Gender And Ethnic Background On Adolescent Development

Adolescence can be the most crucial part of a person’s development. It is the time of transition into adulthood. The experiences gathered this time of a person’s life have lasting effects that linger long into adulthood. Proper guidance and support during this time is a person’s life is essential to ensuring that the person is able to become a successful adult in society. However, many African-American youth are lacking this type of support and guidance during this critical stage in life. Disproportionately some African American male adolescents aren’t provided proper mechanisms for their transition to manhood. Some sociologists believe that the lack of a rites of

In 1971, William E. Cross, Jr., Ph.D., a Black psychologist and prominent researcher (specializing in Black psychology) developed a framework for assessing how black Americans come to understand what it means to be Black. Dr. Cross introduced his ideologies as the “Nigrescence Model of Racial Identity Development“. He asserts that every black American must undergo a series of identity stages to develop a healthy and balanced understanding of the Black experience and become well-rounded in our global society. This model encompasses five stages of identity development, which Dr. Cross emphasizes, must be performed in order to successfully accomplish this goal.

Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a culture that was not inherited, thus putting behind the unique and significant characteristics

81% of Black adults reported that they have experienced at least one incident of day-to-day discrimination. And Adolescence is a stage in which to examine the impact of racial discrimination on the psychological part of African Americans (Racial Identity Matters). Which can cause a person to be scared expectably if someone has already confined in themselves of their race. "My siblings had already instilled the notion of black pride in me. I would have preferred that Mommy were black. Now, as a grown man, I feel privileged to have come from two worlds" (McBride 103). It was easier to accept the black

They are going through transitions in intellectual development and the process and transition of primary to secondary education.’ There are various intellectual skills that an adolescent will learn within this life stage. When in the adolescent life stage, the emotional development norms for an individual is to learn their personal identity and they must leant about who they are about how to control their emotions within the change of puberty. Low self-esteem and confidence issue is often something most teenagers struggle with. With adolescence secondary learning occurs, a person’s self-worth can change within this life-stage due to the social situations that an individual had to be within, also their use of clothing, language and religion etc. The introduction of hormones can often change how teenagers see themselves. Adolescent’s independence that they go through can affect their social and emotional development.

The adolescent individuals begin to reach sexual maturity and established their identity as an adult. This period marks the transition in which individuals think and reason. They also start to encounter conflicts between their family and their peers.

Adolescents face many developmental tasks: physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally. For example, puberty happens, intellectual interests expand, moral thinking happens, sense of identity is initiated, independence is worked towards, there is conflict with adults, and peer influence becomes an issue—to say the least. This particular read focuses on twelve west coast inner city students and the developmental and environmental tasks that impact their education. Professionals often use the word resilience, or suggest that students become resilient, without putting much thought into the difficulties that students must recover from.

Adolescents experience a multitude of physical, cognitive, emotional, and social, and mental changes during a short span of years in their developmental journey to adulthood, and this transition period is full of many developmental changes and milestones. Some typical changes and milestones in an adolescent’s life include puberty, learning to drive, dating, developing new social relationships and social roles, cognitive changes, becoming sexually active, obtaining employment, and graduating high school. In addition to all of these changes in this tumultuous time of life, adolescents are identifying, developing, and coming to terms with their own sense of self, and learning about their identity becomes a priority. Teens and young adults must also address certain challenges that may arise in their lives such as bullying, drug and alcohol use, violence, sexual abuse, eating disorders, depression or other mood/mental health issues, and issues concerning sexuality, and gender identity. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is an engaging story that deals with many of the challenges that all adolescents face, and this novel also addresses challenges that are unique to those teens who may be grappling with issues that face minority cultures and communities as well.

The term culturally constructed means that adolescence is not solely a biological state or condition that young adults go through on their journey to adulthood, being culturally constructed means that our culture around us determines at what age we enter adolescence as well as some of the changes in our life that happen during that time (lecture two ). To me I think a good example of adolescence being culturally constructed is in the film we watched stand by me were the boys felt like to be a man or to be accepted in their society as a man they had to do something heroic as an example in the movie they had to go find the body of the young boy that went missing and this would make them heroes and their community and people would view them no

The chart above denotes the major theories of adolescence development; however in this study we limit ourselves to Erik Erikson’s identity development theory.

“Gender” is a social construct that is developed solely by our society and the early developmental stages of an adolescent’s life. By introducing youths to the roles, behaviors, expectations and activities that correspond with males or females we give a clear guideline of what is accepted from a young male or female. An individual however can identify his or her gender based on their own system of beliefs without corresponding to their natural biological sex. Our lives are shaped by our true biological identities but the influence of the world and society is enough to define what a male and what a female truly is to an individual.

Adolescent development varies greatly on many factors such as hereditary factors, relationships with parents, peer relations, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, culture, and general experience. This paper is being written from the perspective of a Caucasian, lower middle-class, rural late adolescent. The key developmental aspects to be covered in this paper include emotional development and identity development as they were the most influential in my own development as a whole. An individual’s adolescence years play a large part in who the individual eventually becomes starting with the onset of puberty and formation of career interests. Adolescence is typically split into three areas, early adolescence from the ages 12 to14, middle adolescence from the ages 15 to 16, and late adolescence that occurs between the ages of 17 to 19. Every stage plays a unique role in an individual’s development that marks

In questioning second grade and fourth grade students in New York City, the researchers suggest that middle childhood is the period for ethnic identity development. Researchers selected racially diverse students which consisted of Black, Chinese, Dominican, Russian and White students. They were asked a series of questions on what it means to be their ethnicity and correlating factors that can play a role due to their ethnicity.

This study aims to research the emergence of gender differences in the language of children (Ladegaard, 2002). It is noted within the article that there has been a number of studies that put forth opposing views regarding the differences in language between the genders. Some researchers will argue that there is no gender difference in the sociolinguistic abilities of adult males and females and that there is often an overlap in the use of language between the two groups. However, Ladegaard states that there is a great deal of evidence in many sociolinguistic studies that there is, in fact, differences in the language used by adult males and females. Ladegaard makes reference to a number of studies that have concluded that adult male speakers will prefer to use vernacular forms of language, whereas adult female speakers will prefer to use standard speech forms. Since there is substantial findings with the difference of language between adult females and adult males, it is argued within this article that there must be an age in which the language differences begin to form (2002).

Adolescence is thought of by most people as a difficult time between the ages of 12 and 18 that comes with an absolute certainty of change. All types of change, it can be physical, psychological, social, and people even change on a chemical level. Adolescence is also a time that people start to find themselves and they are able to make their own choices and become their own person. It is a very crucial period in an individual’s life because it is the moment to become independent, or at least practicing some amount of independence. This practice will prepare them for later in life when they are actually living on their own and making their own decisions. Adolescence is a needed stage to grow and develop into a functional