Adolescence

Type of psychology: Developmental psychology

Field of study: Adolescence

Key concepts

• contraception

• development of sexual identity

• levels of sexual activity

• psychological effects

• puberty

Perhaps no single event during the adolescent years has as dramatic or widespread

effects as the realization of sexuality. The lives of both boys and girls

become wrapped in this new dimension. Adolescence is a time of sexual exploration

and experimentation, of sexual fantasies and sexual realities, of

incorporating sexuality into one’s identity. These processes determine adolescents’

comfort with their own emerging sexuality as well as with that of

others. Adolescents are also beginning to be involved in intimate relationships,

a context in which sexual activity often occurs.

In recent decades, many of the milestones by which adulthood is defined

and measured—full-time employment, economic independence, domestic

partnership/marriage, and childbearing—are attained at later ages in people’s

lives than they were in earlier generations, while puberty begins at earlier

ages. Thus, adolescents face many years between the onset of puberty,

fertility, and the natural intensification of sexual feelings and the achievement

of committed relationships and economic independence. As a result,

young people have sexual intercourse earlier in life, and there are greater

percentages of adolescents who are sexually experimenting at every age

level, a greater number of acts of premarital intercourse, and a greater number

of sexual partners before marriage.