Identity Change In Adolescence

Adolescence is a transformative and sometimes tumultuous time in one's life, filled with conflicting beliefs, morals, values and identities. Relationships between friends, family, romantic partners, and peers all begin to shift and morph throughout the span of puberty, and often remain in flux for a significant period of time afterwards. into emerging adulthood and beyond.

While no two people share the exact same teenage experience, universally, there are major changes within multiple domains of life at the onset of puberty. Relationships with parents change in a significant way, as parenting style becomes more distal and salient (Lansford, 2017). Often times as teenagers begin to become more independent and place higher value on their

One reason that conflict may arise between a teenager and their parents could be due to the adolescent's "rebellion" against the rules and values of their parents, as the teen's identity branches off from that of their parents and expands over time. However, identity formation can differ across cultures, seeing as prolonged adolescence and the subsequent period of time now labeled "emerging adulthood" is most prevalent among Western cultures (Arnett, 2000). In many other cultures across the world, James Marcia's concept of identity foreclosure

Because of social and cultural attitudes regarding appearance and body types, particularly in a gendered way, the way a teenager is treated and which peer group accepts them can partially depend on their physical appearance and how early or late their bodily changes come along. An adolescent's self-perception can rely heavily on how they're perceived by others. For example, a girl who develops breasts at an earlier age than average is likely to experience more sexual harassment, unwanted attention, and the assumption that she may be older than she is. If she's treated as older, she's likely to begin to behave that way. An example of this within the opposite sex would be the way in which my cousin was treated like an adult when he was still a teenager, because of how tall he was. He was treated as less intelligent compared to his schoolmates because of the perception that he was older due to his larger stature (leading people to believe he must have been held back in school, or must have had a learning disability). I've experienced the opposite due to how petite and short I am, and in my 20s, I still experience this regularly. I find it hard to be taken seriously because I appear younger than I am, and people still make jokes about my height.. I've noticed that my feelings of inadequacy and that I'm not taken seriously have contributed to me not taking myself as seriously as I