Adolescent sexuality: development, health, and psychosocial factors

Adolescent Sexuality

Adolescence is a time of change, physically, emotionally and mentally for young people. They are making a transition from their role of child, to their role of young adolescence when they will be empowered with more freedom and decision making in their lives. The stages of adolescence can be viewed in three stages: early adolescence, between the ages of 8 and 13 for girls; 11 to 15 for boys. The second stage, middle adolescence, occurs between the ages of 13 to 16 for girls; 14 to 17 for boys; and the third stage, late adolescence, between the ages of 16 and up for girls, and 17 and up for boys (Brown, Jane D., Steele, Jeanne R., and Walsh-Childers, Kim, 2002, p. 2). These stages of adolescence trigger adolescent milestones in learning and an awareness of the world around the child, their environment, and how people interact with one another on social levels that form the basis of relating to one another from gender perspectives.

It is the "middle" adolescent who is experiencing the greatest number of changes in their lives, say social researchers Jane Brown, Jeanne R. Steele, and Kim Walsh-Childers (2002). At this age, the group says, adolescents are focused on their independence, and the ways in which they can express that independence, make choices for them selves, and assert the authority that their age empowers them with (Brown, Steele, and Walsh-Childers, p. 2). They're forming relationships, close relationships with people with whom they relate to, peer groups. This is an important time in their lives, because they are at their most bold, and, at the same time, their most vulnerable as they begin to explore their sexuality.

This essay looks at the period of adolescence, late adolescence, when the adolescence's sexuality is emerging, and being noticed by adolescents and noticed by others, too.

Late Adolescence and Girls

It is an especially difficult time for young girls, because they're struggling with their peers and contemporary mindsets that dictate how they conduct themselves and whom and they should be interested in. Brown, Steele, and Walsh-Childers say it is an especially difficult for late adolescent girls, who might feel conflicted about the choices they make for themselves (p. 3). Their sexual choices are influenced by a number of people in their lives, including parents, peer groups, boyfriends, and even those messages that target them in the advertising media (Rouner, Donna, Slater, Michael D.,Domenech-Rodriguez, Melanie, 2003, p. 435). Looking around at the media advertising and programming aimed at young adolescents, there is every reason to be concerned with the manipulation of the media, advertisers, and performers who target late adolescent girls' sexuality. Young pop icons performing in exaggerated sexually suggestive videos, clothes that are sexually revealing and match exaggerated movements of sexually suggested behavior, beauty products, fashion, and the way in which adolescents are depicted in their relationships with one another are designed to encourage expressions and decisions concerning adolescent sexuality (Rounder, Slater and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435). Social researchers Donna Rouner, Michal D. Slater, and Melanie Domenech-Rodriguez say this about advertising targeting adolescents:

Ads routinely depict females, and more recently males (Reichert et al., 1999), as sexual objects where nudity or lurid angles and scans of body parts are frequently employed (Archer, Iritani, Kimes, & Barrios, 1983; Bem, 1993; Courtney & Whipple, 1983; Hall & Crum, 1994; Kilbourne & Lazarus, 1987; Kilbourne & Wunderlich, 1979; Sullivan & O'Connor, 1988). Implicit sexual ads, such as body shots used to sell undergarments, cologne, clothing, cars, and power tools, are also common on television (Cohen, 1981; Kilbourne & Wunderlich, 1979) (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435)."

The ads do not just portray an appearance that adolescents strive to copy, they present a "universe," or space around a social "clique," whose members lead exceptional and extraordinary lives all connected to their youth, good health, and beauty (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435). Being targeted in a way in which adolescent girls are depicted as "winners," for having certain physical attributes associated with social and financial rewards, serve as strong incentives for adolescents to make decisions for themselves that are not necessarily decisions about their own individuality, but are choices they make about advertising and marketing choices made for them by corporations focused on financial profits.

For young adolescent girls, being targeted with these false measurements of self-esteem, self-value, and social significance can lead to a variety of responses in the way that they make choices for themselves. When their world is portrayed by advertisers in a strictly sexual way, it becomes through those sexual tones that they learn to relate to the world around them, and to express themselves (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435). The result, Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez say, can be disastrous, because it can result in an over-sensuality in their expressions, even a sexual aggression, to which their peers, influenced by different backgrounds, might ostracize them for their aggressive and overtly sexuality (p. 435).

On the other side of the spectrum are those girls who might become inhibited by their inability to relate to the role models by whom they are influenced in the various media directed to them. Talk about advertising methods that target the young adolescent girl for products that cause the young girls to believe that the product will resolve their lack of sex appeal, or their sense of awkwardness, or lack of beauty. When that product does not bring about changes in the young adolescent girl's perception of self, the response can be painful, even causing the young girl to act out in extreme ways. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that has become more common amongst late adolescent girls. Brown, Steele, and Walsh-Childers say that anorexia nervosa affects 1% of young adolescent girls between the ages of 16 to 18 (Brown, Steele, and Walsh-Childers, p. 5). Bulimia, an eating disorder that like anorexia nervosa has become increasingly common in young adolescent girls, affects 15% of the girls in the same 16 to 18-year-old category (p. 5). These eating disorders are directly linked to the ways in which these young girls perceive themselves, believe themselves to be sexually attractive or competitive with their peer group.

A majority of American teenagers date; 85% say they have had a boyfriend or girlfriend and have kissed someone romantically. By the age of 14, more than half of all boys have touched a girl's breasts, and a quarter have touched a girl's vulva. One fourth to one half of young people report experience with fellatio and cunnilingus (Newcomer & Udry, 1985; Roper Starch Worldwide, 1994) (Brown, Steele, and Walsh-Childers, p. 5)."

While the above is about both girls and boys, consider just the implications the statement holds for young late adolescent girls. Eight-five percent of teens say that they have a boyfriend or girlfriend; this would be the range from 13 to 19. When young girls begin engaging in physical sexual exploration at an early age, like 13, the obvious conclusion is that by the time the young girl outgrows late adolescence, she could have had multiple sexual partners. This is not healthy, because early sexual exploration puts young girls at risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435).

The range of sexually transmitted disease go from the treatable conditions like syphilis and gonorrhea to the incurable like herpes simplex, Chlamydia, human papilloma virus, and, the worst case scenario, HIV / AIDS and a prolonged and painful road to death. These are each conditions that have in recent years been found to have their origins in middle to late adolescent sexual behaviors (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435). For young girls there is also the life altering condition of early pregnancy and parenthood, which they must often times face without the benefit of a husband or the father of the child (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435).

Rouner, Slater and Domenech-Rodriguez have found that the advertising media that targets young adolescents and follow them into young adulthood are largely responsible for encouraging behavior in adolescents that puts them at risk for irresponsible social and sexual behaviors (p. 435). It also creates distinct and unrealistic lines between the genders associated with social behavior, responsibility, and the roles of young men girls in society (p. 435). For girls, that role is a sexual one, and it is linked to their value as human beings (p. 435). These role assignments can be the force that drives a wedge between a young girl, her identity as an individual, her sexuality, her ability to express her sexuality in a mature way, and even her ability to understand or recognize the emergence of her strengths and value beyond that of being a sexual object.

Adolescent Boys and Sexuality

Social researcher Lisa Smylie, Sheri Medaglia, and Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale (2006) cite many of the issues that have been addressed as risks for young adolescent girls, as equally challenging for boys, or adolescents in general (p. 95). The risks involving life altering adolescent sexual promiscuity is as serious for boys, as it is for girls. Early childhood fatherhood can impact the young adolescent male's life for the rest of his life, assigning him a responsibility that he perhaps never considered taking on when he was being sexually active (p. 95). Being sexually active is, for young adolescent boys, about more than sex. It is also about how the media says that "men," or boys who are going to grow to manhood, should behave, and much of the advertising media suggests to young male adolescents that if they do not partake in certain practices, like beer drinking, then they will not achieve happy manhood (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435).

Becoming sexually active as an adolescent is usually about much more than meeting physical needs or curiosity, and it is much less about emotional attachments than it is about peer pressure, trained imagery through the media, and a desire to take on responsibilities as an adult without an awareness of what a responsibility is. For young boys, making decisions about having unprotected sex as adolescents can change the course of their lives when they find themselves young fathers. Often times, the young adolescents who brought a child into the world together do not have the financial or emotional wherewithal to meet the responsibilities associated with child rearing. It often means that the families, parents of the adolescents, take on these additional extended family responsibilities.

On a social level, the relationship between young girls and boys is distorted by the images that young adolescent males adopt as meaningful imagery of relationships through the media (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435). Alcohol is an ever present depiction of young adulthood, upon the late adolescent stands at the brink of, and which can set a precedent both for perception and behavior in the adolescent's life that are harmful. Rouner, Slater and Domenech-Rodriguez explain it this way:

Most of the advertisements in this study were found to target males, with almost none targeted specifically to females. However, many images of females appear in these ads, and these images are not always favored by female or male viewers. Comments about the unnecessary display of nudity, especially the female body, were common. Perhaps both females and males saw gender roles in television ads that are no longer as ubiquitous in the culture at large, thus questioning why these ads are not a closer reflection of the reality of their age group. As one male asked, "Where are all these girls who look like this [the way the females looked in the ad]? (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435)"

The problem is, of course, that the adolescent had so little experience with women in reality that he was compelled to ask, "Where are all these girls who look like this? (Rouner, Slater, and Domenech-Rodriguez, p. 435)." This is a good sign of avoidance of reality, because certainly the adolescent goes to school and sees females in their real and non-media visually or socially enhanced roles, but chooses to ignore that reality in lieu of the one that has been created for him by the media. The media creates alternative realities that adolescents crave living in. Smylie, Medaglia, and Maticka-Tyndale say that these risk behaviors have short- and long-term cost and social repercussions (p. 95). Smylie, Medaglia and Maticka-Tyndale say that while most adolescents outgrow the media advertising aimed at them, too many fall victim to it (p. 95). The failure, they say, is manifest in what they term as the "social capital," that they define as:

features and resources inherent in the structure of social relations (e.g., information channels, social supports, and material aid) which individuals and communities can draw upon to prevent and/or solve common problems (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; 1990; Putnam, 2000). High stocks of social capital make it possible for individuals and communities to avoid or deal with problems such as drug, tobacco, alcohol use, or sexual and other risk behaviours (Coleman, 1988; 1990) and to overcome other community struggles such as racism, depleted social welfare programs, crime (Portes, 1998; Putnam, 1993), and employment and income inequities (Loury, 1977) (Smylie, Medaglia, and Maticka-Tyndale, p. 95)."

Tangential to the positive outcomes that are reflected in terms of social capital, these researchers say that consistent parental involvement in providing guidance, rules, and structures for adolescents to function within as a family are essential (p. 95). The family structure is balanced with a healthy community interaction in religion, school, and community events that help to invest the adolescent beyond their own environment, to the greater environment that they will become members of as young adults (p. 95).

The intensive attention paid to sexuality and gender roles by young adolescents, especially for young adolescent males, is emphasized by the increasingly common incidents of grade school and middle school aged boys having sexual encounters with their female adult teachers (Angelides, Steven, 2007, p. 347). These are cases not just where the adolescent is susceptible to the authority of the teacher figure, but where the teacher figure and the adolescent share the same misshapen perception of gender roles and relationships. Social researcher Steven Angelides cites the case of a 37-year-old physical education teacher who engaged in an adolescent boy who was 15 years old at the time the affair began, but turned 16 just three months after the affair began (Angelides, p. 347). While many people wanted to focus on the fact that the "child," was actually of an age where adolescents generally become physical, the fact was that the young adolescent was not 16 when the affair began, or at least when authorities could best determine it began (p. 347).

The point to be made by introducing this case scenario is less one about the salacious nature of it, and more about the perceptions of the two individuals: an adolescent boy and an adult female authority figure. The young adolescent was cooperative with authorities in establishing the facts of the case, but he disagreed on their perspective that he was the victim of a predator (p. 347). As is the case with many adolescents his age, the child in this case perceived himself in terms of the definitions that have been provided for him by society about his status as a teen, and about his role and relationship from a gender perspective (p. 347). The age discrepancy between himself and the teacher, and the fact that her role as a teacher was one perceived as carrying with it a responsibility not to put him in physical or emotional harm's way, was not something the young teen was focused on (p. 347). Nor did it make a difference to him, because from his place in society and role playing, he was engaging in an appropriate behavior by following through on his sexual attraction to the teacher (p. 347).

The adolescent's perception of his role as an adolescent was distorted, although that perhaps would not have enabled him to rationalize the inappropriateness of the relationship. However, how he perceived himself as a young adult, rather than a young adolescent, is what "erased" his own role as an adolescent with an adolescent role to maintain, which in and of itself might have helped him to gain a sense of the inappropriate nature of having a physical relationship with his teacher (p. 347). Even though the teacher was sentenced with multiple counts of illegal behavior that resulted in her incarceration for 22 months, the young adolescent felt that he had benefited from the relationship (p. 347).

Gender in Contemporary Society

Ancient history has long been a marker for understanding gender roles in contemporary society. Greek and Roman societies which provides invaluable insight into ancient life, culture, and society also provides insight into gender roles and sexuality (Hanson, Victor Davis, 2004, p. 42). Ancient patriarchal societies have been useful in understanding how the roles of women and men have evolved. However, some of the long-held perceptions arising out of studies of ancient life have recently been re-evaluated (p. 42). Ancient Greek artifacts have recently been found to reveal that the role of young women as objects sexuality whose purpose was to serve as vessels of procreation may not be entirely accurate (p. 42). In fact, the art work on some ancient vases show that young girls were actually going to school, carrying study materials (p. 42).

For historian and social researcher Victor Davis Hanson, ancient Greek artwork shows a greater level of confidence and independence in young girls than he had expected to find (p. 42). He says:

We are told that Greece was a male-dominated society where women were often segregated and relegated to the kitchen and care of the children, while men fought, conducted business, or ran the government. Perhaps -- as, for example, a group of terracotta sculptures from central Greece shows a young girl learning to cook from an older woman. But from this exhibition there also emerges a sense of female confidence and a familiarity between the sexes unknown even today in much of the world. Carefree young girls play knucklebones. They carry one another piggyback as punishment for not hitting a target with stones or balls in the popular game of ephedrismos, and bare-armed, bare-faced, and bare-ankled they are taught to dance (p. 42)."

While Hanson does not question whether that ancient Greece was a patriarchal society, however, he does suggest that perhaps there was a greater level of gender equality than we have long believed there to have been (p. 42). The art, he suggests, can teach us one more thing, and that is the role of parents in the supervision of their children's adolescent years is essential to the social welfare of the young child (p.42). Hanson gets this from an examination of the artwork that suggests that there were actually depictions that were perhaps intended to curb teen suicide, and to caution parents against the threat of predators that might be threats to the physical and emotional well being of their young adolescent children (p. 42).

This is an easily overlooked lesson that Hanson is suggesting might have been gained from the ancients, because of the patriarchal societies that followed ancient societies into modern times. It is only recently in time and history that gender equality has become an "effort" in society, and even then it is only in western societies. Certainly the challenges that are still faced by women in society today: wages, promotions, physical limitations, and other considerations that impact a woman's role in society contribute to the challenges that young adolescents are faced with in reconciling their roles with their sexuality. Brown, Steele and Walsh-Childers say:

American teenagers find themselves faced with a confusing array of contradictory messages and sources of sexual and contraceptive information. Unable to extricate sexuality from the moral stances and medical issues that have become entangled with it (Koch, 1993), socializing forces ranging from parents to peers, from doctors to actors, and from television to the Internet present sex alternately as something forbidden and dangerous yet irresistibly desirable and pleasurable. Sex is showcased as a rite of passage that promises entry into the adult world. However, it is a journey rife with potential perils such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and the road maps provided by one source of information may influence how other sources are received: whether they are followed, questioned, or rejected (p. 26)."

The solution to these challenges is, in part, by familiarizing young adolescents with the proper images and role models that help them put behavior, physical and emotional feelings and actions into perspective. Gender equality can only serve to mitigate the problems and challenges facing these adolescents, because it eliminates certain images of sexual superiority. It changes, too, the perception that women are sex objects, and that they are delegated to that role in society. Gender equality helps adolescents understand that relationships between young girls and boys is a mutual one, and that both parties bring an emotional as well as a physical value to one another, and that those values must be treated in a responsible way, like any other thing that is of value in their lives.

Another solution is provide role models, instead of advertising images. There is no overestimating the influence of a role model on a young adolescent boy or girl. That means educating teens on sex from sources other than the media, which has a tendency to present the sexual aspect of youth as a frolic, something to be pursued with carefree abandon, rather than with careful contemplation of the action and affections involved. This means that adults, parents, must be the first line educators on sex for their children, and that they have to take a proactive role in directing and providing the young people with experiences that help them gain a respect for the roles of males and females in society in general, and not just as it pertains them individually. Brown, Steel and Walsh-Childers says that researchers understand more about the content of television and other media that contain sexual imagery and messages for teens (p. 96). We know less, they say, about how adolescents process this information, except that by way of those teens who emulate the role models through dress and behavior (p. 96). It is essential, therefore, they say, to understand more about how teens are processing the world around them, and how they are reading the signals, which are inundating them through the various media sources (p. 96).