Self-Identity During Adolescent Development

One of the most important factors for developing a healthy self-identity during adolescent development is a strong and supportive relational system. This could include the subjective definition of “family” and what it means to be a family, which may include genetic relatives, and/or friends who are loving, give advice, and have one’s best intention in mind, like the traditional idea of family. This is a collective unit who shows patience, understanding, and does not pass judgement to a growing adolescent during a time that may be confusing and difficult, due to an intersection of active environmental, physical, and cognitive factors. I also think that it is important for parents specifically, not to impose gender expectations, including gender …show more content…
Instead of referring to a biological daughter or biological son as “she” or “him” as soon as the child is born, they should use gender neutral pronouns until the child is old enough to identify their own preferred pronoun. Not only does these imposing gender roles and a heteronormative upbringing, limit a child’s creativity and self-confidence, but these impositions can seriously affect their psychological well-being, as the pressures to adhere to these standards only intensify throughout adolescence. Gender stereotypes, specifically, can cause individuals to feel pressured to live up to these hyper roles when applied, expected, and imposed by parents and others units, like friends, teachers, and the media. This will often leave little boys feeling like they can only act, feel, and think in ways that are linked to ideas of masculinity, such as aggressiveness, lack of emotion, and leadership. Little girls are often forced to act, feel, and think in ways that only adhere to ideas of femininity, which are usually submissiveness, emotionally reactive, and weary of their …show more content…
This may include the encouragement of having real life interpersonal interactions that focus on praising each other. This is rather than more impersonal interactions that perhaps are in the forms of different types of media, and that are more likely cause an individual to experience decreased self-confidence and self-worth due to its depictions of unrealistic beauty, body, and lifestyle standards. Another aspect of this is to encourage willingness to have open ended conversations, without being invasive, judgmental, and respecting the adolescent’s privacy. This allows for the supportive networks and developing adolescents to exchange stories and experiences, while acknowledging each other’s struggles and feelings, and provide different perspectives and approaches to problems and various situations. This is to show the adolescent that these experiences are all part of the process of developing a healthy identity, but no experience, or even even those considered a “mistake,” can define them. Ultimately there are cognitive, psychological, and behavioral approaches to advocating, supporting, and aiding one towards a healthy self-identity during adolescent development, but I believe maintaining a limited hierarchy is also very