The Crucible of Current Gender Demands and Their Effect on AdolescenceEssay Preview: The Crucible of Current Gender Demands and Their Effect on AdolescenceReport this essayJeffrey ScheinAdolescent PsychologySpring 05Dr. Warren SpielbergMidterm PaperThe Crucible of Current Gender Demands and Their Effect on AdolescenceGender has always had a major impact on adolescence for several obvious reasons.Adolescence is the time when our physical sexual characteristics are developing, alongwith an influx of hormones, and the onset of sexual urges towards one another. It isvirtually impossible to ignore the concepts of gender and gender related issues duringadolescence not only due to these physical and chemical changes, but socially, sex willNow more than at perhaps any other time in modern history gender-role, genderidentity, and sexuality in general, are at the forefront of society issues. Naturally this ishaving a greater impact on adolescents than at any other time before. Sexuality iseverywhere in the media; on television, in magazines, in the movies, and in our music.Ideas about gender, gender-roles, and sexual orientation are changing rapidly, while atthe same time igniting vigorous debate and discourse from all sides of the issues. Alongwith changing attitudes of gender demands and expectations are open discussions aboutgay marriage, gays in the military, women in the military, HIV and other sexuallytransmitted diseases, child molestation etc. Now more than any other time in ourcountrys history, adolescents are openly exposed to sexuality issues, and sexuallyexplicit material and information, perhaps complicating what, obviously, is already a veryintense time in ones life as far as gender and sexuality issues are concerned.Gender, to begin with, refers less to ones physical reality as it does to societysideas and concepts of what it means to be male or female. Gender-role refers to patternsof behavior that are partly due to genetic makeup, but perhaps more profoundly fromtraits that are considered in fashion at a particular time and in a particular culture.Since adolescence is a very intense time in social terms and for sexuality issuesand the development of gender concepts, it stands to reason that adolescents have ahigher level of concern over conforming to gender expectations and demands of the day,even if they are stereotypes. This creates an environment that has led to what is known asthe Gender Intensification Hypothesis (Hill & Lynch 1983). The idea is that variouschanges, chemical and otherwise, associated with puberty contribute to an increasedconcern about conformity to such gender stereotypes. Because adolescents are stillunclear on the meaning of gender and sexuality issues they are more likely to be veryrigid in their stereotyping of gender behavior. It is this rigidity in the face of verycomplex concepts that allows adolescents to develop a clearer understanding of genderand expected gender behavior. Only once they have solidified their understanding ofgender, can they begin to think of these concepts in a more flexible manner.Even more difficult, especially in todays society, and specifically in our Westernculture, are the specific issues of sexual identity for the adolescent. Sexual Identity isdescribed as the development of a cohesive sense of self as a sexual being in relation toculturally determined categories (Savin-Williams & Rodriguez 1993).In todays society, the adolescent is bombarded with strong images and expectations regarding gender and sexuality. The media sends very strong messages to todays teens about gender-role behavior, the extent to which ones behaviors are considered masculine or feminine according to cultural norms. Many of these images and messages that teens are exposed to via advertising, television, movies, and music, for example, tend to escalate the rate at which teens might otherwise normally mature into sexuality. There is also a tendency for these influences to heighten the pressure on teens to conform to certain standards of sexual attractiveness, many of which are unrealistic.
Jane Brown and others (1990) found both of these suggestions to be true, in that, television, for one, has a major impact on gender-role expectations and sexuality on todays adolescent. It is obvious by nature of todays greater middle class affluence and the development of the television medium over the past generation that teens have far greater access to television than their parents did. Television, just as other media, has gotten far more permissive and far less censored over the years. Whereas in the 50s and 60s even married couples on television rarely, if ever, slept in the same bed, sexually explicit content is all over television today, both in visual and verbal content. According to several studies the average teenage viewer is exposed to more than 2,400 sexual references per year, and even more so among teens who watch soap operas and other dramas. Research has shown that watching television has a great impact on adolescent expectations about sex and sexuality.
Teens are also very likely to be heavily influenced by television and other media, especially advertising about specific gender-role expectations regarding attractiveness and body image. The ideals of “thinness” for females are often very unrealistic, especially for the physiology of the adolescent female. The current standards for female attractiveness as portrayed in todays media is the slimmest it has been in eighty years, and the risk for eating disorders among adolescent females is as great as it has ever been, while young girls desperately try to fulfill these unrealistic expectations.
Gender-role and current attitudes among adolescents and society as a whole towards gender-role behaviors and expectations have a varying range of influence on the experience of the adolescent. Gender-role, as stated earlier, is largely influenced by attitudes and traits in fashion with current times and within various cultures. For instance, there is a notion that women are more emotional than men, and cry more often, while men tend to be more stoic about expressing such “weak” or feminine emotions, even though there is no physiological evidence whatsoever to support this claim. This kind of thinking leads to gender-role behavior and the pressure on adolescents to act in ways that are considered either masculine or feminine. Many adolescents of today are under heightened pressure to engage in gender-role adaptation, which is defined entirely by
a) The pressures to develop femininity are often associated with a strong need to show self-respect, and with a desire to become masculine. In particular, some adolescents with feminine-gendered gender roles are pressured to have strong sexual needs and fantasies. They also may feel that a desire to feel like a woman can and must be fulfilled by an authority figure of their choice. This sense of self/self-awareness in adolescence does not have to be explicitly expressed, as there are some ways to learn to recognize these aspects, as suggested by the literature. However, there are many ways that adolescents can be raised in environments which are more accepting, accepting of and accepting of all non-conforming and non-masculine bodies.
This section presents all of the evidence for the development of both a healthy and a healthy gender role. However, the focus has been on the role of the child in developing the positive or masculine/feminine role, and the role of the environment, and society as a whole, when the child is a girl. The focus is also on the roles being set out in various cultures. As mentioned earlier, most of the evidence for the developing of the positive or feminine role has been applied only to a small number of cultures.<9>
As discussed previously, there have been few studies that could address the development of the feminine role. More often than not we are led to assume that the gender roles of children develop because most children have no role, however, this assumption is based on the assumption that mothers and fathers are different (eg. men). Most anthropologists are aware that there are not as many studies and therefore many children of different gender roles, as there are with some of the other aspects of gender analysis that are discussed in this book. In my view, it appears that there is a single gender analysis of different child role models, so many children from all different groups are analyzed and analyzed, not just the different groups of children. If both the maternal and the paternal roles are understood in the same way (or both parents and their children are perceived to be male with this perspective) then this could be considered an equal-opportunity, not an inherently inferior-opportunity, but nonetheless a well-rounded and well-balanced set of gender roles. For instance, one can understand parental roles by what they are (as described previously and as a result of research done by many social sciences experts or by some researchers from the sociolinguistics profession) for boys and men in different ways by analyzing the differences in gender roles across social groups like the same-sex relationship. In this way, the cultural factors in which the different gender roles arise can also be understood, and such the differences can be used to develop various social roles throughout the gender spectrum, as well as in different groups. Thus, a successful explanation for the development of the individual roles of children in social groups such as the child role has to be included at the very least in the theory of social theory and social development.<10>
There has been some evidence for how these social roles evolved in different groups under different cultural factors, for example through gender-role and cultural exchange. However, no research has been done on how gender roles were developed within different cultures, such as in the Western world, or how groups of different cultural groups developed them in different ways. It seems that cultural and social factors do not make up the same, in