Black boys and underachievement myth or reality
An investigation into what factors cause adolescent girl’s to engage in sexual behaviour
Abstract
This project is an investigation into what influences adolescent young girls to want to engage in sexual behaviours. Who has the most influence on the adolescent girls, are their peers a factor to their decisions, is the media a factor, or is it their educational establishment? This investigation will answer these questions and why adolescent girls think they need to engage in sexual behaviour. What is adolescence? According to Brown and Larson (2007, p.1) the challenge of a single definition of adolescence is not as cut and dried and adolescence is likened to a ‘kaleidoscope’ where a series of pictures are put together and flicked at speed, and creates a vision of movement that is progressive, but complex at every stage. In linking with this project, this reflects an appropriate definition of what adolescence is in this context. Why do adolescent girls feel it is necessary to lose their virginity and is there an ‘appropriate age’ for adolescent girls to lose their virginity? Is it a question of morals, and do morals have any bearing on the sexual behaviours of adolescent girls today? This project will investigate from a cross cultural perspective with adolescent girls in Northern Ireland and Britain. Finally, the research will examine some of the effects on the adolescent girls, as a result of their sexual behaviours.
Introduction
This project aims to investigate what factors cause adolescent girl’s to engage in sexual behaviour. Six key themes have emerged fromthis researchto be investigated. The first theme is the media and Walkerdine (1984) states comics have a powerful influence on adolescent girls in Britain and the role models were steering their choices to an ideal family situation. On the other hand, Kehily (2002) argues teenage magazines engage in too much sexual content and is calling for the government’s involvement. The second theme is peer pressure, whereOtt et al (2006) argue one of the factors that contribute to adolescent girls engaging in sexual behaviours was in dealing with their own insecurities, and desiring intimacy from boys, which is further validated by their peers. Equally, Moore and Rosenthal (1993) state adolescent girls are looking for love in inappropriate ways, such as having sex with boys in order to gain their friendship, and this contributes as a factor that causes adolescent girls to engage in sexual behaviours. The third theme is sexual health, in Northern Ireland, Schubotz et al (2004) states adolescent girls had neglected looking after themselves and as a result, theywere in danger of contracting various diseases. The fourth theme is education and Moore and Rosenthal (1995) claimthat sex education in Britain should not be based around one size fits all, and that it should be tailor-made towards the adolescents of the day. On the other hand, Hyde and Howlett (2002) argue sex education in Northern Ireland is a contentious issue, and educators that support it say the adolescent girls will make informed choices, whilst other educators argue it is an opportunity to endorse promiscuity, adding to a factor that would cause adolescent girls to engage in sexual behaviours. The fifth theme is religion and Curtis (2002, p.2), argues ‘postmodernist thinking’ is eroding morality in Britain, whilst in Northern Ireland, Hyde and Howlett (2004) argue purity has been eroded, due to a compromise in values, and the final theme is parents. In Britain, in the Centre for Social Justice paper (2013)it claims parents that divorcecreate instability in the home, creating dysfunctional behaviour, in addition to that, educational underachievement and a greater interest in becoming sexually active. On the other hand, in Northern Ireland, Hyde and Howlett (2004) supported parents that communicated with their adolescent girls, informing them of their choices and to be careful.
This is a complex project and the researcher found this topic of interest, because of the rise of adolescent girls becoming sexually active, and therefore wanted to investigate what factors contributed to the adolescent girls sexual behaviours, if indeed there were any, and it was found these six themes came up through the research.
What is adolescence?
Moore and Rosenthal (1993) writes sexuality for adolescents is a bewildering and complicated period within their lives, and spans from moments of pleasure to seasons of crisis and immense pain.Reflecting on this statement, adolescence is an extremely intricate time in a young persons’ life, and it would also be likened to a rollercoaster ride, particularly relating to the state of theadolescent girls emotions, as they are regarded as emotional beings more so than boys. That said, it is important to ask what adolescence, in this sense, is.Brown and Larson (2007) defines adolescence in a way that depicts the complexities of this group of young people, that regard this season of their lives as unique to each individual, but that they all share a common theme of what Brown and Larson (2007, p.1) see as a ‘kaleidoscope’, which conjures up thoughts of individual pictures of slight variations of a person, but when all the drawings are flicked together at speed, you see a picture of movement, albeit small and repeated, it is movement nonetheless. One could almost say it’s a type of transition from ‘childhood to adulthood’, state Brown and Larson (2007, p.1), where common themes emerge,such as, what adolescents have shared concerns about, what they experience in their lives, that they all ask the same questions, andall have similar worries.
Methodology
The research used in this project is documentary evidence taken from books, journals, government documents, and news articles as noted in (Lambert 2010). The strength of this method seemed to be the best approach to use for this investigation, and had been selected because the sources were able to give information that related to the subject material. Equally, the government documents were selected due to their credibility, and the information available was able to back up the statistics given from the data. However, aweakness of this research has been complex in its discovery, because of limited sources and data such as, within sexual health, adolescent girls in Northern Ireland, proved to be challenging, as there is limited research to present a comprehensive account of data, which Hyde and Howell (2004) have discovered in their study. A further weakness to this research is that the data collected cannot possibly give a true reflection, as it does not cover all areas of Britain and Northern Ireland, as this would prove too complex and take far longer than time would allow for this project, so further study on this subject would be necessary.
DISCUSSION
Historical
Giddens (1993) states during the second world war, being a virgin until marriage was highly regarded, in stark contrast to today’s teenagers, who to some extent have a notion of being the loose girl type, Giddens (1993, p.6) argues that adolescent girls believe they have a right to engage in sexual behaviours, that there is no age limit as to when this should take place, and adolescent girls do not regard the archaic view of ‘saving themselves’ for anything remotely related to marriage. Rather, the adolescent girls have a romantic notion that because they love their boyfriends, this validates having sexual intercourse. It is interesting that Giddens (1993) findings claim during a study on adults reflecting on their first sexual experience, the girls tended to lie about the amount of sexual encounters they had. As a result of this, it suggests some form of conscience about the disclosure of how many boyfriends they would have had, so as not to show they were easy.
Tripp (2005) states the rise of sexual behaviour is of growing concern within British society, and the increase of teenage pregnancies, as well as sexual disease, is becoming all too familiar, and has detrimental consequences. Similarly, in Northern Ireland Layte et al (2006, p.280) claim current trends over the last 40 years have eroded the ‘moral framework’ of the Church, so much so that Northern Ireland has evolved into a ‘multi-faith society’, where everything including adolescent girls sexual behaviours have been liberalised, and Layte et al (2006) suggest Northern Ireland is pulling more towards their British neighbours as sexual behaviours become more accepting.
Tripp (2005, p.592) quotes‘factors known to protect young people from teenage pregnancy include higher levels of connectedness with school and family, long term stable relationship with a partner, and strong religious beliefs’.Tripp (2005) is offering an option that strongly suggests that within a safe and securefamily environment, along with the building blocks of a religious foundation, would add to the reduction of teenage pregnancy. On the other hand in Northern Ireland, one of the factors that have emerged from Layte et al (2006, p.256) study suggest that adolescent girls under the age of 17 years old that have sexual intercourse are more likely to have a ‘crisis pregnancy’ and the reason for this seems to be complex, however, other studies have claimed there is a connection to the adolescent girls socio-economic backgrounds, however, this is by no means conclusive from this study. A ‘crisis pregnancy’ is defined by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency as a woman who has found herself to be pregnant, but not by their planned choice, so this is deemed as a ‘personal crisis for her’, reports Layte et al (2006).
Media
According to Walkerdine (1984, p. 165), comics are a powerful influence to girls, in Britain, expressing role models that will influence their choice of the ideal family situation, promoting the fantasy of the ‘happy ever after solutions’ rather than a reality quite the opposite.
On the other hand, Kehily (2002, p.103) argues that teenage magazines have too much in the way of sexual content and there is grave concern about it within the government, as an MP states ‘the magazines rob girls of their innocence’.
In contrast, the ‘first major qualitative study’ conducted in Ireland, by Hyde and Howlett (2004, p.3, 14), suggested that adolescent girls from Ireland, received information and were influenced from these four sources:
Friends 31%
Media 32%
School 18%
Parents 14%
These findings show that 32% of adolescent girls were influenced by the media, and is a key factor in adolescent girls’ engagement of sexual behaviours in Ireland, while friends came second with 31%.
A survey conducted by Collins et al (2004) in Britain, had suggested that adolescent girls revealed they had sex too early and would have liked to
