I
love the research I’ve been able to do on this subject. I think that a lot of
adolescent kids have pretty normal lives without to much drama, but there are
factors here and there that do cause stress and disturbances in their life.
First of all is gender. Growing up is more difficult for girls than it is for
boys, for the most part. Another cause is being different, whether that difference
is religious, body shape, fitness, birth country, irregular family structure,
it can be nearly anything. Anything that makes a teenage different, than the
beautiful blondes on the magazine covers, makes them a target to their peers. There
are a lot of things for kids to be critical or worry about. And with sexuality
becoming a more common topic in television and everyday life, it’s becoming a
more and more important issue with teenagers. For goodness sake, most kids
create idealized sexual expectations and are disappointed by the real thing,
many foreign born teens avoid bringing their parents to school functions so
that their peers don’t see how different their parents are, and most, if not
all, teens worry about how they look and how they should look (skinnier or more
muscular). Honestly, being a teenager these days must be exhausting.
Regardless
of all of these possible pitfalls, it’s not all a black hole. There are points
of light. Like I said earlier, most adolescents don’t have ultra-dramatic
lives. This idea is just perpetuated by the glamorizing media. In reality, most
kids are able to cope with the stresses of their changing bodies, their
different religions, and other factors. One of the most important influences in
kids’ lives are their parents. The parent’s beliefs have a huge effect on their
children. These beliefs affect how they teach their children, the rules they
set, and what they expect of their children. These rules and expectations have
dramatic effects compared to parents who have a more hands-off style. Teens
need this direction; they believe themselves to be all knowing, but often they
don’t completely perceive the consequences to their actions.
Another
point of light I found was the article about the effects of becoming part of a
service group. Boys who did service for their community regularly were more
involved, less likely to get in trouble, and had more self-esteem than boys who
did not do service. This reminds my of our church and the big push we have for
our young people to do service; it really does help. For some reason that study
found that girls weren’t affected very much by doing service. I may disagree
with this, but it’s what the study found.
My
coming of age wasn’t very dramatic, but it wasn’t easy either. Self-image is an
interesting and important part of that age group. I want to know more about it
so I can help young people get through it and know that things get better and
that they can do it. I got through it. I think this research will help me a lot
as I work more on this project.
Baran, Stanley J. "Sex on
TV and Adolescent Sexual Self-Image." Journal
of Broadcasting. 20.
(1976): 61-68. Web. <http://www.heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/jbem20&id=63&collection=journals&index=journals/jbem
As much as I hate to admit it,
young teenagers have a sexual self-image that is much more important to them
than it should be. This article is from the 70s, but it has only gotten worse.
Movies are getting more explicit, and with channels like HBO getting more and
more popular, this problem is rampant. Kids create idealized versions of how
sexual relations work and are ashamed when they are still virgins, thinking
that everyone else aren’t virgins (even though most are). I doubt I’ll use this
information too much in my presentation, but it is an important subset of young
peoples’ self-image that I need to be aware of. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2432591/Porn-pernicious-threat-facing-children-today-By-ex-lads-mag-editor-MARTIN-DAUBNEY.html)
this is an article that talks about the effects of porn on children.
Cohane, Geoffrey H., and
Harrison G. Jr Pope. "Body Image in Boys: A Review of the
Literature."International Journal of
Eating Disorders. 29.4 (2001): 373-379. Web. 14 Oct. 2013.
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eat.1033/pdf>.
Although I am leaning more
towards self-image instead of body image, this article is still valuable. It
says that “boy’s most common concern regarding body shape was being
underdeveloped.” Some boys wanted to be thinner; others wanted to be more
muscular. Also, “In general, body satisfaction among boys is positively
correlated with self-esteem.” Boys may not be as critical as girls, they still
have a very similar problem in terms of body image and how that affects their
self-image.
Grogan, Sarah. Body Image:
Understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women, and children.
2nd Ed. New York City: Routledge, 2008. 41-80.
Chapter 3: Women and body image. Print.
This chapter goes over the
results of a body image questionnaire given to women. As would be expected,
most women desired to be skinnier than they already were and that the perfect cultural
image of a woman is skinnier. On of the more interesting findings is that “women
who wish to be thin are mostly influenced by what they think other women
prefer, rather than by what they think that men prefer.” Social pressures come
from both parties. When people think of body image or self-image, they normally
think of women’s problems. Though this is not always the case, it is definitely
a huge issue that must be addressed. I can’t ignore the elephant in the room.
Jones, Merle B.
"Self-Image and Perceived Parenting Role Expectations on Adolescent
Fathers."
The University of Manitoba. (1999): 94-100. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0006/MQ45067.pdf
(accessed October 2013).
This article talked about teen
pregnancy and their effects on the father. I found this fascinating because
most of the time the focus is on the mother. They found that these young men
have low self-image. They want to be involved in parenting, but “unrealistic expectations
and the inability to combine the developmental tasks of adolescence with the
responsibilities of fatherhood increase their vulnerability to parenting
failure. Two different groups of
teen dads were given questionnaires, one group were in the process of raising
children, while the second was waiting for their baby to come. The former
reported feeling very confused and ill-prepared; the other had high parenting
expectations believing that they would be competent and able to parent well.
This shows adolescents inability to project future consequences of their
actions. I just found this article hugely fascinating and new.
Offer, Daniel, and Eric Ostrov.
Patterns of Adolescent Self-Image. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Inc., 1984. 5-16.
Chapter 1: The Self-Image of Normal Adolescents. Print.
This chapter was a lot more
positive than a lot of the other things that I’ve read. It quizzed a lot of
adolescents and found that most had pretty normal, good lives. It’s not always
as dramatic as some adults make it out to be; teenagers are not always in the “throes
of turmoil”. But it did mention that gender is a significant factor. Female
participants were markedly less confident and had less self-esteem than their
male peers. I think this reading is important to keep our heads straight and
realize, that although many may go through significant troubles, a lot of kids
have normal less dramatic coming of age stories.
Rosenberg, Morris. Society and
the Adolescent Self-image. 1st ed. Middletown, Connecticut:
Wesleyan University Press, 1989. 64-81 Chapter 4:
The Dissonant Religious Context. Print.
This chapter explored the
effects of adolescents who grew up in communities of their religious peers vs.
adolescents who grew up in communities where the majority was a different
religion. They discovered that “children raised in a dissonant religious
context have lower self-esteem than those raised in a consonant context, and
that the more dissonant the context, the smaller the proportion who accept
themselves.” I like this chapter because religion is a really important; well
it is to me anyway. Coming from a childhood where I was in the extreme
minority, I definitely think it is a factor in how kids see themselves and
their social status with peers.
Rumbaut, Ruben G. "The
Crucible within: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Segmented
Assimilation among Children of Immigrants." International Migration Review.
28.4 (1994): 748-794. Web. Oct. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/2547157>.
“For children of immigrants, that developmental process [,
going from Adolescence to adulthood,] can be complicated by experiences of
intense acculturative and intergenerational conflicts as they strive to adapt
in social identity contexts that may be racially and culturally dissonant.” The
strongest predictor of lower self-esteem and higher depression was the measure
on parent-child conflict. Stress comes when the child doesn’t want to be as
culturally involved as the parent, or cares more about being accepted socially
than getting good grades. The next strongest predictor is gender; girls have a
worse time than boys. I found this an extremely enlightening article;
especially because I am a natural born white American. It’s hard for me to know
what life is like for others. It is nice to become closer to well-rounded on
this subject than I was before.
Seginer, Rachel.
"Adolescent Future Orientation." Developmental Psychology and
Culture. no. 1
(2003). http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&context=orpc
(accessed October 2013).
Future orientation is the image
individuals have regarding their future, as consciously represented and
self-reported. “The question is not whether but rather how families affect adolescent future orientation. In constructing
their future orientation adolescents reproduce family socio-economic status.
This is also reinforced by what schools they go to because of where they live
(lower class adolescents go to lower-level high schools). Another huge factor
is parental beliefs. Parent’s ideas and expectations for their children have a
direct effect on the motivational component of future orientation. Parents are
a huge factor in the development of adolescents, as is clearly shown. It is
definitely pertinent to my research.
Simmons, Roberta G., Florence
Rosenberg, and Morris Rosenberg. "Disturbance in the Self-
Image at Adolescence." American Sociological Review.
38.5 (1973): 553-568. Web. Oct. 2013.
Self-image disturbance is much greater in the 12-14 age
group than the 8-11 age group. The 12-14 year olds have a higher level of
self-consciousness, greater instability of self-image, lower self-image, and a
more negative ‘perceived self’ (they are less likely to think that parents,
teachers, and peers of the same sex view them favorably). The biggest
difference is between 11 year olds and 12 year olds. This is possibly due to
puberty, entering junior high school, and/or not being the biggest and oldest in
the school (going from elementary to junior high). I find this interesting because this defines my audience.
Self-image can apply to everyone, but most especially to these kids. I also
liked the four dimensions they listed for self-image: self-consciousness,
stability, self-esteem, and perceived self.
Switzer, Galen E., Roberta G.
Simmons, Mary Amanda Dew, Jeanne M. Regalski, and Chi-
Hsein Wang. "The Effect of a School-Based
Helper Program on Adolescent Self-Image, Attitudes, and Behavior."Journal
of Early Adolescence. 15. (1995): 429-455. Web. Oct. 2013.
<http://jea.sagepub.com/content/15/4/429.full.pdf html>.
I’m really interested in self-image and why we think the way
we do. I also think that actions can affect emotions. This article is really
great because it discusses a possible solution. In this article it discusses seventh
graders who were part of programs that did service for others vs the control
group that did not do service. The program did wonders for the boys involved,
but showed little effect on the girls. “Although girls did report feeling more
like better persons after having participated in the program than did the boys,
the results indicate that boys were the main beneficiaries of this program;
participating boys exhibited positive changes in self-esteem, depressive
affect, involvement, and problem behavior relative to other groups.”
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