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Dimensions of adolescent sexual ideology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2015

Susan Moore  and
Doreen Rosenthal
Susan Moore*
Affiliation:
Monash University
Doreen Rosenthal
Affiliation:
LaTrobe University
*
Psychology Department, Victoria University of Technology, St Albans 3021
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Abstract

All theories of adolescent development give sexuality a central place in negotiating the transition from child to adult. The sexual urges that emerge at puberty must be blended with other aspects of teenagers' lives and channelled adaptively. It is especially important that the adolescent be able to integrate his or her sexual feelings, needs, and desires into a coherent and positive self-identity, which contains, as one aspect, a sexual self. This sexual self is influenced in complex ways by cultural expectations and the sexual discourse characteristic of any social context. This study is a report of interviews with 153 adolescents aged 15 to 18 from three very different backgrounds: homeless youth, and Anglo-Australian and Greek-Australian young people living at home in a large Australian city. A number of themes about the ways young people describe their sexual worlds emerged from analysis of the interviews. The themes concerned permissiveness, romance, beliefs about both the “double standard” and the control of sexual urges, sexual aggression, and sexual “regrets.” The importance of these themes in influencing sexual self-definition and sexual behaviour is presented. The extent to which young people undergo conflict and questioning in integrating their ideas about sexuality and their actual sexual behaviours is considered.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Educational and Developmental Psychologist , Volume 11 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Adolescence , May 1994 , pp. 8 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Psychological Society 1994

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