularity of process, we may also note a wide diversity of products, as exhibited by groups of individuals who differ in size, shape, and capacity, although of the same chronological age.As a result of these pronounced differences in rates of growth and maturation, the number of years a person has lived is in many situations of less significance than the level of physiological and social maturity he has attained (Kroger, 2004). Differences in the time of maturing are sometimes of great importance to the individual. The early-maturing child has a shorter period of prepuberal development than the late-maturing child.
Conversely, the child with early puberty may have a prolonged period in which to make adolescent social adjustments, while the late maturing may have to compress these adjustments into a shorter interval before reaching adulthood. Preceding and accompanying sexual maturation the child undergoes a transformation in size and body form of greater or Im degree, with a lengthening of the legs that sometimes produces an almost sudden change in height. Some rapidly growing boys and girls may "shoot up" and within a brief period of eighteen months or two years attain nearly their full adult stature.Others may grow slowly but continuously over a longer period (Sebald, 1992). It has become evident that puberty is merely an early stage in adolescent development.
It may be two or three years after the first menstruation before the girls will ovulate and attain full sex maturation and the capacity for procreation. Less is known about the male, and at present it is not possible to say when spermatogenesis or production of motile, functionally potent sperm does occur. One important aspect of adolescent development is that the growth of other dimensions and of the several organ systems may lag behind growth in stature.The very tall boy of fifteen or sixteen may still have juvenile, undeveloped gonads, while his heart and circulatory system, the respiratory system, and the gastrointestinal tract may still be relatively immature and progressing only slowly toward the size and functional capacity appropriate to his stature.
Conversely, the boy or girl who reaches puberty at an earlier age apparently grows and develops more as a whole, with fewer biological discrepancies and organic imbalances. But this earlier puberty has its disadvantages as well as advantages, especially in view of the social consequences of "outgrowing" former friends and associates.Boys or girls who complete their growth within a relatively short time may experience only a brief period of instability and may therefore be able to go forward to adult status with less internal incongruity. On the other hand, a brief (and therefore exceptionally rapid) period of growth may entail disturbances of various kinds merely because of the sudden, unexpected increase in size. During this brief period the adolescent must revise his image of the body and try to become accustomed to a new body size and form.Moreover, many of the eye-hand co-ordinations and other patterns of muscular co-ordination built up over the years of childhood may be rendered obsolete by these changes, so that the individual may find himself clumsy and painfully incapable of even simple activities.
In general it may be said that the adolescent must face an altered body and the necessity for revising his body image and habitual motor patterns; and he must learn to adapt to a world in which people and situations are changed and in which he must play new and different roles (Sebald, 1992).With puberty comes also a profound internal change, involving novel impulses and feelings and more sensitized social reactions. Almost suddenly the individual becomes aware of the peculiar characteristics of the members of the opposite sex and regards them as the focus of his or her own interests and as the source of possible embarrassments or even dangers. These changes occur in the individual with greater or less rapidity and carry significance according to the rate and magnitude of the alterations and according to the individual's own past history.It has been repeatedly said that the adolescent is a source of perplexity and irritation for adults--his parents and teachers especially-but less frequently has it been noted that the adolescent may be equally a problem to himself (Dekovic et al.
, 1997). That such is often the case is shown by the common picture of the adolescent, especially of the rapidly growing boy, who may be physically present in a room or class but so preoccupied with his own reveries that he is seemingly incapable of coming to a focus upon anything.This condition may be indicative of the confusion and the often acute anxiety some adolescents face. Pressed both internally and externally and trying to meet the demands placed on them by families, schools, and other adolescents, they sometimes find it necessary to conform, at one and the same time, to the requirements of several different levels of maturity. What happens to some adolescents today is Indicated by the death rate and the incidence of mental disorder during the second decade of life.In this country the period from ten to fifteen years of age has the lowest death rate of all age periods from infancy to senility.
But in the age period fifteen to nineteen boys and girls begin to succumb to the stresses and strains of later adolescent life, and the death rate increases nearly 100 per cent. The deaths from accidents an highest, while tuberculosis, diseases of the heart, pneumonia-influenza, and appendicitis are next in order of magnitude.Thus, in the period when individuals should be biologically most resistant and strong, they are dying prematurely at a rate which is to be deplored. Likewise for mental disorders.
In the age period ten to fourteen the first admissions to state hospitals for mental disorders is very low--in New York State only 4. 3 per 100,000 children of that age. In the age period fifteen to nineteen the rate is 40. 3 per 100,000, almost a ten-fold increase over the preceding five-year period.Moreover, during adolescence a number, not definitely known but significantly large, suffer what is known as "nervous breakdown," while others commit suicide or attempt to do so, become delinquents, vagrants, "bums," or homosexuals, or waste their lives in alcoholism, drug addiction, or in various neurotic patterns leading to self-defeat and tragedy for themselves and their families (Kroger, 2004).
Some of these unfortunate outcomes occur among the most promising youth the highly intelligent and gifted, whose perplexities and personality difficulties are often too long ignored.In these years of transition from childhood, in which he has been primarily an object of culturization by adults, to the conditions and responsibilities of adult living, the adolescent becomes a carrier and interpreter of the traditions and aspirations of our culture. As the adolescent goes on to adult living, becoming a husband or wife, a father or mother, a worker and a citizen, he or she not only takes a place in the maintenance of social order but also may influence the subsequent course of that social order.L?vinson points out that this stag? of lif? is charact?riz?d by ?n?rgy, contradiction, and str?ss with th? major tasks b?ing fulfilling a dr?am, raising a family, and ?stablishing a s?nior position in th? adult world. It is especially important to recall that the adolescent, during this period of adjustment to adult life, may project ahead some more or less clearly conceived ideals of self and also of society.
In these hopes, expectations, and anxieties of the adolescent period, and more specifically in the image that each individual forms for himself and the aspirations that he cherishes for human welfare, may be found a strategic means for social change. No one who reflects upon urgent needs of youth and their significance for society as a whole can fail to be impressed by the necessity of maintaining an educational program which will genuinely help them to grow up and find a design for adult living.It is not unwarranted to say that at present we are unnecessarily and callously wasting some of our most valuable human resources by failing to meet the needs of youth more adequately during these adolescent years (Adolescence, 1993). It is known that adolescence begins early in the second decade and is usually considered as ending at about the twenty-second or twenty-third year in boys and somewhat earlier in girls.
It covers, therefore, approximately the last ten years of what was just referred to as the first epoch of life, the period extending from conception to adulthood. The physical changes which occur during this early period of life include both growth and development: growth, in the sense of an increase in mass, volume, and external dimensions, and development, in the sense of becoming progressively more complex. These two processes, growth and development, do not proceed at the same absolute rate or at the same relative rate throughout this early period of life.There are intervals during which the body is increasing in size more rapidly than it is growing in complexity, and them are other times at which this relationship is reversed. Some of the developmental changes which occur during adolescence are, perhaps, best appreciated when viewed in the light of some events which have preceded them. Besides, when we speak of things which are determined by heredity in the human body, such traits as eye color, hair color, hair form, skin color, or such defects as hemophilia, red-green color blindness, etc.
, suggest themselves.We are likely to lose sight of the fact that, in addition to determining a vast number of what may more or less properly be called "unit characters" such as those which were just enumerated, there is also in the germ plasm some mechanism which controls larger aspects of development and which insures, for example, that human beings give rise only to other human beings and that elephants continue to produce only elephants (Arnett and Taber, 1994). The genetic constitution of man, like that of other forms, controls another important aspect of development.It not only determines within rather narrow limits what the end product of development will be, but it also prescribes quite definitely the stages to be followed in attaining that end. To those concerned with the direction and guidance of adolescents, this period of development often seems burdened with a multitude of problems.
Most of these problems are associated with the adjustments which the adolescent is called upon to make to an environment dominated by adults at a time when his own internal environment is in a state of flux.The unpredictable variations in the adolescent's behavior, so exasperating to adults, may often have a physiological basis. One example, mentioned by Arnett and Taber (1994) is the stirring of sexual instincts, resulting from the increased production of sex hormones within the adolescent's own body and giving rise to typically "adolescent behavior" which is often at odds with the standards set by adults Until the individual can reconcile his own internal environment with his social and cultural environment, some degree of conflict and psychological turmoil will likely prevail.All in all, it can be said that the adolescent faces two ways. He faces forward.
Accompanying his body's rapid, almost headlong growth, are emotional urges toward adulthood quite as resistless, no more to be denied.. It almost seems as though there is a heightening of sense perception, as though he were seeing, hearing, touching for the first time. Meanings once shrouded in mystery are becoming clear. Words formerly unheard or carelessly ignored are charged with deep meaning.
To this new world the adolescent makes eager and passionate response. He is endlessly curious. Like Browning's Paracelsus, he would "see, know, touch, taste all. "
