Girls Entering Adolescence Today Have Greater Pressures and Difficulties than Young Women in Previous Generations - Term Paper Example

Shawn S. Marsudidjaja Marjorie Ford EWRT 1A – Final Draft 6:30 - 8:45 Section Prompt: Girls Entering Adolescence Today Have Greater Pressures and Difficulties than Young Women in Previous Generations. Girls Entering Adolescence Today Have Greater Pressures Adolescence is the period following the onset of puberty, which marks the transition from childhood to adulthood, and it is usually important to every person since it greatly influences the entire life. Many girls today enter adolescence between the age of ten to thirteen years where they start experiencing physical and psychological changes. Most of these changes are usually unexpected and young girls find it to be a challenge to cope with them. Today the challenges have increased and young girls have greater pressure and difficulties than young women in previous generations. Adolescent girls today face a lot of confusion on dating and relationships, which was not experienced by young women in earlier generations. The older women today when they were growing up not allowed involving themselves in any sexual activity as it was taboo in most of the communities for girls to associate with boys at that tender age. This was advantageous to the girls since they eased away from the confusion about dating and pre-marital sex, which is now the biggest source of frustration for the teenagers. The teen girls disclosed that after their bodies have changed and have started to mature, they do experience the desire for affection toward men. As a result most of them engage in premature relationships where they end up being hurt since they usually lead to break-ups. Others end up being pregnant and they find a lot of frustration about the state of their bodies, which they never expected. Since at this age they do not have adequate education on sexuality and are not prepared psychologically, physically and financially to have a baby, they end up being depressed. The consequences of this is abortions and babies being born and thrown away or even sold to people with bad motives. All these problems of relationships and sexuality make it difficult for the young girls to maneuver smoothly through this stage of adolescence .Some of the immature adolescence have ended up in the hands of wrong people. Such wrong people have done evil things to them, like cold murder, robbing and even raping them. Such cases been reported in many instances, people like criminals have taken advantages for them luring them with cheap gifts and ends up doing to them all those evils. In the past, young women tended to move from childhood to adulthood directly, and marriage, done at an early age, this acted as the turning point. After marriage, the woman adopted all adult responsibilities and would start her household immediately. The situation today has greatly changed as the system of education prolonged; hence, girls have to spend the better part of their youth studying. For instants one to sturdy up to university, the girl will take, twenty-four years unlike the past when education not much regarded compared to today’s world. Girls expected to perform the same way as the boys in spite of their biological differences, and continue with academic excellence the way they were before the onset of puberty. This pressure for academic performance is usually high, and they find it difficult to maintain the same academic standards since a considerable amount of time is spent worrying about the body. Most of them do not find the changing body comfortable and they try all means possible to maintain the body in the shape that appears to be acceptable to society. This normally resulted in poor eating habits, which may affect their health, and consequently affecting their academic performance. The research indicates that the performance of girl’s drops gradually as they reach puberty compared to boys. Teen girls reveal that they encounter friendship dynamics where they feel betrayed by their friends, resulting in conflicts. This is usually out of negative competition where they want to outdo each other in the wrong way and in insignificant issues. For example, if a girl perceives her friend to be more beautiful than her, she becomes frustrated and may do all sorts of crazy things to feel superior to her friend. This leads to friendships breaking apart where both parties end up being hurt and discouraged, further increasing the challenges of the 21st century girl. In the early times, there was not much emphasis on such friendships and hence the women in the past never faced the challenge on friendship dynamics. Modern youngsters also have poor relationships and communication with the adults especially their parents and teachers. They find their parents to be backward and they think they cannot understand their needs, which according to them seem to be unique. Similarly, the older women said that parents find the demands by the teens to be unrealistic and unattainable, hence leading to communication break-up between the two groups. This increases the difficulties of the modern girls since they lack someone who can understand them and further increases the confusion. In the past young people were obligated to respect the older ones and hence the challenge of poor relationship between the two did not exist. Due to poor communication, some teenage girls have developed hatred towards their parents, as they think their parents not concerned about them especially when corrected to the right direction. The young girls said that they face the challenge of social isolation since most of them as they undergo the transition to adulthood lack people who they can relate well. They attributed this to identity crisis where they are confused about what is right and wrong, hence, not being able to understand the direction to take in life. The social isolation often leads to low self-esteem which if not handled properly results to depression, hence affecting the growth of the girl. Some have also taken away their life through taking poisons and some have hanged themselves. They also suffer from bullying from the older girls when they fail to comply with their demands, most of which are usually unrealistic. The older women did not face these kinds of challenges when they were growing up because there was no problem of identity crisis as their roles and responsibilities were well known. There is inadequate education on life skills in the current generation, the life skills entails educating them how to handle most situations in life like relationship and how to cope up with the changes in the body. Many girls admitted that they lack vital life skills, which can help to solve their problems. Girls do grow up without being able to perform even the basic responsibilities such as cooking for the family and doing home cleaning; hence, it becomes difficult for them to fit into the society. The main reason for the girls lacking life skills is that the parents nowadays are ever busy and do not take the time to impart to their young ones these important skills. For examples, most parents have few contacts hours with their kids due to busy job schedules most of the times the child spent with house helps who have less interest on the child. In the past, it was impossible to find a woman who lacked knowledge on basic skills since such a kind of a woman be seen as a failure, could bring a lot of shame to the family background. It is evident that the current young girls face a lot more pressure and difficulties as they transit from childhood to adulthood than did the women who grew up in the past. The problems as elaborated above revolved around identity, sexuality, relationships and friendship and have been caused mainly by technology. The government, private organizations and every person needs to fight for the needs of these dear ones to ensure that they transit smoothly and comfortably to adulthood. If such consideration done we will be able to see no big differences in the woman in the past and women in our current generation. The change therefore, should start with us at individual level. Read More