Adolescence-Personal Narrative Analysis

The purpose of this assignment is to analyse how a child’s life is socially constructed, in relating to their development into adulthood, addressing particular issues that consider essentialist and deterministic perspective of the transitions faced during adolescences. In brief description essentialist is how one perceives themselves during situations they cannot control, and deterministic is things that can be controlled by prior conditions, such as decision making. Using the following quote which is about a child’s experience back in the 1915 “And according to the law I was damned. I had no money, I was weak, I was ugly, I was unpopular, I had a chronic cough, I was cowardly, I smelt…but a child’s belief in its own short comings is not …show more content…
According to Arnett (2007) during adolescent, girls have lower self-esteem than boys, also they seek to be accepted based on physical appearance more than boys. Furthermore girls are critical with own appearance, usually not happy with own body image, tiring to compete with the latest cultural trend setters has impact on their self esteem. There have been cases where the impact was so major leading to develop life threatening illness such as anorexia due to dieting (Littleton and Ollendick, 2000).
This links to Maslow’s (1943) theory; hierarchy of needs, which is portrayed in a shape of a pyramid with each stages. Maslow called these five stages; physiological, safety", belongingness and love, esteem, self actualisation. According to Maslow (1943) these are the required needs for individuals to reach self actualisation, this theory suggests that children need each stages to develop, however in Orwell’s case shows that he may not have reached these stages at due time, his self esteem issues possibly have had an impact on him reaching self actualisation (Shaffer and Kipp,