Adolescence Exam 2

Moral Behavior

Basic Processes Behavioral views emphasize the moral behavior of adolescents. The familiar processes of reinforcement, punishment, and imitation have been invoked to explain how and why adolescents learn certain moral behaviors and why their behaviors differ from those of one another. The general conclusions to be drawn are the same as those for other domains of social behavior. When adolescents are positively reinforced for behavior that is consistent with laws and social conventions, they are likely to repeat that behavior. When models who behave morally are provided, adolescents are likely to adopt similar behavior. And, when adolescents are punished for immoral or unacceptable behavior, those behaviors can be eliminated, but at the expense of sanctioning punishment by its very use and of causing emotional side effects for the adolescent. For example, when adolescent drivers act responsibly and are praised by their parents for doing so, they are more likely to continue driving safely. If adolescents see their parents driving responsibly, they are more likely to follow the same patterns. If driving privileges are revoked from adolescents who do not drive responsibly, the behavior is eliminated but the adolescent may feel humiliated by the punishment. To these general conclusions, we can add several qualifiers. The effectiveness of reinforcement and punishment depends on how consistently they are administered and the schedule that is adopted. The effectiveness of modeling depends on the characteristics of the model (power, warmth, uniqueness, and so on) and the presence of cognitive processes, such as symbolic codes and imagery, that enhance retention of the modeled behavior. Adolescents are especially alert to adult hypocrisy, and evidence indicates that they are right to believe that many adults display a double standard—that is, their moral actions do not always correspond to their moral thoughts or pronouncements. In addition to emphasizing the role of environmental determinants and the gap between moral thought and moral action, behaviorists also emphasize that moral behavior is situationally dependent. That is, they say that adolescents are not likely to display consistent moral behavior in diverse social settings. In a classic investigation of moral behavior—one of the most extensive ever conducted—Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May (1928-1930) observed the moral responses of 11,000 children and adolescents who were given the opportunity to lie, cheat, and steal in a variety of circumstances—at home, at school, at social events, and in athletics. A completely honest or a completely dishonest child or adolescent was difficult to find. Situation-specific moral behavior was the rule. Adolescents were more likely to cheat when their friends pressured them to do so and when the chance of being caught was slim. Other analyses suggest that some adolescents are more likely to lie, cheat, and steal than others, an indication of greater consistency of moral behavior in some adolescents than in others. The social cognitive theory of moral development emphasizes a distinction between adolescents' moral competence—the ability to produce moral behaviors—and moral performance—the enactment of those behaviors in specific situations. Competence, or acquisition, is primarily the outgrowth of cognitive-sensory processes. Competencies include what adolescents are capable of doing, what they know, their skills, their awareness of moral rules and regulations, and their cognitive ability to construct behaviors. In contrast, adolescents' moral performance, or behavior, is determined by their motivation and the rewards and incentives to act in a specific moral way. moral development is best understood by considering a combination of social and cognitive factors, especially those involving self-control. He proposes that in developing a "moral self, individuals adopt standards of right and wrong that serve as guides and deterrents for conduct. In this self-regulatory process, people monitor their conduct and the conditions under which it occurs, judge it in relation to moral standards, and regulate their actions by the consequences they apply to themselves. They do things that provide them with satisfaction and a sense of self-worth. They refrain from behaving in ways that violate their moral standards because such conduct will bring self-condemnation. Self-sanctions keep conduct in line with internal standards". Moral behavior includes both negative aspects of behavior—cheating, lying,and stealing, for example—and positive aspects of behavior—such as being considerate to others and giving to a worthy cause. Let's now explore the positive side of moral behavior—prosocial behavior. Prosocial Behavior Many prosocial acts involve altruism, an unselfish interest in helping another person. Altruism is found throughout the human world and is a guiding principle in Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Although adolescents have often been described as egocentric and selfish, adolescent acts of altruism are, nevertheless, plentiful. The circumstances most likely to involve altruism by adolescents are empathetic or sympathetic emotion for an individual in need or a close relationship between the benefactor and the recipient. Prosocial behavior occurs more often in adolescence than in childhood, although examples of caring for others and comforting someone in distress may occur as early as the preschool years. Cognitive changes involving advances in abstract, idealistic, and logical reasoning as well as increased empathy and emotional understanding likely are involved. With such newfound cognitive abilities, young adolescents increasingly sympathize with members of abstract groups with whom they have little experience, such as people living in poverty in other countries. The increase in volunteer opportunities in adolescence also contributes to more frequent prosocial behavior. In a recent study of fifth-, tenth-, and twelfth-grade students, authoritative parents (those who showed warmth while exercising some control) were more likely to have children and youth who showed higher levels of prosocial behavior than were parents who were moderately demanding and uninvolved. Also, a recent study revealed that harsh parenting was linked to a lower level of adolescent prosocial behavior. Other research also has found that mothers are more likely to influence adolescents' prosocial behavior than are fathers. In a recent study, maternal warmth was associated with a higher level of adolescent prosocial behavior. Peer relations also influence the extent to which adolescents engage in prosocial behavior. Also, associating with prosocial peers predicted a greater likelihood of engaging in prosocial behavior and not participating in higher-risk sexual behaviors. In another study, gratitude was linked to a number of positive aspects of development in young adolescents, including satisfaction with one's family, optimism, and prosocial behavior. In addition, a longitudinal study assessed the gratitude of adolescents at 10 to 14 years of age. Four years after the initial assessment, the most grateful adolescents (top 20 percent) had a stronger sense of the meaning of life, were more satisfied with their lives, were happier and more hopeful, had a lower level of negative emotions, and were less depressed than the least grateful students (bottom 20 percent). Further, a recent study of adolescents found that both gratitude and forgiveness were linked to a lower level of reactive and proactive aggression through their connection to self-control. And a recent study of adolescents found that having the character strength of gratitude increased their prosocial behavior and peer acceptance. In sum, given the increasing concern that we live in a world where too often people fail to show how appreciative they are of what others have done for them, the research discussed here indicates that individuals who express gratitude benefit in a number of ways.

Attachment and Connectedness

Adolescents do not simply move away from parental influence into a decision-making world all on their own. As they become more autonomous, it is psychologically healthy for them to be attached to their parents. Let's first examine a general definition of secure attachment and then describe attachment in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Secure attachment involves a positive, enduring emotional bond between two people. In infancy, childhood, and adolescence, secure attachment usually involves an emotional bond between a child and a caregiver that benefits the child's exploration of the environment and further development. In adulthood, a secure attachment can take place not only between caregivers and children, but also between two people in a couple or marital relationship. Infancy and Childhood Attachment theorists such as John Bowlby (1989) and Mary Ainsworth (1979) argue that secure attachment in infancy is central to the development of social competence. Secure attachment is theorized to be an important foundation for psychological development later in the life span. In insecure attachment, infants, children, and adolescents either avoid the caregiver or show considerable resistance or ambivalence toward the caregiver. Insecure attachment is theorized to be related to difficulties in relationships and problems in later development. For example, a research review concluded that children who do not form secure attachments to their parents risk developing anxiety and other internalized problems. Also, a longitudinal study found that infant attachment insecurity was linked to less effective emotion-regulation strategies 20 to 35 years later. Adolescence In the past decade, researchers have begun to explore whether secure attachment might be an important feature of adolescents' relationships with their parents. Researchers have found that securely attached adolescents are less likely than those who are insecurely attached to have emotional difficulties and to engage in problem behaviors such as juvenile delinquency and drug abuse. individuals are classified as secure/autonomous (which corresponds to secure attachment in infancy) or placed in one of three categories of insecure attachment: Dismissing/avoidant attachment is an insecure category in which individuals deemphasize the importance of attachment. This category is associated with consistent experiences of rejection of attachment needs by caregivers. One possible outcome of dismissing/avoidant attachment is that parents and adolescents mutually distance themselves from each other, a state that lessens parental influence. Preoccupied/ ambivalent attachment is an insecure category in which adolescents are hyperattuned to attachment experiences. This preoccupation is thought to occur mainly if parents are inconsistently available to the adolescent. The insecurity may be evident in a high degree of attachment-seeking behavior, mixed with angry feelings. Conflict between parents and adolescents in this type of attachmentclassification can be too high for healthy development. Unresolved/ disorganized attachment is an insecure category in which the adolescent has an unusually high level of fear and might be disoriented. This type of insecurity can result from traumatic experiences such as a parent's death or abuse by parents. After identifying the important people in their lives, the students rank-ordered the people in terms of these contexts: attachment bond (closeness, separation distress, and reassurance in an emergency situation); support seeking (comfort or support in daily contexts); and affiliative (enjoyable social contact). College students placed romantic partners in higher positions and fathers in lower positions than did high school students. Friends' placements in higher positions and fathers' exclusion from the most important people list or placement as the fourth most important person were linked to increased behavior problems (internalizing behaviors such as depression and externalizing behaviors such as rule-breaking).

Parenting Styles

Authoritarian parenting is a restrictive, punitive style in which the parent exhorts the adolescent to follow directions and to respect work and effort. The authoritarian parent places firm limits and controls on the adolescent and allows little verbal exchange. For example, an authoritarian parent might say, "You will do it my way or else. There will be no discussion!" Authoritarian parenting is associated with adolescents' socially incompetent behavior. Adolescents who have authoritarian parents often are anxious about social comparison, fail to initiate activity, and have poor communication skills. A recent study revealed that being raised by authoritarian parents was associated with an increased likelihood of becoming a bully perpetrator. Authoritative parenting encourages adolescents to be independent but still places limits and controls on their actions. Extensive verbal give-and-take is allowed, and parents are warm and nurturant toward the adolescent. An authoritative father, for example, might put his arm around the adolescent in a comforting way and say, "You know you should not have done that. Let's talk about how you can handle the situation better next time." Authoritative parenting is associated with adolescents' socially competent behavior. The adolescents of authoritative parents are self-reliant and socially responsible. A recent study revealed that authoritative parenting was associated with a higher self-concept and lower level of externalizing behavior while authoritarian parenting was related to a lower self-concept and higher level of externalizing behavior in adolescents. Also, a recent Chinese study found that authoritative parenting served as a protective factor against adolescents engagingin delinquency and later in criminal activity. Further, another recent Chinese study revealed that authoritative parenting increased children's favorable trajectories of math achievement. In another recent study, authoritative parenting in grades 7 and 12 predicted greater internalizing of values in emerging adulthood. Other recent research indicated that authoritative parenting was linked to reducing adolescent screen time. In addition, a recent study of low-income Latinx families indicated that authoritative mothers had the highest levels of healthy eating practices and authoritarian mothers the lowest. And a recent Lebanese study revealed that an authoritative parenting style was associated with better adolescent health outcomes than a neglectful style. Neglectful parenting is a style in which the parent is uninvolved in the adolescent's life. The neglectful parent cannot answer the question, "It is 10:00 p.m. Do you know where your adolescent is?" Adolescents have a strong need for their parents to care about them; if their parents are neglectful they develop the sense that other aspects of their parents' lives are more important than they are. These adolescents are socially incompetent—they show poor self-control and do not handle independence well. Closely related to the concept of neglectful parenting is a lack of parental monitoring, which, as we discussed earlier, is linked to a number of negative outcomes for adolescents. In a recent study of adolescents, neglectful parenting was linked to early initiation of sex and engagement in unsafe sex. Indulgent parenting is a style in which parentsare highly involved with their adolescents but place few demands or controls on them. Indulgent parents allow their adolescents to do whatever they want, and the result is that the adolescents never learn to control their own behavior and always expect to get their way. Some parents deliberately rear their adolescents in this way because they mistakenly believe that combining warm involvement with few restraints will produce a creative, confident adolescent. However, indulgent parenting is associated with adolescents' social incompetence, especially a lack of self-control.

Groups in Childhood and Adolescence

Childhood groups differ from adolescent groups in several important ways. The members of childhood groups often are friends or neighborhood acquaintances, and the groups usually are not as formalized as many adolescent groups. During the adolescent years, groups tend to include a broader array of members; in other words, adolescents other than friends or neighborhood acquaintances often are members of adolescent groups. Try to recall the student council, honor society, art club, football team, or another organized group at your junior high school. If you were a member of any of these organizations, you probably remember that they were made up of many individuals you had not met before and that they were a more heterogeneous group than were your childhood peer groups. Rules and regulations were probably well defined, and captains or leaders were formally elected or appointed in the adolescent groups. A classic observational study by Dexter Dunphy (1963) indicates that opposite-sex participation in social groups increases during adolescence. In late childhood, boys and girls tend to form small, same-sex groups. As they move into the early adolescent years, the same-sex groups begin to interact with each other. Gradually, the leaders and high-status members begin to create groups based on mixed-sex relationships. Eventually, the newly created mixed-sex groups replace the same-sex groups. The mixed-sex groups interact with each other in large crowd activities, too—at dances and athletic events, for example. In late adolescence, the crowd begins to dissolve as couples develop more serious relationships and make long-range plans that may include engagement and marriage.

Co-Habitating Adults

Cohabiting Adults Cohabitation refers to living together in a sexual relationship without being married. Cohabitation has undergone considerable changes in recent years. Rates of cohabitation in the United States have continued to rise. At lower SES levels, couples are more likely to cohabit and give birth prior to marriage and less likely to marry at all. Engaging in serial cohabitation—exiting one cohabitation and then entering another—also has increased in the last decade in the United States . And cohabiting rates are even higher in some countries. For example, cohabitation is almost universal in Sweden. Cohabitation is increasing in China and Taiwan but still rare in Japan and South Korea. Also, a recent study indicated that early transitioning into a stepfamily home, especially for females, was linked to earlier entry into cohabitation. In the United States, cohabitation is more often perceived as a precursor to marriage, while in Europe, especially in Scandinavian countries, it is more frequently perceived as an ongoing lifestyle. These couples do not want the official aspects of marriage. In the United States, cohabiting arrangements tend to be short-lived, with one-third lasting less t... ... traditional lifestyle of cohabitation may attract less conventionalindividuals who are not great believers in marriage in the first place. An alternative explanation is that the experience of cohabiting changes people's attitudes and habits in ways that increase their likelihood of divorce. Recent research has provided clarification of cohabitation outcomes. One meta-analysis found the link between cohabitation and marital instability did not hold up when only cohabitation with the eventual marital partner was examined, indicating that these cohabitors may attach more long-term positive meaning to living together. Another study revealed that for first marriages, cohabiting with the spouse without first being engaged was linked to more negative interaction and a higher probability of divorce than cohabiting after engagement. In contrast, premarital cohabitation prior to a second marriage placed couples at risk for divorce regardless of whether they were engaged. One study also found that the marriages of couples who were cohabiting but not engaged were less likely to survive to the 10- to 15-year mark than the marriages of their counterparts who were engaged when they cohabited. Also, another analysis indicated that cohabiting does not have a negative effect on marriage if the couple did not have any previous live-in lovers and did not have children prior to the marriage. And researchers in one study concluded that the difference between the risk of marital dissolution for cohabitors and for those who married without previously cohabiting was much smaller when they had cohabited in their mid- twenties or later

Heterosexual Attitudes and Behavior

Compared with earlier national figures, sexual intercourse in adolescence has been declining recently—in 1991, the national figure was 54.1 percent, and in 2011 it was 47.4 percent. A recent estimate by the National Survey of Family Growth for the probability of having sexual intercourse in the United States by age 20 was 77 percent for males and 79 percent for females. Age at sexual initiation varies by ethnic group in the United States. In the 2019 U.S. survey of ninth- to twelfth-graders, 42.3 percent of African Americans, 42.3 percent of Latinxs, 38 percent of non-Latinx Whites, and 15.6 percent of Asian Americans said they had experienced sexual intercourse. The African American percentage has especially been dropping in recent years—it was 49 percent in 2015. Also, in this study, 3 percent of U.S. adolescents reported that their first sexual experience had taken place before 13 years of age—down from 6.2 percent in 2011 and 10.2 percent in 1991. Further in this study, 6.9 percent of African American high school students (compared with 3.8 percent of Latinxs, 1.9 percent of non-Latinx Whites, and 0.8 percent of Asian Americans) said they had their first sexual experience before 13 years of age. In sum, these figures represent a significant decrease in recent years of having sexual intercourse in adolescence and having sexual intercourse prior to age 13. Oral Sex Oral Sex Research indicates that oral sex is now a common occurrence among U.S. adolescents. In a recent national survey of more than 7,000 15- to 24-year-olds, 58.6 percent of the females reported ever having performed oral sex and 60.4 percent said they had ever received oral sex. Also, in another national survey, 51 percent of U.S. 15- to 19-year-old boys and 47 percent of girls in the same age group said they had engaged in oral sex. it is recommended that if adolescents have oral sex they use condoms. Adolescents who engaged only in oral sex also were more likely to report experiencing pleasure, feeling good about themselves, and having their relationship improve as a result of the sexual experience than did their counterparts who engaged only in vaginal sex or in both oral and vaginal sex. In one study, among female adolescents who reported having vaginal sex first, 31 percent reported having a teen pregnancy, whereas among those who initiated oral-genital sex first, only 8 percent reported having a teen pregnancy. Thus, how adolescents initiate their sex lives may have positive or negative consequences for their sexual health. Cross Cultural Comparisons The timing of teenage sexual initiation in different countries varies widely by culture and gender, and in most instances is linked to the culture's values and customs. In one study, the proportion of females having first intercourse by age 17 ranged from 72 percent in Mali to 47 percent in the United States and 45 percent in Tanzania. The proportion of males who had their first intercourse by age 17 ranged from 76 percent in Jamaica to 64 percent in the United States and 63 percent in Brazil. In developing countries, the vast majority of sexually experienced males in this age group are unmarried, whereas two-thirds or more of the sexually experienced females in this group are married. However, in the United States and in other developed nations such as the Netherlands, Sweden, and Australia, the overwhelming majority of 15- to 19-year-old females are unmarried. Sexual Scripts As adolescents and emerging adults explore their sexual identities, they are guided by sexual scripts. A sexual script is a stereotyped pattern of role prescriptions for how individuals should behave sexually. By the time individuals reach adolescence, girls and boys have been socialized to follow different sexual scripts. Differences in female and male sexual scripting can cause problems and confusion for adolescents as they work out their sexual identities. In a recent research review, it was concluded that a sexual double standard continues to exist, with females being subjected to stricter social norms for sexual behavior and males being granted more sexual freedom and not being criticized for having multiple sexual partners. A recent international study of young adolescents in 14 sites across four continents found consistent evidence for a sexual script of boy's social gains for having girlfriends and girls' risk for having boyfriends. Another sexual script is that female adolescents learn to link sexual intercourse with love. They often rationalize their sexual behavior by telling themselves that they were swept away by the passion of the moment. A number of studies have found that adolescent girls are more likely than their male counterparts to report being in love as the main reason they are sexually active. Other reasons that girls give for being sexually active include giving in to male pressure, gambling that sex is a way to get a boyfriend, curiosity, and sexual desire unrelated to loving and caring. One study explored heterosexual sexual scripts in focus groups with 18- to 26-year-old males and females. The following sexual scripts were supported: Sex Drive. Men are always ready for sex; women inhibit their sexual expression. Physical and Emotional Sex. Men have a physical approach to sex; women have an emotional/relational approach to sex. Sexual Performance. Men and women should both be sexually skilled and knowledgeable. One new aspect of this sexual script for women was agreement that women should especially have oral sex skills. Initiation and Gateway Scripts. Men initiate sex (most men and some women agreed with this script); women are gatekeepers (most men and women agreed that women set the sexual limits). Sexual Evaluation. Single women who appear sexual are judged negatively; men are rewarded for being sexual. However, there was negative judgment of men who come across as too sexual and too often engage in casual sex, especially with different women. Risk Factorss in Adolescent Sexuality Many adolescents are not emotionally prepared to handle sexual experiences, especially in early adolescence. Early sexual activity is linked with risky behaviors such as drug use, delinquency, mental health problems, and school-related problems. In addition to having sex in early adolescence, other risk factors for sexual problems in adolescence include contextual factors such as socioeconomic status (SES) and poverty, immigration/ethnic minority status, substance use, family/parenting and peer factors, school-related influences, and sports activities. The percentage of sexually active young adolescents is higher in low-income areas of inner cities. One study found that adolescents who associated with more deviant peers in early adolescence were likely to have had more sexual partners by age 16. Further, a recent study revealed that associating with antisocial peers predicted early engagement in sexual intercourse. And a research review found that school connectedness was linked to positive sexuality outcomes. Also, a study of middle school students revealed that higher academic achievement reduced the risk of early initiation of sexual intercourse. In addition, researchers found that adolescent females who skipped school or failed a test were more likely to engage in frequent sexual intercourse and less likely to use contraceptives. Also, a recent study found that adolescent males who play sports engage in a higher level of sexual risk taking, while adolescent females who play sports engage in a lower level of sexual risk taking ). Further, a recent study of African American adolescent girls indicated that those who reported that religion was of low or moderate importance to them had a much earlier sexual debut than their counterparts who said that religion was very or extremely important to them. And a recent study found that non-Latinx White adolescent girls showed the most consistent link between a higher level of developmental assets (internal and external) and attitudes and behaviors indicative of delaying sexual activity, while African American youth had the fewest associations. Cognitive and personality factors also are increasingly implicated in sexual risk taking in adolescence. Two such factors are self-control and impulsiveness. A recent study confirmed that low self-control is linked to risky sexual behavior in adolescence

Forcible Sexual Behavior and Sexual Harassment

Rape is forcible sexual intercourse with a person who does not give consent. Legal definitions of rape vary from state to state. In some states, for example, the law allows husbands to force their wives to have sex. Because of the difficulties involved in reporting rape, the actual incidence is not easily determined. A national study found that 7.4 percent of U.S. ninth- through twelfth- grade students reported that they had been physically forced to have intercourse against their will. In this study, approximately 11.3 percent of female students and 3.5 of male students reported having been forced to have sexual intercourse. Further, a recent study indicated that sexual minority college students were much more likely to be victims of sexual assault than heterosexual students. Also, not all rapes are reported by the victims. One research meta-analysis found that 60 percent of rape victims do not acknowledge that they have been raped, with the percentage of unacknowledged rape especially high among college students. Although most victims of rape are girls and women, rape of boys and men does occur. The rape victim initially feels shock and numbness and often is acutely disorganized. Some women show their distress through words and tears, while others experience more internalized suffering. As victims strive to get their lives back to normal, they might experience depression, fear, anxiety, substance abuse, posttraumatic stress disorder, and suicidal thoughts for months or years. Sexual dysfunctions, such as reduced sexual desire and the inability to reach orgasm, occur in 50 percent of rape victims. Many rape victims make lifestyle changes such as moving to a new apartment or refusing to go out at night. About one-fifth of rape victims engage in suicide attempts—a rate eight times higher than that of women who have not been raped. A girl's or woman's recovery from rape depends on both her coping abilities and her psychological adjustment prior to the assault. Social support from clinicians, parents, her partner, and others close to her are also important factors in recovery, as is the availability of professional counseling, sometimes obtained through a rape crisis center. Many rape victims become empowered by reporting their rape to the police and assisting in prosecution if the rapist is caught. However, women who take a legal approach are especially encouraged to use supportive counselors to aid them throughout the legal ordeal. Each female must be allowed to make her own decision about whether to report the rape. Sexual Harassment Girls and women encounter sexual harassment in many different forms, ranging from sexist remarks and covert physical contact (patting, brushing against bodies) to blatant propositions and sexual assaults. Literally millions of girls and women experience such sexual harassment each year in educational and work settings. One study of adolescent girls indicated that most (90 percent) of the girls said they had experienced sexual harassment at least once. In this study, 52 percent of the girls reported that they had experienced academic sexism (involving science, math, and computer technology) and 76 percent said that they had encountered athletic sexism. Also, in a recent study of almost 17,000 students across 8 college campuses, 19 percent of students reported experiencing faculty/staff perpetuated sexual harassment and 30 percent experienced peer perpetuated sexual harassment. In this study, being a woman increased the odds by 86 percent and 147 percent, respectively, for harassment by faculty/staff and peers. The Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education published a 40-page policy guide on sexual harassment. In this guide, a distinction is made between quid pro quo and hostile environment sexual harassment: Quid pro quo sexual harassment occurs when a school employee (such as a teacher) threatens to base an educational decision (such as a grade) on a student's submission to unwelcome sexual conduct. Hostile environment sexual harassment occurs when students are subjected to unwelcome sexual conduct that is so severe, persistent, or pervasive that it limits the students' ability to benefit from their education.

Divorced Families

During the mid-twentieth century, divorce reached epidemic proportions in the United States. However, the divorce rate has declined in recent decades, peaking at 5.1 divorces per 1,000 people in 1981 and then declining to 2.9 divorces per 1,000 people in 2018. The 2018 divorce rate of 2.9 compares with a marriage rate of 6.5 per 1,000 people in 2018. Recently, however, the divorce rate has increased for the age group in which many parents of adolescents fall (middle age). In a recent analysis that compared divorce rates for different age groups in 1990 and 2015, the divorce rate decreased for young adults but increased for middle-aged adults. Compared with earlier decades, divorce holds less stigma for women today and they are more likely to leave an unhappy marriage. Also compared with earlier decades, more women are employed and are less dependent on their husband's income. Another explanation involves the increased number of remarriages, in which the divorce rate is 21⁄2 times as high as it is in first marriages. Adolescents' Adjustment in Divorced Families Most researchers agree that children, adolescents, and emerging adults from divorced families show poorer adjustment than their counterparts in nondivorced families. In a longitudinal study conducted by E. Mavis Hetherington and her colleagues, 25 percent of children from divorced families had emotional problems, but that figure decreased to 20 percent in emerging adulthood. In this study, 10 percent of children and emerging adults from nondivorced families had emotional problems. In Hetherington's research, the 20 percent of emerging adults from divorced families who continued to have emotional problems were characterized by impulsive, irresponsible, or antisocial behavior, or they were depressed. Toward the end of emerging adulthood, this troubled group was having problems at work and difficulties in romantic relationships. The 10 percent of emerging adults from nondivorced families who had emotional problems mainly came from homes where family conflict was high and authoritative parenting was rare. As in childhood, emerging adults who had gone from a highly conflicted intact family to a more harmonious divorced family with a caring, competent parent had fewer emotional problems. In another longitudinal study, parental divorce in childhood and adolescence was linked to poor relationships with fathers, unstable romantic or marital relationships, and lower levels of education in adulthood. Individuals who have experienced multiple divorces are at greater risk. Adolescents and emerging adults in divorced families are more likely than adolescents from nondivorced families to have academic problems, to show externalized problems (such as acting out and delinquency) and internalized problems (such as anxiety and depression), to be less socially responsible, to have less competent intimate relationships, to drop out of school, to become sexually active at an earlier age, to take drugs, to associate with antisocial peers, and to have lower self-esteem. proposed emotional security theory, which has its roots in attachment theory and states that children appraise marital conflict in terms of their sense of security and safety in the family. These researchers distinguish between marital conflict that is negative for children (such as hostile emotional displays and destructive conflict tactics) and marital conflict that can be positive for children (such as a marital disagreement that involves calmly discussing each person's perspective and working together to reach a solution). In a recent study, intensification of interparental conflict in the early elementary school years predicted increases in emotional insecurity five years later in early adolescence, which in turn predicted decreases in adolescent friendship affiliation, and this friendship decrease was linked to a downturn in social competence. Despite the emotional problems that some adolescents and emerging adults from divorced families have, the weight of the research evidence underscores that most adolescents and emerging adults cope successfully with their parents' divorce and that a majority of adolescents and emerging adults in divorced families do not have significant adjustment problems. Whether parents should stay in an unhappy or conflicted marriage for the sake of their children and adolescents is one of the most commonly asked questions about divorce. If the stresses and disruptions in family relationships associated with an unhappy, conflicted marriage that erode the well-being of the children and adolescents are reduced by the move to a divorced, single-parent family, divorce might be advantageous. However, if the diminished resources and increased risks associated with divorce also are accompanied by inept parenting and sustained or increased conflict, not only between the divorced couple but also between parents, children, and siblings, the best choice for the children would be for an unhappy marriage to be retained. These are "ifs," however, and it is difficult to determine how these will play out when parents either remain together in an acrimonious marriage or become divorced. In divorced families, family processes matter a great deal. When the divorced parents have a harmonious relationship and use authoritative parenting, the adjustment of adolescents is improved. When the divorced parents can agree on child-rearing strategies and can maintain a cordial relationship with each other, frequent visits by the noncustodial parent usually benefit the child. A recent meta-analysis of divorced families found links between higher interparental conflict, less effective parenting, and children and adolescents having more psychological problems. Also, in one study, children were more likely to have behavior problems if their post-divorce home environment was less supportive and stimulating, their mother was less sensitive and more depressed, and if their household income was lower. And a recent research review concluded that coparenting (mutual parental support, cooperation, and agreement) following divorce was positively related to child outcomes such as lower anxiety and depression, as well as higher self-esteem and academic performance However, two longitudinal studies revealed that conflict (especially when it is intense and prolonged) between divorced parents was linked to emotional problems, insecure social relationships, and antisocial behavior in adolescents. A secure attachment also matters. A study of non-residential fathers in divorced families indicated that high father-child involvement and lower interparental conflict were linked to positive child outcomes. Unfortunately, father involvement often drops off more than mother involvement, especially for fathers of girls. However, if the adolescent interacts with a caring adult outside the home, such as a mentor, the disengagement can be a positive solution to a disrupted, conflicted family environment. In a 15-year follow- up longitudinal study, divorced families were randomly assigned to an 11-session parenting improvement program or a control condition involving literature when the children were 9 to 12 years old). The parenting program focused on improving mother-child relationship quality, increasing effective discipline, decreasing barriers to father involvement, and reducing interparental conflict. The mothers and children were both given three books on children's adjustment to divorce at one-month intervals. Initial effects included reduced externalizing problems in late childhood and early adolescence, which in turn was linked to better academic outcomes later in adolescence and emerging adulthood as well as predicting increased career success in adulthood.

Working Parents

For the most part, emerging adults' relationships with their parents improve when they leave home. They often grow closer psychologically to their parents and share more with them than they did before leaving home. However, challenges in the parent—emerging adult relationship involve the emerging adult's increasing autonomy, as he or she has adult status in many areas yet still depends on parents in some manner. Many emerging adults can make their own decisions about where to live, whether to stay in college, which lifestyle to adopt, whether to get married, and so on. At the same time, parents often provide support for their emerging adult children even after they leave home. This might be accomplished through loans and monetary gifts for education, purchase of a car, and financial contributions to living arrangements, as well as emotional support. In successful emerging adulthood, individuals separate from their family of origin without cutting off ties completely or fleeing to some substitute emotional refuge. Complete cutoffs from parents rarely solve emotional problems. Emerging adulthood is a time for young people to sort out emotionally what they will take with them from their family of origin, what they will leave behind, and what they will create. The vast majority of studies of parenting styles have focused on outcomes for children and adolescents and have involved mothers rather than fathers. One study revealed that parents act as "scaffolding" and "safety nets" to support their children's successful transition through emerging adulthood. Another study examined mothers' and fathers' parenting styles with their emerging adult children. An authoritative parenting style by both mothers and fathers was linked with positive outcomes in emerging adult children (high self-worth and high social acceptance, and low depression, for example). The most negative outcomes for emerging adult children (low self-worth, high depression, and high anxiety, for example) were related to a controlling-indulgent style on the part of both mothers and fathers. High control by parents may be especially detrimental to emerging adults who are moving toward greater autonomy as they leave their parents' home. Negative outcomes for emerging adult children also resulted from an uninvolved parenting style (low responsiveness, low control) on the part of both mothers and fathers. The most positive outcomes for emerging adult children involved having fathers who used an authoritative style of parenting. Research indicates that parents and their emerging adult/young adult children have more contact than in earlier generations, with the amount of contact especially increasing in the twenty-first century. Aided by advances in technology, today's emerging and young adults frequently text their parents and become friends with their parents on Facebook. Research indicates that today's emerging adults and young adults appreciate their parents' emotional and financial support. Are parents in some countries more involved with college students than are parents in other countries? A recent cross-cultural study found that college students across four countries (the United States, Germany, Hong Kong, and Korea) experienced frequent contact with and support from their parents. In this study, Asian students were given more frequent support than U.S. or German students but were less satisfied with the support. There is concern when parental support becomes too intensive, in which case it can restrict emerging and young adults' development of autonomy. The term "helicopter parents" has been applied to this type of support in which parents hover over their children, ready to intervene at a moment's notice to protect and micromanage their personal and academic life. In a recent study, high levels of parental control and helicopter parenting were detrimental to emerging adults' vocational identity development and perceived competence in transitioning to adulthood. Also, in another recent study, helicopter parenting was related to more negative emotional functioning, less competent decision making, and lower grades/poorer adjustment in college-age adults. Further, a recent study found that college students whose parents were classified as autonomy-supportive reported having better life satisfaction, self-efficacy, and relationships with their parents than those whose parents were classified as helicopter or uninvolved. In addition, in a recent study, helicopter parenting was associated with detrimental outcomes (lower ... ...arents had granted them more space to make decisions and learn how to cope on their own. In today's uncertain economic times, many emerging adults continue to live at home or return to the family home after several years of college or after graduating from college, often to save money while working at their first full-time job. Emerging and young adults also may move back inwith their parents after a job loss or a divorce. And some individuals don't leave home at all until their middle to late twenties because they cannot financially support themselves. Numerous labels have been applied to emerging and young adults who return to their parents' homes to live, including "boomerang kids" and "B2B" (or Back-to- Bedroom). As with most family living arrangements, there are both pluses and minuses when emerging adult children continue living at home or return to live at home. One of the most common complaints voiced by both emerging adults and their parents is a loss of privacy. Emerging adults complain that their parents restrict their independence, cramp their sex lives, reduce their music listening, and treat them as children rather than adults. Parents often complain that their quiet home has become noisy, that they stay up late worrying about when their emerging adult children will come home, that meals are difficult to plan because of conflicting schedules, that their relationship as a married couple has been invaded, and that they have to shoulder too much responsibility for their emerging adult children. In sum, when emerging adults return home to live, a disequilibrium in family life is created, requiring considerable adaptation on the part of parents and their emerging adult children. When emerging adults ask to return home to live, parents and their emerging adult children should agree on the conditions and expectations beforehand. For example, they might discuss and agree on whether the emerging adults will pay rent, wash their own clothes, cook their own meals, do any household chores, pay their phone bills, come and go as they please, be sexually active or drink alcohol at home, and so on. If these conditions aren't negotiated at the beginning, conflict often results because expectations will likely be violated. Parents need to treat emerging adult children more like adults than children and let go of much of their parenting role. Parents should treat their emerging adult children as adults who are capable of responsible, mature behavior. Emerging adults have the right to choose how much they sleep and eat, how they dress, whom they choose as friends and lovers, what career they pursue, and how they spend their money. However, if the emerging adult children act in ways that interfere with their parents' lifestyles, parents need to say so. The discussion should focus not on emerging adults' choices but on why certain activities are unacceptable when both generations are living in the same home. Some parents don't let go of their emerging adult children when they should. They engage in "permaparenting," which can impede not only their emerging adult children's progress toward independence and responsibility but also postpone their own postparenting lives. As mentioned earlier, "helicopter parents" is another label used for parents who hover too closely in their effort to ensure that their children succeed in college and adult life. Although well intentioned, this intrusiveness by parents can slow the process by which their children become responsible adults. When emerging adults move back home, they might have to modify their behavior to make the living arrangement work. Elina Furman (2005) provides some good recommendations in Boomerang Nation: How to Survive Living with Your Parents . . . the Second Time Around. She mentions that when emerging adults move back home, they should be willing to make adjustments. And, as recommended earlier, she urges emerging adults to sit down with their parents and negotiate the ground rules for living at home before they actually move back. Furman also recommends that emerging adults set a deadline for how long they will live at home and then stay focused on their goals (which might be to save enough money to pay off their debts, start a business, buy their own home, finish graduate school, and so on). Too often emerging adults spend the money they save by moving home on luxuries such as spending binges, nights on the town, expensive clothes, and unnecessary travel, which only delay their ability to move out of their parents' home. In a recent study, 22- to 31-year-old "boomerang kids" reported that the main communication dilemma they encountered with their parents was figuring out how to best communicate the idea that living with their parents represented investing in their future rather than creating a stigma. Also in this study, the "boomerang kids" said that the best strategies they could adopt were to state their expectations clearly, contribute to the household, behave like an adult, and state clear timelines for moving out of their parents' home.

Dating and Romantic Relationships

Functions of Dating Dating is a relatively recent phenomenon. It wasn't until the 1920s that dating as we know it became a reality, and even then, its primary role was to select and win a mate. Prior to this period, mate selection was the sole purpose of dating, and "dates" were carefully monitored by parents, who completely controlled the nature of any heterosexual companionship. Often, parents bargained with each other about the merits of their adolescents as potential marriage partners and even chose mates for their children. In recent times, of course, adolescents have gained much more control over the dating process and greater freedom to choose whom to go out with. Furthermore, dating has evolved into something far more than just courtship for marriage Dating today can serve at least eight function: Dating can be a form of recreation. Adolescents who date seem to have fun and see dating as a source of enjoyment and recreation. Dating is a source of status and achievement. Part of the social comparison process in adolescence involves evaluating the status of the people one dates: Are they the best looking, the most popular, and so forth? Dating is part of the socialization process in adolescence. It helps adolescents learn how to get along with others and assists them in learning manners and sociable behavior. Dating involves learning about intimacy and serves as an opportunity to establish a unique, meaningful relationship with a person of the opposite sex. Dating can be a context for sexual experimentation and exploration. Dating can provide companionship through interaction and shared activities in an opposite-sex relationship. Dating experiences contribute to identity formation and development; dating helps adolescents to clarify their identity and to separate from their families of origin. Dating can be a means of mate sorting and selection, thereby retaining its original courtship function. Types of Dating and Developmental Changes A number of dating variations and developmental changes characterize dating and romantic relationships. First, we examine heterosexual romantic relationships and then turn to romantic relationships among sexual minority youth (gay and lesbian adolescents). Heterosexual Romantic Relationships Three stages characterize the development of romantic relationships in adolescence: Entry into romantic attractions and affiliations at about 11 to 13 years of age. This initial stage is triggered by puberty. From 11 to 13 years old, adolescents become intensely interested in romance, and it dominates many conversations with same-sex friends. Developing a crush on someone is common, and the crush often is shared with a same-sex friend. Young adolescents may or may not interact with the individual who is the object of their infatuation. When dating occurs, it usually takes place in a group setting. Exploring romantic relationships at approximately 14 to 16 years of age. At this point in adolescence, casual dating and dating in groups—two types of romantic involvement—occur. Casual dating emerges between individuals who are mutually attracted. These dating experiences are often short- lived, lasting from a few weeks to several months. Dating in groups is common and reflects embeddedness in the peer context. A friend often acts as a third-party facilitator of a potential dating relationship by communicating their friend's romantic interest and determining whether the attraction is reciprocated. At the end of the high school years, more serious romantic relationships develop. This stage is characterized by strong emotional bonds more closely resembling those in adult romantic relationships. These bonds often are more stable and enduring than earlier bonds, typically lasting one year or more. Two variations on these stages in the development of romantic relationships in adolescence involve early starters and late bloomers. Early starters include 15 to 20 percent of 11- to 13-year-olds who say that they currently are in a romantic relationship and 35 percent who indicate that they have had some prior experience in romantic relationships. Late bloomers comprise approximately 10 percent of 17- to 19-year-olds who say that they have had no experience with romantic relationships and another 15 percent who report that they have not engaged in any romantic relationships that lasted more than four months. In this study, the early starters had more externalizing symptoms (aggressive and delinquent behaviors), while late bloomers and the on-time group did not show any indications of maladjustment. In a longitudinal study, continuous singles (individualswho never dated from 10 to 20 years of age) reported lower life satisfaction in adolescence and early adulthood than moderate daters. The continuous singles also were less satisfied with their lives than the later starters. In one study, announcing that "I like someone" occurred by the sixth grade for about 40 percent of the individuals sampled. However, it was not until the tenth grade that 50 percent of the adolescents had a sustained romantic relationship that lasted two months or longer. By their senior year, 25 percent still had not engaged in this type of sustained romantic relationship. In another study, a rather large portion of adolescents in a steady dating relationship said that their steady relationship had persisted 11 months or longer: 20 percent of adolescents age 14 or younger, 35 percent of 15- to 16-year-olds, and almost 60 percent of 17- and 18- year-old. Adolescents often find comfort in numbers in their early exploration of romantic relationships. They may begin hanging out together in heterosexual groups. Sometimes they just hang out at someone's house or get organized enough to ask an adult to drive them to a mall or a movie. A special concern in early dating and "going with" someone is the associated risk for adolescent pregnancy and problems at home and school. In a recent study across 10 years, emerging adults in short-term relationships were characterized by higher levels of support, companionship, and taking care of one's partner than were short-term relationships of adolescents. Long-term adolescent relationships were both supportive and turbulent, characterized by elevated levels of support, negative interactions, higher control, and more jealousy. In emerging adulthood, long-term relationships continued to have high levels of support, but negative interactions, control, and jealousy decreased. Romantic Relationships in Sexual Minority Recently, researchers have begun to study romantic relationships in gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth. The average age of initial same-sex activity for females ranges from 14 to 18 years of age and for males from 13 to 15 . The most common initial same-sex partner is a close friend. Lesbian adolescents are more likely to have sexual encounters with boys before same-sex activity, whereas gay adolescents show the opposite sequence. Most sexual minority youth have same-sex sexual experience, but relatively few have same-sex romantic relationships because of limited opportunities and the social disapproval such relationships may generate from families or heterosexual peers. The romantic possibilities of sexual minority youth are complex. To adequately address the relational interests of sexual minority youth, we can't generalize from heterosexual youth and simply switch the labels. Instead, we need to consider the full range of variation in sexual minority youths' sexual desires and Emotion, Adjustment, and Romantic Relationships Romance can envelop adolescents' and emerging adults' lives. In some cases, the romance is positive, in others negative. A concern is that in some cases the negative emotions are so intense and prolonged that they can lead to serious adjustment problems. In one study, the more romantic experiences tenth- graders had, the more likely they were to report high levels of social acceptance, friendship competence, and romantic competence; however, having more romantic experience also was linked to a higher level of substance use, delinquency, and sexual behavior. Also, in a recent meta-analysis, adolescents reported that there were more negative aspects to their romantic relationships than their friendships. Further, dating and engaging in romantic relationships at an early age can be especially problematic. Researchers have found that early dating and "going with" someone are linked with adolescent pregnancy and problems at home and school. However, in some cases, romantic relationships in adolescence are linked with positive development. For example, in a recent study, having a supportive romantic relationship in adolescence was linked to positive outcomes for adolescents who had a negative relationship with their mother. In another study, adolescents who engaged in a higher level of intimate disclosure at age 10 reported a higher level of companionship in romantic relationships at 12 and 15 years of age. In this study, those who reported more conflict in friendships had a lower level of companionship in romantic relationships at 15 years of age. Youth Relationship Education Programs in relationship education have mainly focused on helping committed adult couples to strengthen their relationships. Recently, though, an increasing number of relationship education programs have been developed for adolescents and emerging adults. Relationship education consists of interventions to provide individuals and couples with information and skills that produce positive romantic relationships and marriages. These interventions are diverse and include instruction in basic relationship knowledge and skills to youth in a classroom setting, helping unmarried couple learn more about relationships in small- group settings, and premarital education for engaged couples. Romantic Relationship Dissolution When things don't go well in a romantic relationship, adolescents and emerging adults need to consider dissolving the relationship. In particular, falling out of love may be wise if you are obsessed with a person who repeatedly betrays your trust; if you are involved with someone who is draining you emotionally or financially; or if you are desperately in love with someone who does not return your feelings. Being in love when love is not returned can lead to depression, obsessive thoughts, sexual dysfunction, inability to work effectively, difficulty in making new friends, and self-condemnation. Thinking clearly in such relationships is often difficult because they are so often linked to arousing emotions. Some individuals get taken advantage of in relationships. For example, without either person realizing it, a relationship can evolve in a way that creates dominant and submissive roles. Detecting this pattern is an important step toward either reconstructing the relationship or ending it if the problems cannot be worked out. Studies of romantic breakups have focused mainly on their negative outcomes. For example, a study of 18- to 20-year-olds revealed that heavy drinking, marijuana use, and cigarette smoking increased following the dissolution of a romantic relationship. Also, in a recent large-scale study of more than 9,000 adults, experiencing a romantic breakup lowered individuals' self-esteem but the effect disappeared one year after the breakup. And another recent study concluded that high commitment to a romantic relationship is a risk factor for depression and suicidal ideation when the relationship ends. A recent study of emerging adults found that contextual, relationship, and individual factors predict the dissolution of relationships. At the contextual level, a greater number of stressful life events ("I became seriously ill or was injured," for example) predicted relationship dissolution. At the relationship quality level, lower levels of supportive interactions (lower level of intimacy, for example) predicted relationship dissolution. And at the individual level, lower levels of romantic appeal predicted relationship dissolution. Over the long term, externalized symptoms (high levels of aggression, for example) and a higher level of substance use also predicted relationship dissolution. However, romantic breakups can also have positive outcomes For example, one study of college students assessed the personal growth that can follow the breakup of a romantic relationship. The participants were undergraduate students who had experienced a relationship breakup in the past nine months. They were asked to describe "what positive changes, if any, have happened as a result of your breakup that might serve to improve your future romantic relationships" (p. 118). Self-reported positive growth was common following the romantic breakups. The most commonly reported types of growth were feeling stronger emotionally and being more self-confident, being more independent, and developing new friendships. Women reported more positive growth than did men. Romantic Love and Its Construction Romantic love, also called passionate love or eros, has strong sexual and infatuation components, and it often predominates in the early part of a love relationship. Romantic love characterizes most adolescent love, and romantic love is also extremely important among college students. In one investigation, unmarried college males and females were asked to identify their closest relationship. More than half named a romantic partner, rather than a parent, sibling, or friend. Romantic love includes a complex intermingling of emotions—fear, anger, sexual desire, joy, and jealousy, for example. Obviously, some of these emotions are a source of anguish. One study found that romantic lovers were more likely than friends to be the cause of depression . Another study revealed that a heightened state of romantic love in young adults was linked to stronger depression and anxiety symptoms but better sleep quality . Another type of love is affectionate love, also called companionate love, which occurs when individuals desire to have another person near and have a deep, caring affection for that person). There is evidence that affectionate love is more characteristic of adult love than adolescent love and that the early stages of love have more romantic ingredients than the later stages. Physical attractiveness and similarity are important aspects of romantic relationships. One study revealed that physically attractive adolescents were more satisfied with their romantic life. In another study, girls and boys who were dating each other tended to be from the same ethnic group, come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, and have similar academic success as measured by their grade point averages. In yet another study, there were substantial pre- relationship similarities between adolescents and their future romantic partners on peer popularity, attractiveness, body appeal, and depressive symptoms. researchers have found that romantic relationships initiated on the Internet are more likely than relationships established in person to last for more than two years. And in a large- scale study of more than 19,000 individuals it was discovered that more than one-third of marriages now begin with online contact and that these marriages are slightly less likely to break up and are characterized by slightly higher marital satisfaction than marriages than begin in offline contexts. To fully understand romantic relationships in adolescence and emerging adulthood, we also need to know how experiences with family members and peers contribute to the way adolescents and emerging adults construct their romantic relationships. One study revealed that young adolescent girls who had negative relationships with their parents turned to romantic relationships for intimacy and support, which in turn provided the opportunity for early sexual initiation. A recent study confirmed that parent-adolescent relationship quality (assessed at 13 to 18 years of age) is linked to the adolescents' later romantic relationships in emerging adulthood (assessed at 20 to 23 years of age). In this study, individuals who had an authoritative relationship with their parents in adolescence were more likely to have the highest levels of support, intimacy, and passion with their romantic partners in emerging adulthood. And a distant parent-adolescent relationship was linked to the lowest levels of support, intimacy, and passion in emerging adult relationships. Attachment history also is linked to couple relationships in adolescence and emerging adulthood. For example, one study found that greater attachment insecurity with parents and peers at age 14 was linked to having a more anxious attachment style at age 22. Adolescents with a secure attachment to parents are likely to approach romantic relationships expecting closeness, warmth, and intimacy. Thus, they are likely to feel comfortable developing close, intimate romantic relationships. Adolescents with a dismissing/avoidant attachment to parents are likely to expect romantic partners to be unresponsive and unavailable. Thus, they might tend to behave in ways that distance themselves from romantic relationships. Adolescents with a preoccupied/ambivalent attachment to parents are likely to be disappointed and frustrated with intimacy and closeness in romantic relationships. Further, the daughters of divorced parents had a more negative opinion of males than did the girls from other family structures. And girls from divorced and widowed families were more likely to marry images of their fathers than were girls from intact families. Hetherington stresses that females from intact families likely have had a greater opportunity to work through relationships with their fathers and therefore are more psychologically free to date and marry someone different from their fathers. Parents are likely to be more involved or interested in their daughters' dating patterns and relationships than those of their sons. Peer relations and friendships provide opportunities to learn modes of relating that are carried over into romantic relationships. Fifteen-year-old girls were more likely to describe romance in terms of interpersonal qualities, while boys described it in terms of physical attraction. For young adolescents, the affiliative qualities of companionship, intimacy, and support were frequently mentioned as positive dimensions of romantic relationships, but love and security were not. Also, the young adolescents described physical attraction more in terms of being cute, pretty, or handsome than in terms of sexuality (such as being a good kisser). Possibly, however, the failure to discuss sexual interests was due to the adolescents' discomfort in talking about such personal feelings with an unfamiliar adult. Dating scripts are the cognitive models that adolescents and adults use to guide and evaluate dating interactions. In one study, first dates were highly scripted along gender lines. Males followed a proactive dating script, females a reactive one. The male's script involved initiating the date (asking for and planning it), controlling the public domain (driving and opening doors), and initiating sexual interaction (making physical contact, making out, and kissing). The female's script focused on the private domain (concern about appearance, enjoying the date), participating in the structure of the date provided by the male (being picked up, having doors opened), and responding to his sexual gestures. These gender differences give males more power in the initial stage of a relationship. Ethnicity and Culture The sociocultural context exerts a powerful influence on adolescent dating patterns and on mate selection. Values and religious beliefs of people in various cultures often dictate the age at which dating begins, how much freedom in dating is allowed, the extent to which dates are chaperoned by parents or other adults, and the respective roles of males and females in dating. In the Arab world, Asian countries, and South America, adults are typically highly restrictive of adolescent girls' romantic relationships. Immigrants to the United States have brought these restrictive standards with them. For example, in the United States, Latinx and Asian American families typically have more conservative standards regarding adolescent dating than does the Anglo-American culture. Especially when an immigrant adolescent wants to date outside his or her ethnic group, dating can be a source of cultural conflict for families who come from cultures in which dating begins at a late age, little freedom in dating is allowed, dates are chaperoned, and adolescent girls' dating is especially restricted. In one study, Latinx young adults living in the midwestern region of the United States reflected on their socialization for dating and sexuality. Because most of their parents viewed U.S.-style dating as a violation of traditional courtship styles, strict boundaries were imposed on youths' romantic involvements. As a result, many of the Latinxs described their adolescent dating experiences as filled with tension and conflict. The average age at which the girls began dating was 15.7 years, with early dating experiences usually occurring without parental knowledge or permission. Over half of the girls engaged in "sneak dating." Also, a recent study found that mother-daughter conflict in Mexican American families was linked to an increase in daughters' romantic involvement. Cross- Cultural Variations in Romantic Relationships Culture has strong influences on many aspects of human development, and romantic relationships are no exception. In collectivist countries like China and Korea, intimacy is more diffused in love because of the strong group emphasis on connections outside of a romantic love relationship. By contrast, in individualistic countries such as the United States and most European countries, intimacy is often intensified because an individual's social network is likely to be smaller and less group oriented. Also, research indicates that greater passion characterizes U.S. romantic relationships than Chinese romantic relationships. And researchers have found that self-disclosure is more common in U.S. romantic relationships than in Japanese romantic relationships. Feelings of commitment are stronger in Chinese romantic relationships than in U.S. romantic relationships In a recent exploration of cross-cultural variations, romantic relationships were explored in three countries: Japan, Argentina, and France. In Japan, the marriage rate is rapidly decreasing to the point that the Japanese government is concerned that this could lead to a considerable drop in Japan's population. In 2013, 45 percent of Japanese women 16 to 24 years of age reported that they were not interested in or despised having sexual contact. Also, the percentage of Japanese men and women who aren't involved in any romantic relationship has increased significantly in recent years.

Gay and Lesbian Adults

Gay and Lesbian Adults Until recently, the legal context of marriage created barriers to breaking up that did not exist for same-sex created barriers to breaking up that did not exist for same-sex partners. However, the legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states in 2015 also created this barrier for same-sex partners In many additional ways, researchers have found that gay and lesbian relationships are similar—in their satisfactions, loves, joys, and conflicts—to heterosexual relationships. For example, a recent study indicated that adults in same-sex relationships were experiencing levels of commitment, satisfaction, and emotional intimacy similar to those of adults in different-sex relationships. Lesbian couples especially place a high priority on equality in their relationships. Indeed, some researchers have found that gay and lesbian couples are more flexible in their gender roles than heterosexual individuals are. For example, one research survey found that a greater percentage of same-sex, dual-earner couples than different-sex couples said they share laundry (44 versus 31 percent), household repairs (33 versus 15 percent), and routine (74 versus 38 percent) and sick (62 versus 32 percent) child-care responsibilities. There are a number of misconceptions about gay and lesbian couples. Contrary to stereotypes, in only a small percentage of gay and lesbian couples is one partner masculine and the other feminine. Only a small segment of the gay population has a large number of sexual partners, and this is uncommon among lesbians. Furthermore, researchers have found that gay and lesbian couples prefer long-term, committed relationships. About half of committed gay couples do have an open relationship that allows the possibility of sex (but not affectionate love) outside of the relationship. Lesbian couples usually do not have this type of open relationship. A special concern is the stigma, prejudice, and discrimination that lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals experience because of widespread social devaluation of same-sex relationships. However, one study indicated that many individuals in these relationships saw stigma as bringing them closer together and strengthening their relationship

Social Cognition and Emotion

Social cognition involves thoughts about social matters. A distinction can be made between knowledge and process in social cognition. Learning about the social knowledge adolescents bring with them to peer relations is important, as is studying how adolescents process information during peer interaction. As children move into adolescence, they acquire more social knowledge (sometimes referred to as social intelligence), and there is considerable individual variation in how much each adolescent knows about what it takes to make friends, to get peers to like him or her, and so forth. From a social cognitive perspective, children and adolescents may have difficulty with peer relations because they lack appropriate social cognitive skills. One investigation explored the possibility that social cognitive skill deficits characterize individuals who have peer-related difficulties. Boys with and without peer adjustment difficulties were identified, and then a number of social cognitive processes or skills were assessed. These included the boys' ability to generate alternative solutions to hypothetical problems, to evaluate these solutions in terms of their effectiveness, and to produce self- statements. It was found that boys without peer adjustment problems generated more alternative solutions, proposed more assertive and mature solutions, gave less intense aggressive solutions, showed more adaptive planning, and evaluated physically aggressive responses less positively than did the boys with peer adjustment problems. Social information processing influences peer relations. For example, consider a situation in which a peer accidentally trips and knocks another boy's soft drink out of his hand. The other boy misinterprets the encounter as a hostile one, which leads him to retaliate aggressively against the peer. Through repeated encounters of this kind, peers come to perceive the boy as having a habit of acting inappropriately. Adolescents go through five steps in processing information about their social world: decoding of social cues, interpretation, response search, selection of an optimal response, and enactment. Dodge has found that aggressive boys are more likely to perceive another child's actions as hostile when the peer's intention is ambiguous. And, when aggressive boys search for cues to determine a peer's intention, they respond more rapidly, less efficiently, and less reflectively than do nonaggressive children. These are among the social cognitive factors believed to be involved in adolescents' conflicts with one another. One study found that adolescents performed more poorly than adults in two social cognitive areas: (1) theory of mind (thoughts about one's own mental processes and the mental processes of others), and (2) emotion recognition Emotion Not only does cognition play an important role in peer relations, so does emotion. For example, the ability to regulate emotion is linked to successful peer relations. Moody and emotionally negative individuals experience greater rejection by peers, whereas emotionally positive individuals are more popular. A study of young adolescents found that anger displays and depression were linked to being unpopular with peers. Adolescents who have effective self-regulatory skills can modulate their emotional expressiveness in contexts that evoke intense emotions, as when a peer says something negative.

Emerging Adults Relationships with Their Parents

In successful emerging adulthood, individuals separate from their family of origin without cutting off ties completely or fleeing to some substitute emotional refuge. Complete cutoffs from parents rarely solve emotional problems. Emerging adulthood is a time for young people to sort out emotionally what they will take with them from their family of origin, what they will leave behind, and what they will create. An authoritative parenting style by both mothers and fathers was linked with positive outcomes in emerging adult children (high self-worth and high social acceptance, and low depression, for example). The most negative outcomes for emerging adult children (low self-worth, high depression, and high anxiety, for example) were related to a controlling-indulgent style on the part of both mothers and fathers. High control by parents may be especially detrimental to emerging adults who are moving toward greater autonomy as they leave their parents' home. Negative outcomes for emerging adult children also resulted from an uninvolved parenting style (low responsiveness, low control) on the part of both mothers and fathers. The most positive outcomes for emerging adult children involved having fathers who used an authoritative style of parenting. Research indicates that parents and their emerging adult/young adult children have more contact than in earlier generations, with the amount of contact especially increasing in the twenty-first century. Aided by advances in technology, today's emerging and young adults frequently text their parents and become friends with their parents on Facebook. Research indicates that today's emerging adults and young adults appreciate their parents' emotional and financial support. Also, in another recent study, helicopter parenting was related to more negative emotional functioning, less competent decision making, and lower grades/poorer adjustment in college-age adults. Further, a recent study found that college students whose parents were classified as autonomy-supportive reported having better life satisfaction, self-efficacy, and relationships with their parents than those whose parents were classified as helicopter or uninvolved. In addition, in a recent study, helicopter parenting was associated with detrimental outcomes. In today's uncertain economic times, many emerging adults continue to live at home or return to the family home after several years of college or after graduating from college, often to save money while working at their first full-time job. Emerging and young adults also may move back in with their parents after a job loss or a divorce. And some individuals don't leave home at all until their middle to late twenties because they cannot financially support themselves. Numerous labels have been applied to emerging and young adults who return to their parents' homes to live, including "boomerang kids" and "B2B" (or Back-to- Bedroom). As with most family living arrangements, there are both pluses and minuses when emerging adult children continue living at home or return to live at home. One of the most common complaints voiced by both emerging adults and their parents is a loss of privacy. Emerging adults complain that their parents restrict their independence, cramp their sex lives, reduce their music listening, and treat them as children rather than adults. Parents often complain that their quiet home has become noisy, that they stay up late worrying about when their emerging adult children will come home, that meals are difficult to plan because of conflicting schedules, that their relationship as a married couple has been invaded, and that they have to shoulder too much responsibility for their emerging adult children. In sum, when emerging adults return home to live, a disequilibrium in family life is created, requiring considerable adaptation on the part of parents and their emerging adult children. When emerging adults ask to return home to live, parents and their emerging adult children should agree on the conditions and expectations beforehand. For example, they might discuss and agree on whether the emerging adults will pay rent, wash their own clothes, cook their own meals, do any household chores, pay their phone bills, come and go as they please, be sexually active or drink alcohol at home, and so on. If these conditions aren't negotiated at the beginning, conflict often results because expectations will likely be violated. Parents need to treat emerging adult children more like adults than children and let go of much of their parenting role. Parents should treat their emerging adult children as adults who are capable of responsible, mature behavior. Emerging adults have the right to choose how much they sleep and eat, how they dress, whom they choose as friends and lovers, what career they pursue, and how they spend their money. However, if the emerging adult children act in ways that interfere with their parents' lifestyles, parents need to say so. The discussion should focus not on emerging adults' choices but on why certain activities are unacceptable when both generations are living in the same home. Some parents don't let go of their emerging adult children when they should. They engage in "permaparenting," which can impede not only their emerging adult children's progress toward independence and responsibility but also postpone their own postparenting lives. As mentioned earlier, "helicopter parents" is another label used for parents who hover too closely in their effort to ensure that their children succeed in college and adult life. Although well intentioned, this intrusiveness by parents can slow the process by which their children become responsible adults. When emerging adults move back home, they might have to modify their behavior to make the living arrangement work. Elina Furman (2005) provides some good recommendations in Boomerang Nation: How to Survive Living with Your Parents . . . the Second Time Around. She mentions that when emerging adults move back home, they should be willing to make adjustments. And, as recommended earlier, she urges emerging adults to sit down with their parents and negotiate the ground rules for living at home before they actually move back. Furman also recommends that emerging adults set a deadline for how long they will live at home and then stay focused on their goals (which might be to save enough money to pay off their debts, start a business, buy their own home, finish graduate school, and so on). Too often emerging adults spend the money they save by moving home on luxuries such as spending binges, nights on the town, expensive clothes, and unnecessary travel, which only delay their ability to move out of their parents' home. In a recent study, 22- to 31-year-old "boomerang kids" reported that the main communication dilemma they encountered with their parents was figuring out how to best communicate the idea that living with their parents represented investing in their future rather than creating a stigma. Also in this study, the "boomerang kids" said that the best strategies they could adopt were to state their expectations clearly, contribute to the household, behave like an adult, and state clear timelines for moving out of their parents' home.

Adolescent Pregnancy

Incidence of Adolescent Pregnancy Adolescent girls who become pregnant come from different ethnic groups and different places, but their circumstances bring the same levels of physical and emotional stress. To many adults, adolescent pregnancy represents a flaw in America's social fabric. Each year more than 200,000 females in the United States have a child before their eighteenth birthday In cross-cultural comparisons, the United States continues to have one of the highest adolescent pregnancy and childbearing rates in the industrialized world, despite a considerable decline since the 1980s. The adolescent pregnancy rate is six times as high in the United States as it is in the Netherlands. This dramatic difference exists in spite of the fact that U.S. adolescents are no more sexually active than their counterparts in the Netherlands. A cross- cultural comparison found that among 21 countries, the United States had the highest adolescent pregnancy rate among 15- to 19-year- olds and Switzerland the lowest. Trends in U.S. Adolescent Pregnancy Rates Despite the negative comparisons of the United States with many other developed countries, there have been some encouraging trends in U.S. adolescent pregnancy rates in recent years. In 2019, the U.S. birth rate for 15- to 19-year-olds was 16.7 births per 1,000 females, the lowest rate ever recorded, and less than half of the rate in 2008 (41.5 births per 1,000 females). Reasons for the decline include school/community health classes, increased use of contraception, and fear of sexually transmitted infections such as AIDS. Ethnic variations characterize adolescent pregnancy, and rates are declining significantly among all ethnic groups. For 15- to 19-year-old U.S. females in 2017, per 1,000 females the birth rate for Latinas was 25.3 (down from 38 in 2014), for African Americans 25.8 (down from 35 in 2014), for non-Latinx Whites 11.4 (down from 17 in 2014), and for Asian Americans 2.7 (down from 8 in 2014). These figures represent substantial decreases in pregnancy rates for Latinx and African American adolescent girls. However, daughters of teenage mothers are at increased risk for teenage childbearing, thus perpetuating an intergenerational cycle. A study using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth revealed that daughters of teenage mothers were 66 percent more likely than average to become teenage mothers themselves. In this study, factors that increased the likelihood that daughters of teenage mothers would become pregnant included low parental monitoring and poverty. Consequences of Adolescent Pregnancy The consequences of America's high adolescent pregnancy rate are cause for great concern. Adolescent pregnancy creates concern. Adolescent pregnancy creates health risks for both the baby and the mother. Infants born to adolescent mothers are more likely to be born preterm and to have low birth weights—factors associated with increased risk of infant mortality—as well as neurological problems and childhood illness. And one study assessed the reading and math achievement trajectories of children born to adolescent and non-adolescent mothers with different levels of education. In this study, higher levels of maternal education were linked to higher levels of children's achievement through the eighth grade. Even at similar levels of maternal educational attainment, however, the achievement of children born to the adolescent mothers never reached the levels of children born to adult mothers. In a recent Canadian study, 18 percent of adolescent mothers lived in low-SES neighborhoods (compared with 11 percent of mothers 20 to 34 years of age), had higher rates of depression during pregnancy than mothers 20 to 34 years of age, and also had higher rates of tobacco, marijuana, and alcohol use than adult mothers. In addition, adolescent mothers often drop out of school. Although many adolescent mothers resume their education later in life, they generally do not catch up economically with women who postpone childbearing until their twenties. Also, a study of African American urban youth found that at 32 years of age, women who had been teenage mothers were more likely than women who had not been teenage mothers to be unemployed, live in poverty, depend on welfare, and not have completed college. In this study, at 32 years of age, men who had been teenage fathers were more likely to be unemployed than were men who had not been teenage fathers. A special concern is repeated adolescent pregnancy. In a recent national study, the percentage of teen births that were repeat births decreased from 21 percent in 2004 to 17 percent in 2015. In a recent meta-analysis, use of effective contraception, especially LARC, and education-related factors (higher level of education and school continuation) resulted in a lower incidence of repeated teen pregnancy, while depression and a history of abortion were linked to a higher percentage of repeated teen pregnancy. Researchers have found that adolescent mothers interact less effectively with their infants than do adult mothers. One study revealed that adolescent mothers spent more time negatively interacting and less time in play and positive interactions with their infants than did adult mothers. Children of adolescent parents face problems even before they are born. Only one of every five pregnant adolescent girls receives any prenatal care at all during the important first three months of pregnancy. Pregnant adolescents are more likely to have anemia and complications related to preterm delivery than are mothers aged 20 to 24. The problems of adolescent pregnancy double the normal risk of delivering a low-birth-weight baby (one that weighs under 5.5 pounds), a category that places the infant at risk for physical and mental deficits Reducing Adolescent Pregnancy Serious, extensive efforts are needed to reduce adolescent pregnancy and to help pregnant adolescents and young mothers enhance their educational and occupational opportunities. Age-appropriate family-life education benefits adolescents. One strategy that is used in some family-life education programs is the Baby Think It Over doll, a life-size computer-driven baby doll that engages in realistic responses and gives adolescents the opportunity to experience the responsibilities of being a parent. A study of primarily Latinx ninth-grade students who took care of the Baby Think It Over doll found that the experience increased the age at which they wanted to have their first child, produced a greater interest in career and educational planning, and raised their awareness of how having a baby might interfere with those plans.

Gay and Lesbian Parents

Increasingly, gay and lesbian couples are creating families that include children. Data indicate that approximately 20 percent of same-sex couples are raising children under the age of 18 in the United States. An important aspect of gay and lesbian families with children is the sexual identity of parents at the time of a child's birth or adoption. The largest group of children with gay and lesbian parents are likely those who were born in the context of heterosexual relationships, with one or both parents only later identifying themselves as gay or lesbian. Gay and lesbian parents may be single or have same-gender partners. In addition, gays and lesbians are increasingly choosing parenthood through donor insemination or adoption. Researchers have found that the children conceived through new reproductive technologies—such as in vitro fertilization—are as well adjusted as their counterparts conceived by natural means. Earlier in the chapter, we describe the positive outcomes of coparenting for children. One study compared the incidence of coparenting in adoptive heterosexual, lesbian, and gay couples with preschool-aged children. Both self-reports and observations found that lesbian and gay couples shared child care more than heterosexual couples did, with lesbian couples being the most supportive. Further, another study revealed more positive parenting in adoptive gay father families and fewer child externalizing problems in these families than in heterosexual families. In addition, in a recent study, lesbian mothers, heterosexual mothers, and gay fathers reported higher parenting competence thanheterosexual fathers. Another issue focuses on custody arrangements for adolescents. Many gays and lesbians have lost custody of their adolescents to heterosexual spouses following divorce. For this reason, many gay fathers and lesbian mothers are noncustodial parents. Researchers have found few differences between children growing up with gay fathers and lesbian mothers and children growing up with heterosexual parents. For example, children growing up in gay or lesbian families are just as popular with their peers, and there are no differences between the adjustment and mental health of children living in these families and children living in heterosexual families. For example, in a recent study, the adjustment of school-aged children adopted as infants by gay, lesbian, and heterosexual parents showed no differences. Rather, children's behavior patterns and family functioning were predicted by earlier child adjustment issues and parental stress. In another recent study of lesbian and gay adoptive parents, 98 percent of the adoptive parents reported that their children had adjusted well to school. Also, the overwhelming majority of children growing up in a gay or lesbian family have a heterosexual orientation.

Mother's, Father's, and Co-parenting

Mothers are more involved with their children and adolescents than are fathers, although fathers increase the time they spend in parenting when they have sons and are less likely to become divorced when they have sons. Mothers' interactions with their adolescents often center on caregiving and teaching activities, whereas fathers' interactions often involve leisure activities. Mothers and fathers also often interact differently with their sons and daughters. In many cultures, mothers socialize their daughters to be more obedient and responsible than their sons. They also place more restrictions on daughters' autonomy. Fathers show more attention to sons than daughters, engage in more activities with sons, and put forth more effort to promote sons' intellectual development. Much of the research we describe in this chapter on families is based on interviews and observations of mothers. Let's look at several studies that have included fathers and their adolescents. One study of non-Latinx White two-parent families examined the amount of time mothers and fathers spent with their children from 8 to 18 years of age and how such time use was linked to their children's and adolescents' development. The amount of time that adolescents spent with their parents declined from early to late adolescence. Most of that time was labeled "social time," which involved time shared with friends and other relatives. However, private one-on-one time between a parent and his/her adolescent increased from age 8 to 12 or 13, leveled off in middle adolescence, and then began declining at about 15 to 18years of age. For both boys and girls, adolescents spent the most time with the same-sex parent. Further, an important finding in the study was that more private one-on-one time spent with the father was linked to a higher level of adolescent self-worth and social skills. This study is important is calling attention to different types of time— social and private—and different developmental trajectories in adolescence for those two types of time adolescents spend with parents. Another study focused on two-parent African American families with adolescents. Mothers reported having a warmer relationship with their adolescents than did fathers, and both parents indicated they had a warmer relationship with younger than with older adolescents. A higher level of maternal warmth was linked to a lower level of depressive symptoms and less risky behavior in sons, while a higher level of paternal warmth and shared time with fathers was associated with less risky adolescent behavior. Also, in a recent study, adolescents' emotion regulation benefited when mothers provided support and fathers loosened behavioral control. These links are in line with the view that mother-adolescent relationships are supportive attachment relationships while father-adolescent relationships challenge adolescents to regulate their emotions autonomously.The two studies just described involved two-parent families. Of course, there is concern about the large number of adolescents who grow up in single-parent families, especially when the father is completely absent or spends little time with his adolescent. A research review concluded that thenegative effects of father absence are especially evident in these outcomes: lower rates of high school graduation, problems with socioemotional adjustment during adolescence, and mental health problems in adulthood. Later in this chapter, we will further explore the father's role in divorced families and stepfamilies. Coparenting The organizing theme of coparenting is that poor coordination, active undermining and disparagement of the other parent, lack of cooperation and warmth, and disconnection by one parenting partner—either alone or in combination with overinvolvement by the other—are conditions that place children and adolescents at developmental risk. By contrast, parental solidarity, cooperation, and warmth show clear ties to children's and adolescents' prosocial behavior and competence in peer relations. A recent study indicated that destructive marital conflict was associated with less effective coparenting. Another study found that parents' joint involvement predicted that adolescents would engage in fewer risky behaviors. Also, in another recent study, coparenting disagreements undermined adolescents' adjustment by interfering with secure attachment of adolescents to their mothers and adolescents' development of autonomy. And a recent study of low-income, unmarried families revealed that cooperative coparenting at earlier points in time results in fewer child behavior problems later on.

Values

One way to measure what people value is to ask them what their goals are. Over the past five decades, traditional-aged college students have shown an increased concern for personal well-being and a decreased concern for the well-being of others, especially for the disadvantaged. today's college freshmen are more strongly motivated to be well- off financially and less motivated to develop a meaningful philosophy of life than were their counterparts of 50 years ago. In 2019, 84.3 percent of students (the highest percent ever in this survey) viewed becoming well-off financially as an "essential" or a "very important" objective compared with only 42 percent in 1971. There are, however, some signs that U.S. college students are shifting toward a stronger interest in promoting the welfare of society. In the survey just described, interest in developing a meaningful philosophy of life increased from 39 percent to 49.8 percent of U.S. college freshmen from 2001 through 2019Also in this survey, the percentage of college freshmen who said the chances are very good that they will participate in volunteer activities or community service programs increased from 18 percent in 1990 to 38.2 percent in 2019. Other research on values has found that adolescents who are involved in groups that connect them to others in school, their communities, or faith-based institutions report higher levels of social trust, altruism, commitments to the common good of people, and endorsements of the rights of immigrants to obtain full inclusion in society. In this research, adolescents who were uninvolved in such groups were more likely to endorse self-interested and materialistic values. Our discussion of values relates to the view William Damon (2008) proposed in The Path to Purpose . Damon concluded that a major difficulty confronting today's youth is their lack of a clear sense of what they want to do with their lives—that too many youth are essentially "rudderless." Damon found that only about 20 percent of 12- to 22-year-olds in the United States expressed "a clear vision of where they want to go, what they want to accomplish in life, and why." He argues that their goals and values too often focus on the short term, such as getting a good grade on a test this week and finding a date for a dance, rather than developing a plan for the future based on positive values. The types of questions that adults can pose to youth to guide them toward developing more purposeful values include "What's most important in your life? Why do you care about those things? . . . What does it mean to be a good person?"

Schools

The Hidden Curriculum Eight decades ago, educator John Dewey (1933) recognized that even when schools do not have specific programs in moral education, they provide moral education through a "hidden curriculum." The hidden curriculum is conveyed by the moral atmosphere that is a part of every school. The moral atmosphere is created by school and classroom rules, the moral orientation of teachers and school administrators, and curriculum materials. Teachers serve as models of ethical or unethical behavior. Classroom rules and peer relations at school transmit attitudes about cheating, lying, stealing, and consideration for others. And, by enforcing rules and regulations, the school administration infuses the school with a value system. Character Education Considerable interest has been shown in character education, a direct education approach that involves teaching students a basic moral literacy to prevent them from engaging in immoral behavior and doing harm to themselves or others. In 2018, 18 states had a legislative mandate for character education in schools; another 18 had legislation that encouraged character education; 7 supported character education, but without legislation; and 8 had no legislation specifying character education. The argument is that such behaviors as lying, stealing, and cheating are wrong and that students should be taught this throughout their education. Advocates of character education emphasize that every school should have an explicit moral code that is clearly communicated to students. According to traditional views of character education, any violations of the code should be met with sanctions; however, recent approaches advocate a more democratic approach. Instruction in specified moral concepts, such as cheating, can take the form of example and definition, class discussions and role playing, or rewarding students for proper behavior. More recently, encouraging students to develop a care perspective has been accepted as a relevant aspect of character education. Rather than just instructing adolescents to refrain from morally deviant behavior, advocates of a care perspective encourage students to engage in prosocial behaviors such as considering others' feelings, being sensitive to others, and helping others. Lawrence Walker (2002) argues that it is important for character education to involve more than displaying a list of moral virtues on a classroom wall. Instead, he emphasizes that children and adolescents need to participate in critical discussions of values; they need to discuss and reflect on how to incorporate virtues into their daily lives. Walker also advocates exposing children to moral exemplars worthy of emulating and getting children to participate in community service. The character education approach reflects the moral personality domain of moral development discussed earlier in the chapter. Values Clarification A second approach to providing moral education is values clarification , which involves helping individuals to identify their purpose in life and to determine what outcomes are worth working for. Unlike character education, which tells students what their values should be, values clarification encourages students to define their own values and to understand the values of others. Advocates of values clarification say it is value-free. However, critics argue that the content of these programs offends community standards and that the values-clarification exercises fail to stress right behavior. Service Learning Over the last several decades, there has been a growing understanding that the quality of a society can be considerably enhanced when citizens become proactive in providing service to the community and the nation. (1) students are given some degree of choice in the service activities in which they participate, and (2) students are provided opportunities to reflect about their participation. Researchers have found that service learning benefits adolescents and emerging adults in a number of ways. Improvements in adolescent development related to service learning include higher grades in school, increased goal setting, higher self- esteem, a heightened sense of being able to make a difference for others, identity achievement, exploration of moral issues, and an increased likelihood of serving as volunteers in the future. In one study, 74 percent of African American and 70 percent of Latinx adolescents said that service-learning programs could have a "fairly or very big effect" on keeping students from dropping out of school. A research analysis revealed that 26 percent of U.S. public high schools require students to participate in service learning. The benefits of service learning, both for the volunteers and for the recipients, suggest that more adolescents should be required to participate in such programs. Cheating A moral education concern is how extensive cheating is and how to handle cheating if it is detected. Academic cheating can take many forms, including plagiarism, using "cheat sheets" during an exam, copying from a neighbor during a test, purchasing papers, and falsifying lab results. A long history of research also implicates the power of the situation in determining whether students cheat. For example, students are more likely to cheat when they are not being closely monitored during a test; when they know their peers are cheating; when they know whether or not another student has been caught cheating; and when student scores are made public. One study revealed that college students who engaged in academic cheating were characterized by the personality traits of low conscientiousness and low agreeableness. Among strategies recommended for decreasing academic cheating are preventive measures such as making sure students are aware of what constitutes cheating, describing the consequences if they do cheat, closely monitoring students' behavior while they are taking tests, and emphasizing the importance of being a moral, responsible individual who engages in academic integrity. In promoting academic integrity, many colleges have instituted an honor code policy that emphasizes self-responsibility, fairness, trust, and scholarship. However, few secondary schools have developed honor code policies. An Integrative Approach Darcia Narváez (2020) emphasizes an integrative approach to moral education that encompasses both the reflective moral thinking and commitment to justice advocated in Kohlberg's approach, and the development of a particular moral character advocated in the character education approach. She highlights the Child Development Project as an excellent example of an integrative moral education approach. In the Child Development Project, students are given multiple opportunities to discuss other students' experiences, which inspire empathy and perspective taking, and they participate in exercises that encourage them to reflect on their own behaviors in terms of values such as fairness and social responsibility. Adults coach students in ethical decision making and guide them in becoming more caring individuals. Students experience a caring community, not only in the classroom, but also in after-school activities and through parental involvement in the program. Research evaluations of the Child Development Project link it to an improved sense of community, an increase in prosocial behavior, better interpersonal understanding, and an increase in social problem solving

Friendship

The Importance of Friendship The functions that adolescents' friendships serve can be categorized in six ways: Companionship. Friendship provides adolescents with a familiar partner, someone who is willing to spend time with them and join in collaborative activities. Stimulation . Friendship provides adolescents with interesting information, excitement, and amusement. Physical support. Friendship provides resources and assistance. Ego support. Friendship provides the expectation of support, encouragement, and feedback that helps adolescents to maintain an impression of themselves as competent, attractive, and worthwhile individuals. Social comparison. Friendship provides information about where adolescents stand vis-à-vis others and whether adolescents are doing okay. Intimacy/affection. Friendship provides adolescents with a warm, close, trusting relationship with another individual, a relationship that involves self- disclosure.The importance of friendship was underscored in a two-year longitudinal study. Sixth-grade students who did not have a friend engaged in less prosocial behavior (cooperation, sharing, helping others), had lower grades, and were more emotionally distressed (depression, low well-being) than their counterparts who had one or more friends. Two years later, in the eighth grade, the students who had not had a friend in the sixth grade remained more emotionally distressed than their counterparts Friendship in Adolescence For most children, being popular with their peers is a strong motivator. The focus of their peer relations is on being liked by classmates and being included in games or lunchroom conversations. Beginning in early adolescence, however, teenagers typically prefer to have a smaller number of friendships that are more intense and intimate than those of young children. friends are important in shaping the development of children and adolescents. Everyone, said Sullivan, has basic social needs, such as the need for secure attachment, playful companionship, social acceptance, intimacy, and sexual relations. Whether or not these needs are fulfilled largely determines our emotional well-being. For example, if the need for playful companionship goes unmet, then we become bored and depressed; if the need for social acceptance is not met, we suffer a diminished sense of self-worth. During adolescence, said Sullivan, friends become increasingly important in meeting social needs. In particular, Sullivan argued that the need for intimacy intensifies during early adolescence, motivating teenagers to seek out close friends. If adolescents fail to forge such close friendships, they experience loneliness and a reduced sense of self-worth. Adolescents also say they depend more on friends than on parents to satisfy their needs for companionship, reassurance of worth, and intimacy. The ups and downs of experiences with friends shape adolescents' well-being. children and adolescents use friends as cognitive and social resources on a regular basis. Hartup also commented that normative transitions, such as moving from elementary to middle school, are negotiated more competently by children who have friends than by those who don't. Although having friends can be a developmental advantage, not all friendships are alike and the quality of friendship is also important to consider. People differ in the company they keep—that is, who their friends are. Positive friendship relationships in adolescence are associated with a host of positive outcomes, including lower rates of delinquency, substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, and bullying victimization, and higher levels of academic achievement and physical activity. Let's examine three studies that document how having friends with positive characteristics can influence the adolescent's development. In one study, friends' grade- point average was a consistent predictor of positive school achievement and also was linked to less drug abuse and acting out. Also, in a recent study of young adolescents, for non-Latinx White and Asian Americans, higher academic achievement was linked to having same-ethnic friends,while for African American and Latinx adolescents, higher academic achievement was associated with having more cross-ethnic friendships. And in another recent study, friends' social support was linked to greater engagement in physical activity during adolescence. Not having a close relationship with a best friend, having less contact with friends, having friends who are depressed, and experiencing peer rejection all increase depressive tendencies in adolescents. In a recent study, girls who had few friends had more depressive symptoms than those with more than two close friends. Also, researchers have found that interacting with delinquent peers and friends greatly increases the risk of becoming delinquent. Further, one study found that adolescents adapted their smoking and drinking behavior to match that of their best friends. Similarly, a recent study of adolescent girls revealed that friends' dieting predicted whether an adolescent girl would engage in dieting or extreme dieting. And in a recent large- scale study, younger and older adolescents who had no friends were much more likely to engage in suicidal ideation. Friendship in Emerging Adulthood Many aspects of friendship are the same in adolescence and in emerging adulthood. One difference between close relationships in adolescence and emerging adulthood was found in a longitudinal study. Close relationships—between friends, family members, and romantic partners—were more integrated and similar in emerging adulthoodthan in adolescence. Also in this study, the number of friendships declined from the end of adolescence through emerging adulthood. Another research study indicated that best friendships often decline in satisfaction and commitment during the first year of college. In this study, maintaining communication with high school friends and keeping the same best friends across the transition to college lessened the decline. Intimacy and Similarity Two important characteristics of friendship are intimacy and similarity. Intimacy In the context of friendship, intimacy has been defined in different ways. For example, it has been defined broadly to include everything in a relationship that makes the relationship seem close or intense. In most research studies, though, intimacy in friendship is defined narrowly as self-disclosure, or sharing of private thoughts. Private or personal knowledge about a friend also has been used as an index of intimacy.The most consistent finding in the last two decades of research on adolescent friendships is that intimacy is an important feature of friendship. When young adolescents are asked what they want from a friend, or how they can tell if someone is their best friend, they frequently say that a best friend will share problems with them, understand them, and listen when they talk about their own thoughts or feelings. When young children talk about their friendships, comments about intimate self-disclosure or mutual understanding are rare. In one investigation, friendship intimacy wasmore prominent in 13- to 16-year-olds than in 10- to 13-year-olds . Similarity Another predominant characteristic of friendship is that, throughout the childhood and adolescent years, friends are generally similar—in terms of age, sex, ethnicity, and many other factors. Similarity is referred to as homophily , the tendency to associate with similar others. Friends often have similar attitudes toward school, similar educational aspirations, and closely aligned achievement orientations. Mixed-Age Friendships Although most adolescents develop friendships with individuals who are close to their own age, some adolescents become best friends with younger or older individuals. A study also revealed that over time from the sixth through tenth grades girls were more likely to have older male friends, which places some girls on a developmental trajectory for engaging in problem behavior. However, a study of young adolescents found that mixed- grade friends may protect same-grade friendless girls from feelings of loneliness and same-grade friendless and anxious-withdrawn boys from victimization. Other-Sex Friendships Although adolescents are more likely to have same-sex friends, associations with other-sex friends are more common than is often thought. The number of other-sex friendships increases in early adolescence, with girls reporting more other-sex friends than boys, and these other-sex friendships increase as adolescence proceeds. Other-sex friendships and participation in mixed-sex groups provide a context that can help adolescents learn how to communicate with the other sex and reduce their anxiety in social and dating heterosexual interactions. Later in this chapter, you will read further about how these other-sex relationships are linked to romantic experiences. Despite these potential benefits, researchers have found that some other-sex friendships are linked to negative behaviors such as earlier sexual intercourse, as well as increases in alcohol use and delinquency. Parents likely monitor their daughters' other-sex friendships more closely than those of their sons because they perceive boys to have a more negative influence, especially in initiating problem behavior. One study revealed that a higher level of parental monitoring of young adolescent girls led to the girls having fewer friendships with boys, which in turn was associated with a lower level of subsequent alcohol use by the girls in late adolescence.

Sexual Culture

The Sexual Culture It is important to put adolescent sexuality into the broader context of sexuality in the American culture. Whereas in the mid-twentieth century sex was perceived to be more appropriate for married couples, today adult sex is openly acknowledged as appropriate for both married and single adults. Sex among unmarried teenagers is an extension of this general trend toward greater sexual permissiveness in the adult culture. In the United States, society sends mixed messages about sex to youth—on the one hand, adolescents (especially girls) are told not to have sex, and on the other hand, they see sex portrayed in the media as positive (especially for boys). Sex is explicitly portrayed in movies, TV shows, videos, lyrics of popular music, MTV, and websites. A recent study of prime-time television shows viewed by U.S. adolescents and emerging adults found that sexual violence and abuse, casual sex, lack of contraception, and no coverage of the consequences of risky sexual behavior were common. Another recent study of television shows revealed that sexual behavior with casual acquaintances was shown almost as frequently as sexual behavior in committed relationships. Further, a study of 12- to 17-year-olds found that those who watched more sexually explicit TV shows were more likely than their counterparts who watched fewer of these shows to initiate sexual intercourse within the next 12 months. Adolescents in the highest 10 percent of time spent viewing sexually explicit TV shows were twice as likely to engage in sexual intercourse as those in the lowest 10 percent. In addition, a study of adolescents across a three-year period revealed a link between watching sex on TV and subsequent higher risk of pregnancy. And in a recent study of Latina and non-Latinx White girls' preferred TV programs, female characters were more likely to be portrayed in a sexualized manner (clothing, sexual comments, and so on) than were male characters. Adolescents increasingly have had access to sexually explicit websites. One study revealed that adolescents who reported ever visiting a sexually explicit website were more sexually permissive and were more likely to have multiple lifetime sexual partners, to have had more than one sexual partner in the last three months, to have used alcohol or other substances at their last sexual encounter, and to engage in anal sex more than their counterparts who reported that they had never visited a sexually explicit website. Also, a recent Taiwanese study found that exposure to sexually explicit media in the eighth grade was linked to risky sexual behavior that included early sexual debut, unsafe sex, and multiple sexual partners. Adolescent engagement in sexting, which involves sending sexually explicit images, videos, or text messages via electronic communication, has become increasingly common. For example, in a recent national study of U.S. middle and high school students, 13 percent reported they had sent a sext and 18.5 percent indicated they had received a text. Also, a recent study of adolescents and young adults in 11 countries revealed that the dark triad of personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) were linked to sexting. In this study, sharing one's own sexts was positively predicted by Machiavellianism (manipulating others) and narcissism (inflated view of self and self- love, for example), while both risky and aggravated sexting were associated with Machiavellianism and psychopathy (lack of empathy and emotional shallowness). Also, in a meta-analysis of emerging adults, 38.3 percent were sending sexts, 41.5 were receiving sexts, and 47.7 percent were engaged in reciprocal sexting. Further, a recent study of emerging adults found that receiving unwanted sexts and sexting under coercion were linked to higher levels of anxiety, stress, and depression, as well as lower self-esteem.

Sexual Minority Youth's Attitudes and Behavior

The majority of sexual minority individuals experience their first same-sex attraction, sexual behavior, and self-labeling as a gay or lesbian just before or during adolescence. However, some sexual minority individuals have these experiences for the first time during emerging adulthood. Also, while most gays and lesbians have their first same- sex experience just prior to or during adolescence, they often have their first extended same-sex relationship in emerging adulthood. In the timing and sequence of sexual developmental milestones, there are few individual differences between heterosexual and sexual minority adolescents except that sexual minority adolescents have to cope with their sexual identity in more stressful ways and also in disclosing this identity to others Preference for a sexual partner of the same or other sex is not always a fixed decision, made once in a lifetime and then adhered to forever Also, the use of the term "homosexual" as a clear-cut sexual type is often oversimplified. The term bisexual refers to someone who is attracted to people of both sexes. Researchers have gravitated toward more descriptive and limited terms than "homosexual," preferring such terms as "individuals with same-sex attractions," or "individuals who have engaged in same-sex behavior." Another approach is to consider adolescent sexuality not in terms of categories but on a continuum in sexual and romantic dimensions from exclusive attraction to the opposite sex to exclusive attraction to the same sex. Factor Associated with Sexual Minority Researchers have explored the possible biological basis of sexual minority behavior. In this regard, we next evaluate hormone, brain, and twin studies regarding same-sex attraction. The results of hormone studies have been inconsistent. Indeed, if sexual minority males are given male sexual hormones (androgens), their sexual orientation does not change; their sexual desire merely increases. A very early critical period might influence sexual orientation. In the second to fifth months after conception, exposure of the fetus to hormone levels characteristic of females might cause the individual (female or male) to become attracted to males. If this critical-period hypothesis turns out to be correct, it would explain why clinicians have found that sexual orientation is difficult, if not virtually impossible, to modify orientation by studying twins. A Swedish study of almost 4,000 twins found that only about 35 percent of the variation in homosexual behavior in men and 19 percent in women were explained by genetic differences. This result suggests that although genes play a role in sexual orientation, they are not the only influence. That said, it has become clear that whether a person is heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual, that individual cannot be talked out of his or her sexual orientation Developmental Pathways It is commonly perceived that most sexual minority adolescents quietly struggle with same-sex attractions in childhood, do not engage in heterosexual dating, and gradually recognize that they are gay or lesbian in mid- to late adolescence. However, there is much more fluidity in sexual orientation than this developmental milestone approach suggests. Many youth do follow this developmental pathway, but others do not. For example, many youth have no recollection of same-sex attractions and experience a more abrupt sense of their same-sex attraction in late adolescence. Researchers also have found that the majority of adolescents with same-sex attractions also experience some degree of other-sex attractions at some point in their lives; this is particularly true of females. And, although some adolescents who are attracted to same-sex individuals fall in love with these individuals, others claim that their same-sex attractions are purely physical. In sum, sexual minority youth have diverse developmental trajectories, encompassing their patterns of initial attraction, the presence or absence of sexual and romantic attractions to both sexes, and the possibility of a disjuncture in their physical and emotional attraction to one sex or the other. Gay or Lesbian Identity and Disclosure Establishing a gay or lesbian identity and disclosing that information to others is often a long process, frequently beginning just before adolescence or in early adolescence and concluding in emerging adulthood. In one study of gay adolescents, the majority said that as children they felt different from other boys. The average age at which they had their first crush on another boy was 12.7 years, and the average age when they realized they were gay was 12.5 years. Most of the boys said they felt confused when they first became aware that they were gay. About half the boys said they initially tried to deny their identity as a gay male. Similarities and Differences with Heterosexual Youth Many gender differences that appear in heterosexual relationships also occur in same-sex relationships. A large-scale study found similarities and differences in the lives of adolescents who are heterosexual, those who have same-sex attractions, and those who are bisexual. Similarities across sexual orientations occurred for friendship quality, academic orientation, and perception of school climate. Bisexual adolescents reported the most negative results, including areas of their lives such as relationships with parents, psychological functioning, and victimization. Adolescents with same-sex attractions reported less positive experiences than did exclusively heterosexual adolescents in relationships with parents, psychological functioning, and victimization. These results confirm findings in other studies that suggest that non-heterosexual adolescents face additional risks and challenges in their lives. However, the findings also indicate that adolescents with same-sex attractions have a number of positive aspects to their lives, including intrapersonal strengths (academic orientation) and interpersonal resources (friendship quality). Discrimination, Bias, and Violence Having irrational negative feelings against individuals who have same-sex attractions is called homophobia. In its more extreme forms, homophobia can lead individuals to ridicule, physically assault, or even murder people they believe to have same-sex attractions. More typically, homophobia is associated with avoidance of individuals who have same-sex attractions, faulty beliefs about sexual minority lifestyles (such as falsely thinking that most child molesters have same-sex attractions), and subtle or overt discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas of life. One of the harmful aspects of the stigmatization of same-sex attraction is the self-devaluation engaged in by sexual minority individuals. One common form of self-devaluation is called passing, the process of hiding one's real social identity. Without adequate support, and with fear of stigmatization, many sexual minority youth retreat to the closet during high school and then emerge at a safer time later, often in college. Sexual minority youth are more likely to be targeted for violence than heterosexual youth in a number of contexts, including forced sex and dating violence, and verbal and physical harassment at school and in the community. Many sexual minority adolescents also experience discrimination and rejection in interactions with their families, peers, schools, and communities. Sexual minority youths' exposure to stigma and discrimination has been cited as the main reason they are more likely to develop problems. For example, one study found that family rejection of coming out by sexual minority adolescents was linked to their higher rates of depression, substance use, and unprotected sex. A study of 15-year- olds found that sexual minority status was linked to depression mainly via peer harassment. Despite these negative circumstances, many sexual minority adolescents successfully cope with the challenges they face and develop levels of health and well-being that are similar to those of their heterosexual peers. Health The majority of sexual minority (gay, lesbian, and bisexual) adolescents have competent and successful paths of development through adolescence and become healthy and productive adults. However, concern has been raised about health risks for sexual minority youth, particularly risks related to the discrimination and bias they experience. For example, in a recent large-scale study, sexual minority adolescents did engage in a higher prevalence of health-risk behaviors (greater drug use and sexual risk taking, for example) than did heterosexual adolescents. And a recent study found that early sexual debut (first sexual intercourse before age 13) was associated with sexual risk taking, substance use, violent victimization, and suicidal thoughts/ attempts in both sexual minority (gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents) and heterosexual youth Recent research indicates there is ample evidence that sexual minority adolescents have higher levels of suicidal thoughts and attempts than heterosexual adolescents. Also in this research, sexual minority adolescent girls had higher rates of suicidal death than heterosexual adolescent girls but sexual minority adolescent boys did not have higher suicidal death rates than heterosexual adolescent boys. Further, a research review of more than 300 studies concluded that bisexual youth had a higher rate of suicidal ideation and attempts than their gay, lesbian, and heterosexual counterparts. Sexual minority adolescents are more likely to have had an early sexual debut (before age 13 in some studies, prior to age 14 in others), to report a higher number of lifetime or recent sexual partners, and to have more sexually transmitted infections than heterosexual adolescents, although mixed results have been found for condom use across these groups. A special concern is the higher rate of sexually transmitted infections, especially HIV, in males who have sex with males. Also, researchers have found a higher incidence of sexually transmitted infections in adolescent girls with same-sex partners (especially when they have sexual relations with male partners as well). Further, in a recent study, compared with heterosexual adolescents, sexual minority adolescents (mean age = 15) were engaging in riskier sexual behavior, with females reporting more sexual partners and drug use prior to sex and males indicating inconsistent condom use and higher rates of HIV.

Greenery and Care Perspective

The most publicized criticism of Kohlberg's theory has come from Carol Gilligan, who argues that Kohlberg's theory reflects a gender bias. According to Gilligan, Kohlberg's theory is based on a male norm that puts abstract principles above relationships and concern for others and sees the individual as standing alone and independently making moral decisions. It puts justice at the heart of morality. In contrast with Kohlberg's justice perspective, Gilligan argues for a care perspective, which is a moral perspective that views people in terms of their connectedness with others and emphasizes interpersonal communication, relationships with others, and concern for others. According to Gilligan, Kohlberg greatly underplayed the care perspective, perhaps because he was a male, because most of his research was with males rather than females, and because he used male responses as a model for his theory. In extensive interviews with girls from 6 to 18 years of age, Gilligan and her colleagues found that girls consistently interpret moral dilemmas in terms of human relationships and base these interpretations on watching and listening to other people. However, a meta-analysis (a statistical analysis that combines the results of many different studies) casts doubt on Gilligan's claim of substantial gender differences in moral judgment. And another analysis concluded that girls' moral orientations are "somewhat more likely to focus on care for others than on abstract principles of justice, but they can use both moral orientations when needed (as can boys . . .)"

Peer Statuses

The term sociometric status is used to describe the extent to which children and adolescents are liked or disliked by their peer group. Sociometric status is typically assessed by asking children and adolescents to rate how much they like or dislike each of their classmates. Alternatively, it may be assessed by asking children and adolescents to nominate the peers they like the most and those they like the least. Most adolescents conform to the mainstream standards of their peers. However, the rebellious or anti-conformist adolescent reacts counter to the mainstream peer group's expectations, deliberately moving away from the actions or beliefs this group advocates. One study revealed that low peer status in childhood was associated with an increased probability of being unemployed and having mental health problems in adulthood. Developmentalists have distinguished five types of peer statuses: Popular adolescents are frequently nominated as a best friend and are rarely disliked by their peers. Average adolescents receive an average number of both positive and negative nominations from their peers. Neglected adolescents are infrequently nominated as a best friend but are not disliked by their peers. Rejected adolescents are infrequently nominated as someone's best friend and are actively disliked by their peers. Controversial adolescents are frequently nominated both as someone's best friend and as being disliked.of social skills that contribute to their being well liked. Researchers have found that popular adolescents give out reinforcements, listen carefully, maintain open lines of communication with peers, are happy, control their negative emotions, show enthusiasm and concern for others, and are self- confident without being conceited. In one study, adolescents' popularity with their peers was associated with their dating popularity. Also, in a recent study, being a fun person to be around was found to be an important component of peer popularity. Neglected adolescents engage in low rates of interaction with their peers and are often described as shy by peers. Rejected adolescents often have more serious adjustment problems than those who are neglected. The combination of being rejected by peers and being aggressive especially forecasts problems. In a recent study, peer rejection was frequently preceded by either aggression or depression in adolescence. Peer rejection is consistently linked to the development and maintenance of conduct problems and antisocial behavior The three reasons why aggressive peer-rejected boys have problems in social relationships: First, the rejected, aggressive boys are more impulsive and have problems sustaining attention. As a result, they are more likely to be disruptive of ongoing activities in the classroom and in focused group play. Second, rejected, aggressive boys are more emotionally reactive. They are aroused to anger more easily and tend to have more difficulty calming down once aroused. Because of this they are more prone to become angry at peers and attack them verbally and physically. Third, rejected boys have fewer social skills for making friends and maintaining positive relationships with peers.Not all rejected adolescents are aggressive. A final comment about peer statuses in adolescence is in order. Much of the peer status research involves samples from middle and late childhood, and in some cases early adolescence, but not late adolescence. One reason for this focus is that to assess peer status, a fairly well-defined group of classmates who know each other well and interact on a regular basis is needed. In contrast with elementary school and middle school, where students stay with the same group most of the day (more prevalent in elementary school than in middle school), it is difficult to assess peer status in high school contexts where students are in contact with large numbers of peers and are unlikely to know all of their classmates.

Sexually Transmitted Infections

are infections that are contracted primarily through sexual contact. This contact is not limited to vaginal intercourse but includes oral- genital and anal-genital contact as well. STIs are an increasing health problem. Every year more than 3 million American adolescents (about one-fourth of those who are sexually experienced) acquire an STI. Recent estimates indicate that while 15- to 24-year-olds represent only 25 percent of the sexually experienced U.S. population, they acquire nearly 50 percent of all new STIs. Among the main STIs adolescents can get are three STIs caused by viruses—acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), genital herpes, and genital warts—and three STIs caused by bacteria—gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia. No single STI has caused more deaths, had a greater impact on sexual behavior, or created more public fear in recent decades than HIV. We explore here its nature and incidence, how it is transmitted, and how to prevent it from spreading. AIDS stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a sexually transmitted infection that is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which destroys the body's immune system. Following exposure to HIV, an individual is vulnerable to germs that a normal immune system could destroy. Genital herpes is a sexually transmitted infection caused by a large family of viruses with many different strains, some of which produce nonsexually transmitted diseases such as cold sores, chicken pox, and mononucleosis. Three to five days after contact, itching and tingling can occur, followed by an eruption of painful sores and blisters. The attacks can last up to three weeks and can recur as frequently as every few weeks or as infrequently as every few years. The virus can also pass through nonlatex condoms as well as contraceptive foams and creams. It is estimated that approximately 20 percent of adolescents have genital herpes. It also is estimated that more than 600,000 new genital herpes infections are appearing in the 15- to 24- year-old age group in the United States each year. Genital warts are caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is difficult to test for and does not always produce symptoms but is very contagious nonetheless. Genital warts usually appear as small, hard, painless bumps on the penis, in the vaginal area, or around the anus. More than 9 million individuals in the United States in the 15- to 24- year-old age group are estimated to have an HPV infection, making HPV the most commonly acquired STI in this age group. Treatment involves the use of a topical drug, freezing, or surgery. Unfortunately, genital warts may return despite treatment, and in some cases they are linked to cervical cancer and other genital cancers. Condoms afford some protection against HPV infection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021) recommends that all 11- and 12-year-old girls be given a two-dose sequence of the HPV vaccine. Adolescent females who do not start having the vaccination until 15 years and older need a three-dose sequence. HPV infections and cervical precancers have dropped significantly since the vaccine has been in use. Page 216 We now turn to three STIs—gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia—caused by bacteria. Gonorrhea is an STI that is commonly called the "drip" or the "clap." It is caused by a bacterium called Neisseria gonorrhoeae , which thrives in the moist mucous membranes lining the mouth, throat, vagina, cervix, urethra, and anal tract. The bacterium is spread by contact between the infected moist membranes of one individual and the membranes of another. In 2018, there were 583,405 cases of gonorrhea reported, a 5.7 percent increase since 2018 and a 92.7 percent increase since its historic low in 2009. Males have higher rates of gonorrhea than females, and the highest rate of the disease occurs in the 20-24 age range for both males and females. A large-scale study revealed that adolescents who were most likely to screen positive for gonorrhea were female, African American, and 16 years of age or older. Early symptoms of gonorrhea are more likely to appear in males, who are likely to have a discharge from the penis and burning during urination. The early sign of gonorrhea in females, often undetectable, is a mild, sometimes irritating vaginal discharge. Complications of gonorrhea in males include prostate, bladder, and kidney problems, as well as sterility. In females, gonorrhea may lead to infertility due to the abdominal adhesions or pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) that it can cause. Gonorrhea can be successfully treated in its early stages with penicillin or other antibiotics. Syphilis is an STI caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum , a member of the spirochaeta family. The spirochete needs a warm, moist environment to survive, and it is transmitted by penile-vaginal, oral-genital, or anal contact. It can also be transmitted from a pregnant woman to her fetus after the fourth month of pregnancy; if she is treated before this time with penicillin, the syphilis will not be transmitted to the fetus. In 2019, nearly 130,000 new cases of syphilis were reported in the United States, an increase of 70 percent since 2015. If left untreated, syphilis may progress through four phases: primary (chancre sores appear), secondary (general skin rash occurs), latent (a period that can last for several years during which no overt symptoms are present), and tertiary (cardiovascular disease, blindness, paralysis, skin ulcers, liver damage, mental problems, and even death may occur). In its early phases, syphilis can be effectively treated with penicillin. Chlamydia , one of the most common of all STIs, is named for Chlamydia trachomatis , an organism that spreads by sexual contact and infects the genital organs of both sexes. Although fewer individuals have heard of chlamydia than have heard of gonorrhea and syphilis, its incidence is much higher. This STI is highly infectious; women run a 70 percent risk of contracting it in a single sexual encounter with an infected partner. The male risk is estimated at between 25 and 50 percent. Many females with chlamydia have few or no symptoms. When symptoms do appear, they include disrupted menstrual periods, pelvic pain, elevated temperature, nausea, vomiting, and headache. Possible symptoms of chlamydia in males are a discharge from the penis and burning during urination. Because many females with chlamydia are asymptomatic, the infection often goes untreated and the chlamydia spreads to the upper reproductive tract, where it can cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). The resultant scarring of tissue in the fallopian tubes can produce infertility or ectopic pregnancies (tubal pregnancies)—that is, a pregnancy in which the fertilized egg is implanted outside the uterus. One-quarter of females who have PID become infertile; multiple cases of PID increase the rate of infertility to half. Some researchers suggest that chlamydia is the number one preventable cause of female infertility. Although they can occur without sexual contact and are therefore not classified as STIs, urinary tract or bladder infections and vaginal yeast infections (also called thrush ) are common in sexually active females, especially those who have an intense "honeymoon" lovemaking experience. Both of these infections clear up quickly with medication, but their symptoms (urinary urgency and burning in urinary tract infections; itching, irritation, and whitish vaginal discharge in yeast infections) may be frightening, especially to adolescents who may already have considerable anxiety about sex. We discuss them because one of the non-STIs may be what brings an adolescent girl to a doctor, nurse practitioner, or family-planning clinic, providing an opportunity for her to receive sex education and contraception.

Parental Monitoring

A key aspect of the managerial role of parenting is effective monitoring, which is especially important as children move into the adolescent years. Monitoring includes supervising an adolescent's choice of social settings, activities, and friends. Recent research indicated that a higher level of general parental monitoring of adolescents' spending habits, friends, and whereabouts was linked to adolescents having healthier weight status, better dietary habits, more physical exercise, and less screen time. Also, in a study of fifth- to eighth- graders, a higher level of parental monitoring was associated with students' having higher grades. In another study, low parental monitoring was a key factor in predicting a developmental trajectory of delinquency and substance use in adolescence. Further, a research meta- analysis revealed that higher levels of parental monitoring and rule enforcement were linked to later initiation of sexual intercourse and more consistent use of condoms by adolescents. In addition, a recent study revealed that when parents had little awareness of their whereabouts, adolescent girls were more likely to smoke cigarettes and to initiate smoking at an earlier age. And a recent study indicated that parental active tracking measures during adolescence and college were linked to better health behavior in both developmental time frames. Parental monitoring may be more effective in some conditions than in others. For example, a recent study found that high monitoring combined with high support of autonomy was linked to better adjustment than other combinations of monitoring and autonomy support. The least effective parenting combination was low monitoring coupled with high psychological control. Three ways that parents can engage in parental monitoring are solicitation (asking questions), control (disclosure rules), and when youth don't comply, snooping. In one study, snooping was perceived by both adolescents and parents as the most likely of these three strategies to violate youths' privacy rights. Also, in this study, snooping was a relatively infrequent parental monitoring tactic but was a better indicator of problems in adolescent and family functioning than were solicitation and control.

What is the Most Effective Sex Education?

Currently, a major controversy in sex education is whether schools should have an abstinence- only program or a comprehensive sex education program that emphasizes contraceptive knowledge, delaying sexual intercourse, and reducing the frequency of sex and number of partners. A recent review and analysis concluded that research across the last three decades provides strong support for comprehensive sex education across a range of topics and grade levels. Recently there has been an increased emphasis on abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) policies and programs in many U.S. schools. However, a major problem with such policies and programs is that a very large majority of individuals engage in sexual intercourse at some point in adolescence or emerging adulthood, while the average age when people marry for the first time continues to go up (currently 27 for females, 29 for males in the United States). The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (2017) released a policy position noting that research evidence indicates that many comprehensive sex education programs successfully delay initiation of sexual intercourse and reduce rates of sexually transmitted infections. The Society's position also states that research indicates AOUM programs are ineffective in delaying sexual intercourse and reducing other sexual risk behaviors. Despite the evidence that strongly favors comprehensive sex education, there recently has been an increase in government funding for abstinence-only programs. Also, in some states (Texas and Mississippi, for example), many students receive either abstinence-only sex education or no sex education at all. U.S. sex education typically has focused on the hazards of sex and the need to protect adolescent females from male predators. The contrast between sex education in the United States and other Western nations is remarkable. For example, the Swedish State Commission on Sex Education recommends that students gain knowledge to help them to experience sexual life as a source of happiness and fellowship with others. Swedish adolescents are sexually active at an earlier age than are American adolescents, and they are exposed to even more explicit sex on television. However, the Swedish National Board of Education has developed a curriculum to give every child, beginning at age 7, a thorough grounding in reproductive biology and, by the age of 10 or 12, information about various forms of contraception. Teachers handle the subject of sex whenever it becomes relevant, regardless of the subject they are teaching. The idea is to demystify sex so that familiarity will make students less vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy and STIs. Despite a relatively early onset of sexual activity, the adolescent pregnancy rate in Sweden is one of the lowest in the world.

Developing a Sexual Identity

Dealing with emerging sexual feelings and forming a sense of sexual identity is a multifaceted process. This lengthy process involves learning to manage sexual feelings such as sexual arousal and attraction, developing new forms of intimacy, and learning the skills required to regulate sexual behavior so as to avoid undesirable consequences. Developing a sexual identity also involves more than just sexual behavior. Sexual identities emerge in the context of physical factors such as puberty's hormones, social factors, and cultural factors, with most societies placing constraints on the sexual behavior of adolescents. An adolescent's sexual identity is strongly influenced by social norms related to sex—the extent to which adolescents perceive that their peers are having sex, using protection, and so on. These social norms have important influences on adolescents' sexual behavior. For example, one study revealed that when adolescents perceived that their peers were sexually permissive, the adolescents had a higher rate of initiating sexual intercourse and engaging in risky sexual practices. An adolescent's sexual identity involves an indication of sexual orientation (whether an individual has same-sex or other-sex attractions), and it also involves activities, interests, and styles of behavior.

Individual Difference Factors

Individual differences among peers also are important influences on peer relations. Among the wide range of individual differences that can affect peer relations are personality traits, such as how shy or outgoing an adolescent is. For example, a very shy adolescent is more likely than a gregarious adolescent to be neglected by peers and to feel anxious about introducing himself or herself to new peers. In a longitudinal study, shyness in childhood predicted lower emotional stability and lower extraversion in adolescence, with these links mainly due negative peer experiences. Other individual differences include the adolescent's openness to peer influence and the status/power of the adolescent versus the status/power of the other adolescent or adolescent peer group. Being in a subordinate social position in a dyad or group can decrease the adolescent's ability to influence peers and increase the adolescent's susceptibility to peer influence.

Influences on the Kohlberg's Stages

Kohlberg theorized that the individual's moral orientation unfolds as a consequence of cognitive development and exposure to appropriate social experiences. Children and adolescents construct their moral thoughts as they move from one level to the next, rather than passively accepting a cultural norm of morality. Investigators have sought to understand factors that influence movement through the moral levels, among them modeling, cognitive conflict, peer relations, and role-taking opportunities. Several investigators have attempted to advance individuals' levels of moral development by having a model present arguments that reflect moral thinking slightly above the individuals' established level. These studies are based on the cognitive developmental concepts of equilibrium and conflict. By presenting moral information slightly beyond the individual's cognitive level, a disequilibrium is created that motivates a restructuring of moral thought. The resolution of the disequilibrium and conflict should be toward increased competence. Like Piaget, Kohlberg emphasized that peer interaction is a critical part of the social stimulation that challenges individuals to change their moral orientation. Whereas adults characteristically impose rules and regulations on children, the mutual give-and-take in peer interaction provides the child with an opportunity to take the role of another person and to generate rules democratically. Kohlberg stressed that role-taking opportunities can, in principle, be engendered by any peer group encounter. Researchers have found that more advanced moral reasoning takes place when peers engage in challenging, even moderately conflicting, conversation. In particular, parents who allow or encourage conversation about value-laden issues promote more advanced moral thought in their children and adolescents. Unfortunately, many parents do not systematically provide their children and adolescents with such role- taking opportunities. In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis on the role of parenting in moral development

Kohlberg's Three Levels

Kohlberg's Level 1: Preconventional Reasoning Preconventional reasoning is the lowest level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. At this level, moral reasoning is strongly influenced by external punishment and reward. For example, children and adolescents obey adults because adults tell them to obey. Or they might be nice to others so that others will be nice to them. This earliest level has sometimes been described as "What's in it for me?" There is a much stronger punishment-and-obedience than reward orientation to Level 1 moral reasoning because children respect the power of adults. There also are adults at this level who adopt an "eye- for-an-eye," "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" approach. Kohlberg's Level 2: Conventional Reasoning Conventional reasoning is the second, or intermediate, level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. In conventional reasoning, individuals develop expectations about social roles. Level 2 comes into play when for the first time the naked self-pursuit of Level 1 gives way to conventional expectations of good behavior within the society of friends and family. For example, in the Heinz and the druggist story, wouldn't a good husband steal the drug to save his wife's life? In terms of laws of society, at Level 2 reasoning, individuals come to understand that for a community and nation to work effectively, they need to be protected by laws that everyone follows. Kohlberg's Level 3: Postconventional Reasoning Postconventional reasoning is the highest level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. In Level 3 reasoning, conventional considerations are now judged against moral concerns such as liberty, justice, and equality, with the idea that morality can improve the laws, fix them, and guide conventional institutions in the direction of a better world. At the highest point in Level 3, people are aware that moral principles make demands on them. Yes, Heinz should steal the drug because the value of life trumps the druggist' right to property. However, this moral judgment has a universal intent—everyone in Heinz's position should also steal the drug. Kohlberg argued that these levels occur in a sequence and are age-related: Before age 9, most children reason about moral dilemmas in a preconventional way; by early adolescence, they reason in more conventional ways. By early adulthood, a small number of individuals reason in postconventional ways. In a 20-year longitudinal investigation, the uses of level 1 decreased. Any change in moral reasoning between late adolescence and early adulthood appears to be relatively gradual. One study found that when 16- to 19- year-olds and 18- to 25-year-olds were asked to reason about real- life moral dilemmas and their responses were coded using Kohlberg's levels, there was no significant difference in the moral reasoning of the two age group.

Parenting

Love withdrawal comes closest to the psychoanalytic emphasis on fear of punishment and of losing parental love. It is a disciplinary technique in which a parent withholds attention or love from the adolescent, as when the parent refuses to talk to the adolescent or states a dislike for the adolescent. Power assertion is a disciplinary technique in which a parent attempts to gain control over the adolescent or the adolescent's resources. Examples include spanking, threatening, or removing privileges. Induction is the disciplinary technique in which a parent uses reason and explains how the adolescent's antisocial actions are likely to affect others. Examples of induction include comments such as "Don't hit him. He was only trying to help" and "Why are you yelling at her? She didn't mean to hurt your feelings." Parental discipline contributes to children's moral development, but other aspects of parenting also play important roles, including providing opportunities for perspective taking and modeling moral behavior and thinking. Nancy Eisenberg and her colleagues suggest that parents who adopt the following strategies are more likely to have children and adolescents who behave morally: Be warm and supportive, use inductive reasoning, and engage in authoritative parenting. Avoid being punitive, and do not use love withdrawal as a disciplinary strategy. Use inductive discipline. Provide opportunities for children and youth to learn about others' perspectives and feelings. Involve children and youth in family decision making and in the process of thinking about moral decisions. Model moral behaviors and thinking, and provide opportunities for children and youth to do so. Provide information about what behaviors are expected and why. Foster an internal rather than an external sense of morality. Help children and youth to understand and regulate negative emotion rather than becoming overaroused. Parents who show this configuration of behaviors are likely to foster concern and caring about others in their children and youth, and to create a positive parent-child relationship. In terms of relationship quality, secure attachment may play an important role in children's and adolescents' moral development. A secure attachment can place children on a positive path for internalizing parents' socializing goals and adhering to family values. In one study, early secure attachment defused a maladaptive trajectory toward antisocial outcomes. In another study, securely attached children's willing, cooperative stance was linked to positive future socialization outcomes such as a lower incidence of externalizing problems (aggression, for example)

Contraceptive Use

Many sexually active adolescents do not use contraceptives, use them inconsistently, or use contraceptive methods that are less effective than others. Recently, a number of leading medical organizations and experts have recommended that adolescents use long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). LARC consists of the use of intrauterine devices (IUDs) and contraceptive implants, which have a much lower failure rate and greater effectiveness in preventing unwanted pregnancy than the use of birth control pills and condoms. A recent national study found that adolescent use of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) increased from 1.8 percent in 2013 to 5.3 percent in 2017. In one study, researchers found that 50 percent of U.S. 15- to 19- year-old girls with unintended pregnancies ending in live births were not using any birth control method when they got pregnant, and 34 percent believed they could not get pregnant at the time. Another study found that a greater age difference between sexual partners in adolescence is associated with less consistent condom use. Researchers also have found that U.S. adolescents use condoms less than their counterparts in Europe, likely because of the more extensive sex education children and adolescents experience in European countries. Studies of 15-year- olds revealed that in Europe 72 percent of the girls and 81 percent of the boys had used condoms during their last intercourse. Use of birth control pills also continues to be higher in European countries. Such comparisons provide insight into why adolescent pregnancy rates are much higher in the United States than in European countries.

The Positive Role of Religion and Spirituality in Adolescents' and Emerging Adult Lives

Researchers have found that various aspects of religion are linked with positive outcomes for adolescents. One study revealed that a higher level of church engagement (based on years of attendance, choice in attending, and participation in activities) was related to higher grades for male adolescents. Churchgoing may benefit students because religious communities encourage socially acceptable behavior, which includes doing well in school. Churchgoing also may benefit students because churches often offer positive role models for students. One study found that youth generally thought about spirituality in positive ways. In this study, 10- to 18- year-olds' self-ratings of spirituality were positively linked to the 5 Cs of Positive Youth Development (competence, confidence, character, connection, and caring/compassion). In the longitudinal aspect of the study, the youths' self-ratings of spirituality predicted their character ratings one year later. Also, in a recent study of 11- to 22-year-olds, positive bidirectional links between religiousness and self-control were found. Religion also plays a role in adolescents' health and whether they engage in problem behaviors. A research meta- analysis found that spirituality/religiosity was positively related to well- being, self-esteem, and three of the Big Five factors of personality (conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness). In this meta-analysis, spirituality/religion was negatively associated with risky behavior and depression. Also, in a recent study, religiosity was linked to delayed onset of alcohol use, more so for adolescent girls than boys. In addition, a study of ninth- to twelfth- graders revealed that more frequent religious attendance in one grade predicted lower levels of substance abuse in the next grade. Further, a recent study revealed that high school students who reported turning to spiritual beliefs when they were experiencing problems were less likely to engage in substance use. Also, in a recent Danish study, participating in a religious organization and praying were associated with fewer risk factors for engaging in an unhealthy lifestyle. And across three countries, adolescents who reported having a higher level of spirituality were more likely to have positive health outcomes. Many religious adolescents also internalize their religion's message about caring and concern for people. For example, a number of studies have found that adolescents who are involved in religious institutions are more likely to engage in service learning than their counterparts who don't participate in religious institutions.).