Consultation with the Specialist
Adolescent Social Development
Robert L. Johnson MD, FAAP1
1 Director of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ.
Adolescence is a time set aside in our culture for our children to learn how to be adults. Throughout history this societal responsibility has been satisfied in various ways by different cultural groups. Alex Hailey, in his book Roots, describes the ancient African adolescence of the young Kunta Kinte:
At 12 years of age the boys of the village were separated from their families and taken to a camp in the jungle. Over a period of 6 weeks, the men of the community taught the boys all the lessons of adulthood. At the end of the encampment they were tested to determine if they had learned these lessons of adulthood. Those boys who successfully passed the test were granted adult status and circumcised as a visible sign of their manhood. These young people who left their village as boys returned to their society as men.
Adolescents in our culture must accomplish the same task of adolescence as the young Kunte Kinte. They must:
1. Emancipate themselves within the structure that gave them nurture and support during their childhood (usually the family or some similar surrogate structure);
2. Establish their sexual identity—make decisions about maleness and femaleness and love-object gender;
Establish their intellectual identity and place themselves within the religious, cultural, ethnic, moral, and political constructs of our society;
