Few studies have taken a dyadic approach to investigating adolescent sexuality. This is surprising as dyadic relationships form the principal con text in which girls express their sexuality and the initial context in which they make meaning of their sexual behavior. As we discussed earlier, this may relate to a Western tendency toward viewing individualness […]

Adolescent girls’ family environments serve as important contexts for learning about sexuality and for providing secure foundations from which adolescents can explore their sexuality. In addition, adolescent girls’ de veloping sexuality impacts the functioning of their family and the ways in which family members relate to them (Hill, 1988; Holmbeck & Hill, 1991). Girls’ development […]

There is a striking lack of empirical investigations of lesbian adoles cents’ sexuality. This is not very surprising since sexual development has not been the focus of research on girls’ sexuality. In other words, since lesbian adolescents do not become pregnant as a result of their sexual behavior nor does their sexual behavior put them […]

Loevinger (1976) describes the ego as a search for meaning, a frame of reference, and a process of creating a coherent orientation toward the world. According to Loevinger, ego development is a normal sequence of stages involving an increasingly articulated view of the self and others. Each stage is characterized by how the individual copes […]

Girls who experience menarche earlier than their peers have been found to engage in sexual intercourse sooner than their on-time and late maturing peers (Morris, Mallin, & Udry, 1982; Zabin, Smith, Hirsch, & Hardy, 1986). However, the impact of sex hormones on the sexual behavior of girls seems to depend on their social context. Specifically, […]

Inspired by the pioneering theoretical work of Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1986), numerous developmental researchers have begun to realize the importance of context and process in understanding human develop ment. Bronfenbrenner’s person-process-context model asserts that charac teristics of individuals (person variables) and characteristics of the ecolog ical environment in which individuals live (context variables) influence processes […]

As we have discussed, the majority of research on adolescent girls’ sexuality has focused on describing the sexual behaviors of adolescent girls and determining which factors affect whether or not girls engage in various sexual behaviors or the age at which girls first engage in them. Few studies examine what sexual behaviors or sexual feelings […]

Although sexuality in adults is considered to be an integral compo nent of healthy functioning, researchers of adolescents have ignored the obvious developmental trajectory to this crucial aspect of healthy adult functioning. Instead, as we have discussed, previous research on adolescent girls’ sexuality has operated from a framework that views adolescent sex uality as pathological. […]

Contemporary investigations of adolescent sexuality can be enhanced by using a framework that views adolescent sexuality from a normative developmental perspective. We present one such framework that focuses on girls’ developing sense of themselves as sexual beings and the subjective meanings of their sexual behaviors. We argue that analysis of the meaning of adolescent sexuality […]

Current cultural and theoretical perspectives of the meaning of sex­uality to female adults have transitioned from an emphasis on reproduction to a view of sexuality as a healthy component of adult functioning and personal identity (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988; Foucault, 1978; Irvine, 1994; Weeks, 1981). This view has only recently been adopted as a lens […]