ADOLESCENCE

The defining developmental task of adolescence is identity formation. (See Table 16.3.) Rapid and dramatic changes, physical and psychosocial, occur in almost all aspects of adolescent life.

Stage Theories of Adolescence

According to Erikson’s psychosocial stages in development (see Table 16.3), the transition from childhood to adulthood requires a return to earlier develop­mental issues that emerge with age-related complexity:

• Adolescents revisit the attachment phase of infancy as they search for trust, as with trustworthy and admirable friends. In early adolescence, this task focuses on same-sex friends; later, it turns toward finding partners of the opposite sex. As they begin to function as members of society rather than only family, classroom, or other small groups, ado­lescents seek to establish trust through political and social causes and trustworthy leaders.

• Expression of autonomy begins with the two-year-old’s insistence on “doing it myself.” In adolescence, autonomy refers to learning to make one’s own decisions and choices in life rather than accepting those of parents or friends.

• In early childhood, initiative was demonstrated through pretend play. Its counterpart in adolescence is establishing one’s own goals rather than simply accepting what others plan.

• Industry in middle childhood focuses on tasks set by the teacher or par­ent. In adolescence, industry means taking responsibility for one’s own ambitions and the quality of work produced.

The third order of consciousness (Kegan, 1994), “cross-categorical” knowing, begins in adolescence.

Friends and Self-Esteem. In adolescence, high school students spend an aver­age of twenty-two nonschool hours a week with their peers, approximately twice as much time as with adults (Csikszentmihalyi and Larson, 1984). Despite the importance of peers in an adolescent’s life, the amount of time spent with peers is influenced by how parents respond to the child’s devel­opmental changes. The adolescent frequently responds to strict, authoritarian behavior from parents by turning to peers for support and behavioral guid­ance. Authoritative parents accept their child’s growing up, continue to include her in family decision making, support her self-expression, and mon­itor her behavior (ask her to call when she will be late coming in at night). As a consequence, adolescents of authoritative parents become competent in school and are less likely to cause trouble. Their friends also enjoy the indi­rect benefits of improved school performance and behavior (Steinberg and Darling, 1994).

For adolescents, friendship goes beyond reciprocal action and is viewed within the context of a long-term series of interactions. Conflict is seen as a natural occurrence within this relationship. The adolescent also realizes that working through and resolving a conflict usually strengthens a relationship if the conflict is constructively managed.

Although the extent to which friends may negatively influence the adoles­cent appears to be exaggerated, friends have considerable influence because of the need for social approval. Praise from friends rewards specific behaviors and makes it likely they will occur again. Friends seek to be like their friends for two reasons: (1) friends have characteristics the individual wishes to have (intrin­sic motivation), and (2) the individual judges her own competence by compar­ing her performance with that of classmates (social comparison). Prosocial and responsible classroom behavior has been related directly to classroom grades and test scores even when the effects of academic behavior, teacher preference among students, IQ, family structure, sex, ethnicity, and days absent from school were taken into account (Wentzel, 1993).

Loyalty and intimacy are valued and expected in adolescent friendships; the self-disclosing conversations that occur between close friends, especially among girls, help teenagers shape their identity. However, by the late teen years, the adolescent is capable of tolerating friends with different likes, dislikes, values, and beliefs. Selman’s Levels 3 and 4 illustrate this change. (See Table 16.2). Boys between the ages of fourteen and sixteen usually form relationships with a group, and it helps them assert their independence from authority figures. For boys, validation of worth occurs through action rather than personal dis­closure between friends. Like attachment in infancy, adolescent boys and girls use friends to make sense of ambiguous or anxiety-provoking situations. Among both boys and girls in some countries, a clique (a peer group of ado­lescents small enough to allow regular interaction) becomes part of the social environment.

Friendship and Cooperation. Conformity to peer pressure increases between ages nine and fifteen but decreases thereafter. It is likely that middle adolescence is when conventional standards of behavior are least followed. On the whole, adolescents are perceived to engage in high levels of behavior that poses risks to their health, safety, and well-being. However, antisocial behavior is more com­mon among boys than girls and is much higher when peer groups are organized around competition, as with gangs. Contrary to common belief, adolescents are no more likely than other age groups to feel invulnerable (Quadrel, Fischoff, and Davis, 1993). Sensation seeking, or the need for novel experiences, has also been found wanting as a viable hypothesis for this behavior. At present, there exists no generally accepted explanation for risk-taking behavior in adolescence.

Students often establish borders between their group and other groups during early adolescence. Students of other races are frequently seen as possessing dif­ferent values and orientations. Teachers and other adults too often fail to pay attention to the effect of peer group dynamics in forming students’ attitudes about others. This may be due, in part, to the fact that adolescents are likely to keep their activities unobserved by parents and other adults in authority.

Perspective Taking. Erikson’s model of the identity crisis of adolescence fits well with Piaget’s ideas of formal operational thought as well as empirical stud­ies exploring the development of self-understanding in adolescents. Adolescents’ thinking about themselves grows more abstract and self-reflective. They also work to integrate their past selves with the self they hope to achieve in the future (Selman, 1980).

Younger adolescents (approximately nine to fifteen) develop friendships for intimacy and support. Because the adolescent at this age is capable of stepping outside the interaction and taking the perspective of a third party, friendships survive run-of-the-mill conflict.

Although still recognizing the need for the support and sense of identity provided by friends, older adolescents (approximately age twelve to adulthood) are capable of accepting their friends’ needs to have other relationships as well. They are able to view events from the perspective of the law, morality, and society as a whole.

The Role of Conflict

The adolescent is able to see parties in a conflict from a generalized third-person perspective, that is, to step outside the conflict as a neutral third person and simul­taneously consider both his own perspective and the other’s. He can view the con­flict interaction from the vantage point of the disinterested average spectator.

Conflict in adolescence occurs more frequently with parents than siblings or peers—presumably because individual autonomy has become the devel­opmental issue at this age. The most common conflict issues between parents and adolescents are authority, autonomy, and responsibility (Smetana, 1989). Adolescents report an average of seven disagreements daily (Collins and Laursen, 1992). However, the parent’s response to differences of opinion with the adolescent can help the young person’s developing sense of identity, ego formation, and social-cognitive skills. The most helpful parental response takes the form of a supportive but challenging discussion about the issue. Adolescents from families that openly and constructively express their conflict are signifi­cantly better able to resolve conflict with their peers than those whose parents cut off disagreement unilaterally. As at younger ages, conflict in adolescence is likely to occur in close relationships. Conflict with same-sex friends declines in later adolescence but increases with romantic partners.

Naive Conflict Resolution Strategies. Without specific skills development in conflict resolution, the resolution strategies the adolescent uses with friends commonly involve submission (one person gives in to the other’s demands), compromise (both parties make concessions), third-party intervention (par­ties accept a resolution suggested by an uninvolved person), standoff (parties change the topic or divert their attention to a different activity), and withdrawal (one person refuses to continue the conflict exchange).

The San Francisco Community Board Program. An example of a conflict res­olution program that is responsive to adolescent developmental needs is the cur­riculum prepared by the San Francisco Community Board (Sadalla, Henriquez, and Holmberg, 1987). The Community Board Program (CBP) develops problem­solving skills, such as negotiation, in students who normally would avoid con­flict and those who become aggressive to get what they want in a conflict situation. Like ECSEL, the CBP works to ensure development of age-appropriate skills; it takes both natural physical development as well as effective nurturing to create children who become emotionally and academically proficient.

Unlike programs like ECSEL for young children, the CBP must take into account students who have well-established negative patterns of conflict resolution. Unlearning old habits can be a long and difficult process, partic­ularly once a student gains a reputation for a particular behavior or charac­teristics. (Peers make it difficult for a student to change a negative reputation even as early as the middle school years.) The CBP also builds on the adolescent’s greater capacity for dealing with complex cognitive issues, greater independence from parental constraint, and a growing sense of evolving self that is largely absent in the preschooler and underdeveloped in the preadolescent.

Adulthood

When adults spent their time in taking care of basic family needs, adulthood was seen as a static state with no systematic changes until old age. With the Malthusian explosion of modern conveniences and time savers, adults now have the time and opportunity for exploring their own growth potential. This change has meant that researchers are beginning to investigate the “stages” or levels of adulthood. For example, Bernice Neugarten (1973) focuses on the “three” times which, interacting simultaneously, are important influences in adult develop­ment: the biological time table (for example, gray hair, menopause, reduced activity); social time (go to school, raise a family, retire); and historic time (war, recession, resurgence of religion). In a study of men’s (1978) and women’s (1996) lives, Daniel Levinson divided the life span into three eras: early, mid­dle, and late adulthood. Transitionary periods lasting for some years divide the life eras. Roughly, these transitions occur around age 30, early 40s, 50s, and so on. These transitions can be difficult or smooth; however, one’s life commit­ments often change from the beginning and end of such periods. Stable periods lead to enriched work and family choices; transition periods result in a reap­praisal of work and family, leading to changes in the following stable period.

Kegan does not consider the fourth and fifth orders of consciousness to reflect greater maturity than the third order, but he believes that the latter is simply inadequate in meeting the social demands of American middle class adulthood in the twenty-first century. (Note that Table 16.3 reflects the cognitive area of consciousness.) Modern culture requires a well-defined fourth-order transfor­mation of consciousness in the cognitive, affective, interpersonal, and intraper­sonal realms. Because support systems such as tradition, local culture, and religion are often lacking, an adaptive individual must develop a highly focused sense of self to connect the interiority of consciousness with the challenges of the external world. As Kegan says, “I would put it this way: the mental burden of modern life may be nothing less than the extraordinary cultural demand that each person, in adulthood, creates internally, an order of consciousness com­parable to that which ordinarily would be found only at the level of a commu­nity’s collective intelligence” (1994, p. 134).

Each constructivist cycle becomes a part of an alternating rhythm between self-assertiveness and the inclusion of the self within enduring social rela­tionships, institutions, and normative ideologies. For example, the second- order sense of self-possession changes to the commitment and relationship of cross-categorical consciousness. The fourth order turns back toward self- possessiveness with the identification of a distinctive self, yet that self is con­textualized within the roles and social commitments that resulted from the third-order consciousness.

Kegan’s work provides a road map to assist adults in making the required transitions to respond to modern society. According to Kegan, today’s parents are expected to take charge of the family, to institute a vision that will serve the family, to promote the development of the children, and to develop an overall set of values by which the family functions. These tasks require parents to operate within a fourth order of consciousness. He provides the example of a woman’s young daughter asking her mother whether she has had intimate rela­tionships since her divorce. The mother’s third-order consciousness would pro­voke guilt if she lied and said, “No.” A fourth-order consciousness would emphasize the ability of the mother to place her child’s best interests in the fore­front of her decision making. In this case, a higher-order value system would dictate that the mother keep burdensome information from her child. In this way, the mother has strengthened her family through her leadership role and autonomous decision making.

The highlighting of the autonomous self in Kegan’s work may be criticized as a bias toward male development. He replies that both the desire for autonomy and (as elaborated by many gender studies concerning women’s ways of know­ing) connectedness are inherent in both the third- and the fourth-order consciousness. Autonomy is not meant to be defined as separateness. Kegan views autonomy and connectedness as stylistic differences in the fourth order of consciousness: autonomy emerges through committed relationship, which requires individualization of role identity to remain vital.

Fifth-order consciousness, postmodernism, may be illustrated in the differ­ences between two couples. The fourth-order couple respects each other as com­plicated persons who make important and different contributions, often complementary, to the relationship. They look at each other’s “culture” to dis­cover and honor the terms by which the other is creating meaning and value.

Conversely, the fifth-order couple sets aside any belief that the source of their closeness resides in the cooperation of psychologically whole and distinct selves. They are suspicious of any tendency to feel identified with one side of any oppo­site and to identify the other with the other side of that opposite. The fifth-order couple refuses to see themselves sharing a single system or form. Their rela­tionship allows them to interact in ways that celebrate their “multipleness” and the fact that many forms of each self are encouraged to emerge.

The Role of Conflict

Kegan’s view of the role of conflict may best be illustrated through the ways in which the fourth- and fifth-order couples approach conflict. The fourth-order couple views conflicting parties as each being whole and distinct. They promote the willingness and ability of each party to understand and respect the position of the other. The transformation of the relationship really involves the transfor­mation of attitudes that each party holds concerning the other person’s ability to respect his or her position, not the positions themselves. The changes that are brought about involve greater understanding of both positions by both parties, altered attitudes about the other’s understanding of one’s own position, and new possibilities in different problem-solving approaches. This represents integrated negotiation as it is usually practiced. The fifth-order couple would seek to use conflict to transform one’s own attitudes and positions and one’s need to “win.” There is a mutual suspicion that one’s own and the other’s integrity is also ide­ology, which translates to partiality. The post-modern approach to conflict sug­gests that the protracted nature of conflict means that it may be important that the other side remains in the conflict. One or both of the conflicting parties has most likely revealed a partial position. The conflict reveals the incompleteness of the parties who have the conflict in order to recover their true complexity.

Simply put, the postmodern view of conflict would have disputants (1) consider the protracted conflict as a sign that one or both parties have become identified with the polar ends of the issue; (2) reflect that the disputing relationship is not due to opposing views but an expression of incompleteness; (3) view the relationship, as cantankerous as it may be, as an opportunity to reveal your multiplicity; and (4) concentrate on ways to let the conflicting relationship “transform” the parties rather than focusing on resolution of the conflict. Resolv­ing conflicts through transforming the conflicting parties is difficult because post­modern conflict resolution requires people to organize experience at a level beyond the fourth order, something few people can do (Argyris, 1993). This approach requires a trans-systemic or cross-theoretical epistemological organization.