Teen tango
Dr. S. YAMUNA
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Youngsters are in a very difficult situation during adolescence because their biological maturity and societal adulthood do not match.
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Puberty brings on physical and psychological changes in men and women, which enable them to develop relationships with members of opposite sex and achieve sexual comfort in this world.
Sexuality is a basic but most essential recognition that humans need other humans for survival and also that humans are capable of giving and receiving love and affection from birth to death. Sexuality is a complex phenomenon which involves interaction between one's a) biological sex b) core gender identity c) gender identity and d) gender role behaviour.
X or Y, boy or girl
Biological sex is determined at conception depending on the father's contribution of X or Y Chromosome. Core gender identity is established by two years of age when one's sense of maleness or femaleness is defined by the various environmental influences from parents and others.
Gender identity is established between two and six years when the child learns various behaviour associated with masculinity and femininity. Thus girls play with dolls and boys play with cars. Gender role behaviour is influenced by a personal desire for some type of sexual pleasure leading on to orgasm. This is mainly explored during adolescence and in adulthood. Sexual orientation (heterosexual or homosexual) develops in childhood, by six to eight years of age and not in adolescence.
Sexuality begins at birth. Male infants have erections; female infants have vaginal secretions since early days of life. Masturbation or self-genital stimulation for pleasure is common between two and six years of age in both boys and girls.
Children above six years of age have an inherent curiosity about the anatomy of the opposite sex. These are natural phenomena and the child is influenced to a great extent by the parents' attitude and their way of handling these phenomena. If a parent finds a four-year-old handling the genitals for pleasure, and aggressively reacts to it as "dirty" or "unclean", the child associates genitals and later sexuality as "dirty" and "unclean" and may have problems in his or her sexual life in future.
Establishment of relationships in teenagers varies with the stage of adolescence. Early adolescence is the homosexual phase where boys and girls have their own sex friends with whom they share their pleasure.
During mid-adolescence, attraction to the opposite sex begins. Depending on the parental and peer influences, group dating, individual dating and sexual intimacy develops in a sequential order. This is the heterosexual phase of sexuality.
Towards adulthood
Youngsters are in a very difficult situation during adolescence, when their biological maturity and societal adulthood do not match with each other. For e.g. a boy is capable of fatherhood from the time he achieves spermarche i.e. nocturnal emissions. Girls are capable of procreating when their menstrual cycles become ovulatory cycles. Society approves of sexual relations between them only after marriage, which is on an average a decade later. Psychosocially and cognitively they are not mature enough to look after a baby and nurture a dependent child.
Live for today
Young boys and girls, as early adolescents are concrete thinkers. They live for the present. With late adolescence, abstract thinking evolves which make young adults understand the consequences of impulsive sexual behaviour.
Psychologically, premarital sex, pregnancy, abortion, child birth, sexually transmitted diseases, promiscuity leave long term scars and guilt which can hamper the development of good marital relations. Hence abstinence is to be practised despite being exposed to sexually explicit material in the media.
Thorough knowledge of the reproductive tract including the physiology of reproduction should be imparted by parents, teachers or medical personnel to the teenagers. This would bring down the urge to indulge in premarital sex which
may lead to unforeseen consequences during adolescence and later.
Dr. Yamuna is a Chennai based Consultant Paediatrician and Adolescent Physician. She can be contacted at dryamunapaed@yahoo.com
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