Perspectives on the Adolescent Male’s Development in an Urban Setting
Excerpts from some conversations among girls talking about boys—their brothers, their boy friends, their ‘just friends’, the fathers of their own or their friends’ babies:
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Boys. They have one track minds. So immature.
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Adolescent boys—they always think about going to bed; they don’t think about afterwards.
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They wanna be grown but don’t know how to act that way.
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Girls, girls, girls—that’s all they think about.
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My brother—he’s fourteen. I don’t know what he’s doing. All he does is be playing outside. He comes in late—eats all by hisself. He hangs around with a bunch of boys—thinks he knows everything. Thinks he’s grown. He’s always gotta be with th style—those fancy running shoes, fashion jeans—$40 jeans he has! Four girls in my family and only one boy. We girls never had stuff like that. My mother can’t control him. The school’s always calling her. Him and his friends—first one gets suspended, then the next. They think it’s funny. I told him I think he just be being bad so he can go to that other school instead of regular high school—he’s got friends at that special school. People think that’s a school for dumb kids—but it ain’t. Boy! He just used to get some good grades—like in the fifth grade—all A’s. If my father was here, he’d make him act right. My brother, he’s smart though. He just gave the school our mother’s phone number. My father, boy, if he was here, he’d make him act right.
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And girls, now I know he been messin’ with them girls. I told him he better not get some girl pregnant—told him he better use some type of protection. He won’t listen to me. He won’t listen to nobody.
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And now summer’s here. I told him to get a (CETA) application. He didn’t. He could do something good too, like teach them little kids music. He used to play the drums. And he can play some hoop, boy! He used to be on the team—got a great big trophy and everything. Now he’s not doing nothing. He’s on one of them modified schedules—just gets math, English, science and social studies. Then he’s supposed to go home.
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Boy, he sure like those school parties they have though. You know, they have ’em every friday night—keep the kids busy. Yeah, he sure likes them parties.
As this conversation indicates, the urban environment in which the young adolescent male functions is a complex one; within it he has many roles which require a range of disparate behaviors.
At home, he has a mother who no longer functions as an authority figure or as a person to seek to please by excelling at school or doing chores at home, and a sister he no longer cares to talk to, relax or eat meals with and, whose advice he’d just as soon not hear. And they are convinced at home that they not only have no control, but that the only person who might help is the absent father. (“If he knew, he’d help”—yet, neither school nor family contact father to tell him.)
At school, he has teachers, principal and coach whose expectations for him are dimming. They are keeping him in school but, unable to control his behavior, they deny him music and basketball as punishment. So now he’d rather be suspended, or expelled altogether. The cycle is in full swing—“I’m a failure, let me fail. School’s a meaningless place to be. Who needs it.”
At the Boy’s Club, well, he used to be somebody there when he was a basketball player but he isn’t on a team anymore. That big trophy is getting smaller and smaller. (His sister may appear to remember it better than he can right now.)
The school parties—now here’s a place he seems to be enjoying. He must be feeling pretty good about who he is here: some talent for music, dancing, dressed well, popular with girls. You have to work hard to hold on here—the right jeans, the right tape deck—but you can make it here, and so it’s worth the effort. It’s especially worth the effort when your life in the male peer group depends heavily on your success with girls.
The adolescent boys alluded to in this conversation clearly do not and are not meant to represent all teenage boys in a lower socio-economic environment. (Admittedly, they do invite our attention because they are the early adolescents we are worried about!) If this vignette was shared with a high school class, would the class be capable of comparing and contrasting this boy’s development with other males in their school or neighborhood? Our students need insights which may help them understand behaviors of school peers; as family members and as future parents, they need to learn about adolescent development to optimize their functioning in those roles.
The informal profile presented prompts our consideration more broadly of the biological, the psychological and social factors which characterize the adolescent males’ behavior and development. All boys experience some degree of anxiety over the physical changes they are experiencing, all boys are struggling at one point or another with their changing roles in their families and with same and opposite sex peers, all boys are influenced by the social environment in which they are raised.
I have chosen to use vignettes and photographic images to guide the introduction to this unit on adolescent males in an urban setting. These I hope will capture some reality of today’s urban adolescent world, some highlights of his development, and provide a point of departure for examining their multi-faceted environment. Each section includes a suggested strategy for incorporating the written and visual images into classroom activities.
Communication between adults and adolescents is not always easy, nor is communication between the adolescents themselves. While this unit can not answer all the questions, it will hopefully provide a guide to the sensitive presentation of information which might heighten the adolescent male’s self awareness and enhance the adolescent female’s understanding of her brother, friend or mate.
