Adolescence is the period between childhood and adulthood and covers the transformation brought about by bodily changes, attainment of reproductive capacity, and attainment of emotional maturity adequate for child rearing. It is also the development and attainment of an adequate personality and responsibility that will make the individual useful and independent in an adult world. The term “adolescence” denotes “growing into maturity”.

Awakening into adolescence. During adolescence, the young man and woman seek to develop a personality and to attain individuality and independence. The adolescent seeks to satisfactorily answer the question, “Who am I? What do I want to be?“. There may seem to be a dilemma here because the adolescent must have uniqueness as a person yet at the same time must belong to a group. Hence, he struggles to define himself as distinct from his elders, to exert his imprint on society and community and to identify with a group (hence the special language, dress, etc., of the barkada). He must be different and yet the same because he must stand out and yet belong.

In an effort to define this uniqueness and personality, the individual tests his capabilities and will, therefore, engage in risk-taking behavior to prove his abilities. This is the basis for the well recognized “rebel without a cause” personality frequently adapted. It is expressed in smoking, drinking, drugs, barkada, and certainly so, in sexual behavior, with its attendant dangers of HIV and others. And, of course, part of that pattern of behavior leads to harassment and abuse, and a willingness to expose oneself to or participate in “adult” behavior. Preparation of the young, in terms of giving them an awareness of what can happen and, as importantly, giving them an idea of how these situations can be handled, is an essential part of an adequate adolescent experience. It is important to remember that the adolescent, by the nature of the psychological state he/she is in, is incapable of seeing the consequences of his/her actions.

The sexual awakening. Sexuality is an integral part of the human being because it is on the basis of the sexual instinct that the human race is perpetuated. While factors that will condition the manifestations of the sexual instinct may be operative even during fetal life, infancy and childhood, that sexual system becomes initially functional only at puberty. On the basis of biological factors the male develops in a manner different from the female.

The male is awakened to sexual pleasure at puberty and is repeatedly subjected to the orgasmic experience, an experience that the female does not have. This gives the male a genitally centered focus which seeks relief and gratification. The female awakens sexually on the basis of an emotionally centered (as against genitally-centered) need for interpersonal relationship with a significant other, in short, to a love relationship.

The young man, therefore, must contend with two seemingly separate and sometimes conflicting drives. One seeks genital satisfaction and relief in ejaculation and devoid of emotional overtones towards the sexual object. The other is basically emotional and in relation to which he may consciously seek to deny or suppress any genital overtones. And when he realizes that he is responding to his “love object” in genital terms, he is often confused and embarrassed. With increasing maturity, he begins to realize the integration of these two drives into one. [Full integration is not frequently attained so that men are frequently able to function sexually at various levels of integration].

The young man and the young woman approach this vital human interrelationship on different grounds. The woman, from the beginning, loves and seeks emotional expression of that love. The young man, at one level, seeks genital relief and satisfaction even without emotional involvement, and at another level may experience emotional involvement and seek physical expression of that involvement. The woman is often oblivious of this dual basis in the man. On the other hand, the male may discover that emotional response may lead a woman to give of herself even if he himself, has no emotional interest. It is important to keep in mind that the two sexes awaken differently and interrelate to each other on this differential basis. They are not playing the game with the same set of rules, so to speak.

Interrelationships. Relationships do not develop suddenly out of no where. It is developed gradually so that in friendship and in play, the young boy and girl learn how to interrelate with others, refine that experience to a particular special other, develop that feeling into a crush, a puppy love, into a love relationship that dwarfs all else. But it takes years to develop this capacity to interrelate in that manner with a significant other.

For a long while, these feelings, while overwhelming, are transient or transitory. It is only much later does it become a stable, lasting relationship that is later needed for the rearing of the offspring. Hence, it is extremely rare that this kind of relationship and feeling reaches out to only one person in a lifetime. It is more usually a series of relationships as the process matures, the two are bounded together in an intense “you-me” interaction that cements the pair together. Later, when the bonds that holds them together are well established, that relationship becomes less intense, becomes a “we” relationship vis-à-vis the world. The ardent love of formation shifts to a more relaxed but a more stable relationship.

The role of parental relationships. The adolescent is reared to be able to take up his role in the world, to conceive and eventually rear offspring. This reproductive goal consists not merely the conception of a new life; it is conception, pregnancy, birth, and the care of the young until they are able to care for themselves. While in some species of animals, the offspring are able to care for themselves once the egg is fertilized, among the higher animals this is unlikely. And in the human, this is a process that reaches out until adulthood or maturity. This care of the young involves not only the mother but the father as well, and therefore it is vital that the parents be bonded together for that duration. [While survival and adequate maturity can occur even if this care of the young is deficient, this survival and maturity may be compromised].

The biologic forces that make new life possible are necessarily sexual, but forces that keep the parents bonded together for the duration are fundamentally emotional and psychological and take the form of a love relationship. It is the result of interpersonal affective or love relationship between a man and a woman that will lead them eventually to become father and mother. This relationship is a refinement of the interpersonal relationship of a couple who seek sharing and a union of two into one. It is a sharing of ideas, of experiences, of aspirations, even of possessions, frequently to the exclusion of others. Life becomes such that it has no meaning without the other, the object of that affection. It is fundamentally an existential experience that recognizes neither past nor future, but merely the present.

A stable relationship between father and mother is the best and ideal context within which a child is reared and develops. However, there are situations that lead to single parenthood and broken families. So the factors that would usually lead to an adequate adolescent development do not exist. This does not condemn the young person to a necessarily warped development. Fortunately, the human is resilient to an extreme. What tends to complicate the issues today is the rapidity of change (see Alvin Toeffler : Future Shock, 1971) and the phenomenon of the young frequently developing outside the context of the family, as when they obtain schooling away from home. Consider the difference of the traditional agricultural or fishing society with that in the modern world.

The changing society. In time, however, the organization and patterns of human society began to change. Towns and cities increased in size to proportions unheard of and untenable once upon a time, the tight family structure loosened so that parental and family control over the rearing of the young was often lost; the values and purposes of society were altered. Change in society took place, insidiously and unnoticed at first, but eventually obvious not only from one generation to the next, but from one sibling to the next. The stabilizing forces that helped the procreation and rearing of the young became less influential so that the development and maturing young were often to develop and mature by themselves. The variety of results should then have been foreseeable and understandable.

The societies of several centuries ago were more compact and interdependent communities so that the individuals, within families and clans, were more supportive of one another than they are today. It was still necessary and desirable that the individual young man and woman develop a sense of adulthood and maturity, but the importance of this individual responsibility was not as urgent because of the many supportive forces society provided.

Traditional and accepted patterns are not the only determinants of behavioral development in the adolescent. In the modern context particularly, the usual formative influences (family, tradition, elders, clergy) tend to be diluted by rapidly changing peer examples, role models, media and the very notion of rapid change and the absence of performance. The interfering influences of these factors are greater when the adolescent lives outside the direct influence of the more traditional guideposts. While there is no denying the intensity of media influence on the adolescent, awareness of how media does alter and determine behavior is still vague.

The development of an identity and individuality, which is an essential part of adolescence, is much complicated by modern living, and affects the sense of person hood each individual will have, gender identity being an important facet of that personality. The societal roles once open to the adolescent two or three generations back, were few, particularly for females. The modern world opens opportunities beyond wife, mother, spinster aunt, religious nun, to now include office-worker, computer programmer, airline stewardess, etc. And because it is of the utmost importance to the individual to establish an individuality, frequently this is done with peculiar choices. The adolescent in the modern world often needs help in identifying a comfortable niche in society.

Developing strength of character. In the contemporary world, these supportive forces have loosened their influences on the individual and it becomes imperative then for the individual to develop strength of character to achieve a degree of self-control not required of him under simpler circumstances. Society’s role increasingly becomes that of providing the mechanisms whereby the individual can develop a true sense of responsibility and discipline to enable him to live an adjusted, useful and fulfilling life today. How this is to be accomplished will require dedicated effort and innovation because the simple solutions of yesterday may be inadequate today or no longer tenable.

While we may not be as appreciative today of some of the values we held especially dear once upon a time, a change of perspective brought about by this constant and rapid change insinuates that nothing is permanent and everything is evanescent. We should review these values because they often represent realities we have tended to overlook or downgrade. The strength of character required in celibacy and sexual abstinence except in situations where it is evidently called for, as within marriage, is precisely the strength of character we need to achieve, in this modern world, not a creature of circumstance but rather a determinant of circumstance. And we should seek this in the sources of inspiration and discipline in human behavior we have always turned to-- a sense of justice and fairness, a religious acknowledging the limitations of man as creature, a spirituality that sees a meaning beyond the limits of this world and creation.

These are primordial forces functioning in rapidly changing modern circumstances. The forces will not go away simply because some may view them as outdated. Nor will the circumstances adjust to our preferences simply because we find them disturbing and uncomfortable. This is our special challenge: to accept the reality of both and to see how we can reconcile them with the least harm to man. We may never achieve total reconciliation, but we can approach it, and that should be our goal.

A paper presented during FAD’s First Student Congress November 20-21, 1998 held at the University of the East, Manila. Organized by the Foundation for Adolescent Development, Inc.