Bautista, Janessa 1IT-A

Teenagers in Love
Parents' reactions to teen romance. Published on June 2, 2009 by Nancy Kalish, Ph.D. in Sticky Bonds Friends from our childhood or adolescence are special, no matter how much time has elapsed between visits. These compelling connections are the result of shared roots during the formative years. Our childhood friends and teenage sweethearts experienced with us all the wonderful, horrible, boring, and embarrassing moments that helped to make us who we are today. Yet, when children are young, parents may regard these relationships as insignificant. If the family must move to a new community and the children's close friends must be left behind, so what? They will make new friends, the parents assure them. But, is a friend as interchangeable as a new toy for an old one, or is there more to friendship than that? Why are we so elated to rediscover long lost friends in our adult years if, as some parents believe, they were so dispensable to us as children? Even more belittled by many parents is a teenager's (or preteen's) love for a boyfriend or girlfriend. Adults refer to these relationships with demeaning language, calling them "just puppy love," and these romantic bonds are not taken seriously. Parents question the ability of teenagers to know what love is, yet they accept their teenagers' statements, "I love you, Mom & Dad," with full appreciation and at face value. If adults accept that teenagers can love parents truly, then shouldn't they also accept that teen romances are "real" love? Recreational dating is relatively new. Teenagers many years ago married their first sweethearts right out of high school. These men and women of the World War II Generation married at younger ages than their Baby Boomer children or their Generation X or Millennial grandchildren. But education has become prolonged, so marriage is later. The age of puberty, however, has dropped. Whatever the reasons for this, reaching puberty influences the age of first love and first sexual experience. It is rare now to marry a first love. Today's teenagers date not for mate selection but for fun. However, the first love experience is no less powerful than it was in the 1940's. Adults who underestimate the strength of the bond-- or the impact of the loss -- of a first love may have forgotten what a blow it was when they lost their own first loves. They may even try to comfort teenagers with lighthearted lessons: a surprising number of men and women wrote to me to bitterly complain about parents who joked years ago, "Don't worry! Boyfriends/girlfriends are like buses... a new one comes along every ten minutes!" This was not helpful, and it was not funny. The loss of a first love can be so crushing to some teenagers that they become suicidal. The pain of the breakup will subside with time, but the love may stay buried and dormant for decades. While most men and women find satisfying partners after first love breakups, there are adults who spend their married years aware that "something is missing." They continue to think about their lost first loves. Perhaps if they had married their first loves when they were younger, they tell me, they could have formed lasting and fulfilling marriages, but they will never know. These romances were interrupted - often by their parents' interference. In my recent survey of 1600 people (who had never tried a reunion with a lost love), ages 18 to 92, 56% of the participants said they would not want to go back to their first loves, 19% were not sure -- but 25% said they would! Even the adults who had no current interest in their first loves, including those who had only bitter memories, revealed that these early romances influenced their life-long attitudes about love, and even about themselves.

The longer I study lost loves and lost love reunions, the clearer it becomes to me how important young love really is. First love, young love, is indeed real love. This intense love does not come along every ten minutes. For some people, it may come only once in a lifetime. Copyright 2010 by Nancy Kalish, Ph.D. Revised 2012 http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sticky-bonds/200906/teenagers-in-love

Study: Teen Love Hurts

By Malcolm Ritter Feb. 15 The most famous youthful romance in the English-speaking world, that star-crossed love of Romeo and Juliet, was a tragedy. Now researchers have published a huge study of real-life adolescents in love. The results suggest that on balance, falling in love makes adolescents more depressed, and more prone to delinquency and alcohol abuse than they would have been if theyd avoided romance. The reported effect on depression is small, but its bigger for girls than boys. The researchers suggest it could be one reason teen girls show higher rates of depression than teen boys do, a difference that persists into adulthood. Teen Love Ain't Grand This is not exactly the view of romance that prevails around Valentines Day. Researchers whove studied teenage love say that smaller studies had shown teen romance can cause emotional trouble, but that the new work overlooked some good things. The study was done by sociologists Kara Joyner of Cornell University and J. Richard Udry of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They presented the results in the December issue of the Journal of Health & Social Behavior. Their results are based on responses from about 8,200 adolescents across the country who were interviewed twice, about a year apart, about a wide variety of things. The kids were ages 12 to 17 at the first interview. To measure levels of depression, the researchers examined adolescents answers to 11 questions about the previous week, such as how often they felt they couldnt shake off the blues, felt lonely or sad or got bothered by things that normally wouldnt faze them. Researchers Compared Teens In and Out of Romance To see what loves got to do with it, the researchers compared responses from adolescents who didnt report any romantic involvement at either interview with those who reported it at both interviews. They looked at how much depression levels changed between interviews for each group. The finding: The romantically involved adolescents showed a bigger increase in depression levels, or a smaller decrease, than uninvolved teens. The difference wasnt much. For boys of all ages, it was about one-half point on a 33-point scale. Girls were hit harder, with a 2-point difference for girls whod been 12 at the first interview, and diminishing with age to about a half-point difference for girls whod been 17.

Contradicts Adult Findings The results were a surprise, because studies of adults have shown married people tend to be less depressed than single ones, Joyner said. So why would love lower adolescent mood? By analyzing the adolescents answers to other questions, Joyner and Udry found evidence for three possible factors: deteriorating relationships with parents, poorer performance in school, and breakups of relationships. In fact, it appeared that for boys, romance made a difference in depression only if theyd had a breakup between interviews. For girls, in contrast, the biggest impact from romance seemed to come from a rockier relationship with Mom and Dad. That was especially so among younger girls, where the bump in depression was biggest. To Joyner, it makes sense that if a young daughter is dating, her parents may be concerned about her choice of partner or what she is doing with him. Presumably, their concern leads to arguments. That would be my guess. But its only a guess. The study cant prove what caused what. Maybe girls feeling less loved at home were more likely to seek romance with a guy, rather than the other way around. Alcohol and Delinquency, Too Joyner and Udry also found that romance was associated with a small decrease in happiness for girls, as assessed by different questions, and a small increase in alcohol problems and delinquency in both sexes. They didnt look for explanations for the latter two findings. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a University of Michigan psychologist who studies depression, said the studys findings on that topic made sense. Many researchers who work on adolescent depression have thought that something about dating behavior and dating relationships can be toxic to girls health, she said. The idea is that girls base their self-esteem on these relationships more than boys do and will contort themselves to make these relationships work, Nolen-Hoeksema said. I think theres something to it. It makes sense that dating could be one reason why female depression rates start to exceed male rates around age 14 or so, she said. But lots of things can promote depression, she cautioned, and not every girl whos dating is depressed. Critic: Study Too Negative Reed Larson, who studies adolescent emotion at the University of Illinois in Urbana, thinks the new study focuses unfairly on loves downside. His own work has tracked adolescent emotions hour-by-hour and day-by-day by having participants wear beepers, which prompt them at random times to write down how they are feeling. Those results show adolescent love provokes a fusillade of strong feelings, both positive and negative, Larson said. Yes, theres anger, worry, hurt, anxiety, jealousy and frustration. But theres also happiness, joy, euphoria, thrills and, well, love. Those can oscillate within the same day, Larson said. The same child will tell us at one moment in time theyre just on top of the world because they just had this great talk with John, and then a few hours later, theyre totally depressed because John is suddenly seeing somebody else. Then theyll come back up because they had a good talk with John, and things are back on track. And these feelings are a big part of adolescent life, Larson and colleagues found. In a sample of 14-year-olds to 17-yearolds, for example, girls said real or fantasized relationships with boys caused 34 percent of the strong emotions theyd reported. For boys the figure was 25 percent.

Even the lower figure is about twice the rate attributed to school and about three times the rate for family or same-sex friends. Most of the emotions traced to girl-boy romance were positive, but 42 percent were negative, including anger and depression. Wyndol Furman, a psychology professor at the University of Denver who studies adolescent romance, also cautioned that studies like Joyners tell only half the story. Its not like romantic relationships hold only danger for teens, without any benefit, he said. I dont buy that, any more than the idea that driving a car is only dangerous, he said. There are risks. But are you going to give your car up? http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117623&page=1