Social Development In Adolescence

Some societies mark the transition from childhood to adulthood with a formal ceremony (e.g., a bar or bat mitzvah, a quinceañera), a practice that some developmental psychologists contend helps to explain cross-cultural approaches to adult identity. Researchers believe that the absence of formal rites of passage ceremonies in industrialized societies leads to certain problems. How should a teenager realize and claim their adulthood? Some adolescents may assert their man or womanhood by engaging in prosocial activities while others engage in high risk behaviors. A first driver’s license is a case in point. Some adolescents express that it represents their own coming of age with an adult responsibility. For others, that also means risky behavior behind the wheel.

Teens who who routinely engage in risky behavior may be attempting to invent their own rites of passage. Of course, much depends on the values and expectations of the peer group with which they identify and what constitutes a risk. For one teenager, the rite may involve preparing to audition for the school play. For another adolescent, it may involve joining a street gang that may provide a sense of belonging and protection in unsafe communities.

Remembering key elements of their own rites of passage, some adults recall alcohol/coffee/smoking as well as important relationships in ways the could inform their own parenting. Researchers believe that parents of teens must somehow allow for both limits and choices within those limits.

Adolescents have two, apparently contradictory, tasks in their relationships with their parents- to establish autonomy from them and to maintain a sense of relatedness with them. That is, teens could strive to separate/individuate while retaining a parental connection. Relatedness to parents has benefits. For example, teens who are close to their parents are less likely to use drugs.

Besides the teen-parent relationship, peers become far more significant in adolescence than they have been at any earlier period (and perhaps than they will be at any time later in life). The structure of peer groups changes during the teenage years, and the social system of crowds becomes increasingly differentiated. Adolescents are most likely to choose a peer group that shares their values, attitudes, behavior, and identity status. Values matter!