Girls in Adolescence

S. Mermiga, N Voura, N. Benetos, D. Chatzigrigoriadou, C. Thomopoulou, G. Koutloubasi, N. Darai, E. Paraschou

Adolescence is a process, rather than a time period, of achieving the attitudes and beliefs needed for effective participation in society. Adolescence may also be defined: as a period of physical development, a period of sexual development, development in the family environment and social development (peer group pressure).

Physical development

Physically adolescence comprises several distinct periods. Pubescence refers to the two-year period preceding puberty and to the physical changes taking place during that period. The climax of pubescence is called puberty. The onset of puberty involves many physical changes. Basic physical changes force the body into adolescent girl’s consciousness. She loses the security of a familiar body because of new sensations, features and the body becomes an important symbol itself in which the adolescent invests emotions of security, self-worth and competence.

In the typical girl, the adolescent growth spurt begins shortly after the age of 10 and peaks about the age of 12. Ordinarily the first pubertal event is the occurrence of breast buds at an average age of 11 years. A girl’s breasts are important to her because the breasts are traditional symbols of beauty, motherhood and sexual expression. Another pubertal change is the menarche. Most girls reach menarche between the ages of 12 and 14. Many girls have unpleasant experiences relating to menarche and keep the event secret. However, their experiences differ according to various factors including the girl’s age when it occurs, her expectations, her information, her family and her own personality. Reactions to menarche vary from highly positive to highly negative. Some girls are proud of attaining adulthood. In contrast, other girls attach negative values to the process.

A structural feature of special concern in adolescence is height and weight. Growth in height is rapid during infancy and early childhood but the rate of growth slows down until early puberty when it speeds up again. The average girl practically stops growing in stature at age 15. In parallel the weight spurt for girls is between the ages 10 and 14. Both overweight and underweight appear more frequently among girls. The tendency to put on weight may be normal and temporary.

In addition adolescent girls face some problems such as malnutrition, smoking and alcohol. During adolescence, nutritional needs are greatest in puberty.  A major problem is the preference for snack food over proper diet. The diet of many girls is often deficient in essential elements and this bad diet may influence their mature physiques, their resistance to infectious diseases and their health for all the years ahead. Smoking is another bad habit usually established in adolescence and very popular in both sexes. Smoking causes many health problems as blood pressure, increased heart rate and cancer. Last, alcohol is a very addicted substance. It affects the physical development of girls, especially between the ages 14 and 16 and causes serious health problems such as cirrhosis of the liver.

Emotional development

Regarding emotional development stress, aggression and loneliness are some of the feelings that influence girls in a major level. During adolescence girls feel very stressful and unsafe for their future and they can’t accept that their lives change and being characterized by difficulties.

Other feelings with largely negative effect are hostility and aggression. In adolescence, the girl faces expectations, especially from her mother. Consequently, her feelings of hostility may be disguised in somatic symptoms and various defensive behaviors.

The sense of loneliness is also discomforting for girls. It includes low self-esteem, anxiety, depression and interpersonal hostilities. Loneliness relates to physical symptoms and even to suicide, as indicated in case reports. Girls who feel lonely in a great level, are depressed, unhappy, lacking self consciousness and relatively dependent on others in decision-making. Loneliness may be the result of unsatisfactory relationships with significant others and inadequate social skills.

Sexual Development

In adolescence, girls develop their sexual activity by observing the opposite sex, flirting with boys, and paying more attention to their appearance more than ever. The fact is that the sexual development of young people is affected in fundamental sense by what is taking place around them. Today we live in a society which is remarkably open to sexuality. However, there are some factors that modify the sexual behavior of an adolescent girl such as family, religion and friends. First, parents have more strict approaches on sexuality. They influence their daughters’ sexuality which is under development related to other social, cultural and religious factors. Parents, on the other hand, may be the most effective sex educators, especially if they are open without being intrusive and critical. Parents can offer monitoring and supervision, assisting the teenager daughter to delay involvement in sexual activity. Alternatively, they may let her set her own boundaries and make her own decisions about the pace of her sexual development.

Secondly, there is good evidence to show that religious faiths have an impact on sexual behavior during adolescence. The girls who have religious beliefs are likely to delay sexual activity and may also be more prone to guilt and anxiety about this aspect.

A number of studies have considered that differential impact of parent and peer influence on girl’s sexual behavior. Results showed that the influence of parents and friends varied in correlation with age. The effect of discussion with the mother was strongest in those between 15 and 17, while the effect of friends’ approval was most marked in the 19-year-old group.

Furthermore, girls pay more attention to ideas of love, romance and intimacy. For them the experience of passionate love or an all consuming involvement in an intimate relationship can become the most important thing in their lives. Falling in love is part of the search for identity and self-definition. Thus, for girls an experience of love and intimacy contributes to the development of identity and maturity, through opportunities for self-exploration.

Also, girls stress the importance of disclosure and support in close relationships. Close relationships of a sexual nature during this stage of development have a high degree of impact on the young girl’s life. If the young girl manages the break-up of the relationship without too much trauma, then the next step may be developmentally more mature. On the other hand, if the loss is too painful, then it may take some time to overcome it. In any event, we should not underestimate the significance of intimate relationships for adolescent girls.

The Adolescent In The Family

The adolescent stage includes many changes regarding parent-adolescent relationship. As teenagers grow up, need to be more independed, to get new experiences and achieve control of their own lives. It is believed, especially for girls, that the emotional disengagement from parents is a fundamental element towards autonomy. In this stage young girls are most in need of establishing their right to freedom, while at the same time parents do not want to lose control.

It is commonly believed that the adolescent years bring with them conflict and disagreement in home. Researchers, on the other hand, report good relationships between parents and teenagers, with relatively little evidence of a generation gap in attitudes to careers, education and morality. Of course, there are families in which there are problematic relationships between parents and teenager daughters. Young girls perceive their parents as more conservative in their attitudes than parents believe themselves to be.

Quality of communication between parents and daughters vary depending on a range of variables such as social background, age of the girl and religious beliefs. The most common reason for the communication breakdown is failure to understand the other’s point of view. Another factor that affects the parent-adolescent relationship is the type of parenting. Young girls reared in families with authoritative parents do better on a range of qualities, including self-esteem, perspective-taking and likelihood of avoiding risk behavior such as drugs and immature sexual activity. Such parents show warmth, provide structure in family rules, so that the young girl has expectations and rules for her behavior. Adolescent girls who grow up in neglectful or indifferent families are those most at risk. They are likely to be more impulsive and get involved in high-risk behaviors.

Finally, there are some differences between mothers and fathers in their relationships with their teenage daughters. All studies have reported mothers as being more supportive, more interested in their daughters and more engaged in the parenting task. Mothers maintain regular contact with their daughters and engage themselves in adolescents’ interests. Also they closely monitor their daughters by acting both as disciplinarians and advisors and serve as confidants who share experiences. Whereas, fathers are important in setting long-term goals, in determining rules and providing discipline. However, they do not get to know their teenagers daughters as individual personalities or support them in their emotional progress through adolescence.

The Adolescent In The Peer Group

Close friendships are the rule during the teenage years. Almost all young girls are eager to participate in shared activities and exchange ideas and opinions with their friends. The quality of relationship that adolescents are able to establish with their peer group is important. To the extent that individuals can identify and integrate with a group, they will derive corresponding benefits in terms of emotional support, assistance and social learning and this in turn is likely to be reflected in their self-esteem. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of adolescent relationships across the teenage years is the disintegration of the gender segregation.

Usually during early to mid-adolescence personal needs and social pressures direct adolescents towards at least one peer group because the alternative is loneliness and isolation. Friendships usually begin at school, while time spent together outside of school strengthens the bond. Some young girls find it difficult to establish out-of-school friendships because they lack confidence or the necessary social skills. Many adolescent girls feel awkward about meeting and joining established group. This may be partly due to the fact that in adolescence young girls link to a range of groups. These different groups demand different roles, have different norms and may be difficult for some teenagers to penetrate as newcomers.

By comparison with adolescent young men, young women are more concerned with forming emotional, intimate relationships with one, or a few, best friends. For adolescent young women the peer group is seen primarily as a network of intimate friendships, a place to find a friend and a source of support and confidence. Girls rate their friendships as higher in affection, intimacy, companionship and satisfaction. They are in more frequent contact with their close friends and there is an increasing ability among girls to seek constructive solutions to problems. Friendships are based on a completely different set of structural relationships than those with parents. They are a move to intimacy that includes the development of a more exclusive focus, openness to self-disclosure and the sharing of problems and advice. The central notion is that friends tell one another and get to know just about everything that is going on in one another’s lives.

Importantly, adolescent girls take their major values in life from their parents, while they consult both parents and friends about relationship and personal problems. In general terms, parental and peer influences complement each other in ways that prepare adolescent girls for more mature relationships in their future lives. Family relationships during childhood provide a strong emotional foundation for peer relationships during adolescence.