Adolescence, the Stage; Adolescent, the Person

Abstract

Adolescence is a sociocultural construction shaped by the complex interaction between cultural worldview and contextual influences at the macro level and the family context at the micro level. How is adolescence, the stage, and adolescent, the person, constructed in the urban Indian middle class context? This chapter addresses these two aspects. The first section illustrates adolescents’ and parents’ descriptions of the stage of adolescence and highlights the salient features and socialization goals. Gender as a mediating factor is underlined. The next section depicts adolescent, the person, in terms of attributes, dreams, wishes, insecurities, and anxieties, to reveal the multidimensional self-construal of the adolescent, embodying the individual, relational, and encompassing selves, with glimpses of the related-autonomous self .