All My Children

In the later teens—at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen—a majority of young people will have lost enough of their shyness and gained enough experience so that they can mix socially with pleasure. Those who are in love will be in love on a more realistic basis than when they were younger—in the sense that they will have got to know the beloved before allowing themselves to become infatuated, and in the sense that they are seeing each other fairly regularly in real life situations, not just dreaming of each other at a distance. Others will not be emotionally ready yet to fall seriously in love, but they are drawn to certain members of the opposite sex and are having regular or occasional dates. Continue Reading »

The burning out of an infatuation can be a painful matter at any age for the person who is still in love, but it is particularly so for the young teenager who has not yet developed any protection against such hurts. There is an aching, stinging emptiness. There is a loss of face, a loss of a sense of dignity, with friends and family There may be a scalding jealousy if the romance has been ended by the beloved’s turning his affection to someone else. There may be a sense of disappointment or indignation or outrage against the erstwhile beloved who now seems a fraud. However, it isn’t strictly fair to blame a person for not being able to be what you had imagined him to be. Continue Reading »

Popularity with a large group is useful only to the politician who’s after votes. What you as an individual can use and need is to be appreciated fondly by a small circle of friends for your particular flavour, whether it’s for your generosity or understanding or vivacity or witty tongue. Romantically what you as a teenager need is a chance to get to know and be known by some appropriate members of the opposite sex—a few at a time—in order to reveal your own ideas, to learn to respond to the ideas of others, to let your own qualities of personality come out so that those of the other sex who might cherish them can see them, to find out for yourself what qualities you want and need in a beloved. These things are not at all clear to a young person at first. In order to take advantage of your opportunities to get to know members of the opposite sex, you ought to learn enough easy flirtatiousness to signal interest to them. I don’t mean a heavy seductiveness but a sparkle in the eye, a personal smile, a lightly flattering remark, to show that you think the other person is fun. You should acquire enough facility with light talk so that you can pass ten minutes or an hour with another person while you—and he—decide whether or not there are possibilities in this friendship. Continue Reading »

Protection is usually mentioned as the first purpose of clothes. Modesty is another, but there is little stress on it today. An aim with high priority throughout history has been to conceal or minimise the unattractive features of each person’s body and to call attention to the more appealing ones. When we want to please someone or a group we dress up; and when we don’t give a damn or want to show a subtle scorn, we dress too negligently for the occasion.

Human beings have a wavering attitude in regard to modesty and exhibitionism. (Exhibitionism is the pleasurable impulse to show one’s body—or one’s total self.) They start off in early childhood as frank exhibitionists; they’ll gleefully show their navels or their genitals to anyone who really appeals to them. But by six or seven, they are apt to be bashful about being seen naked or when using the bathroom, at least some of the time. In early adolescence, when a person is made strongly aware of his sexual interests but has not yet become sufficiently used to them to be comfortable with them, modesty tends to be even more accentuated. (A modest person may, at the same time, be having fantasies of exhibitionism.) Continue Reading »

There are a number of venereal diseases in America and Western Europe. Those which most people know about are called syphilis and gonorrhoea. Another of these diseases which has become increasingly common in Britain is known by the rather long name of non-specific urethritis. There are a few other rare venereal diseases and other minor conditions which can be caught by contact between the sexual organs, but which do not have effects on health nearly as serious as those resulting from syphilis and gonorrhoea.

In the old days a lot of people used to think that you caught V.D. just by having sexual intercourse with somebody to whom you were not married. Some people had superstitious ideas that marriage conferred immunity from venereal disease. Until the last few years it was in fact the case that venereal disease was unusual and caught mainly from prostitutes. But now, owing to the changes in sexual practices which have taken place recently, gonorrhoea at least is the second most common infectious disease in Britain, and a person is unlikely in fact to catch it from a prostitute, prostitutes being particularly well aware of how to avoid gonorrhoea. Continue Reading »

In adolescence in both sexes the skin texture coarsens and the pores (hair follicles) enlarge, more so in boys. Adolescent skin becomes susceptible to acne—more in one individual, less in another. In acne the wax from the sebaceous (wax) glands, which are connected to the hair follicles (to keep the skin and hair oiled), collects in the follicles and hardens there. The top of each plug of wax, mixed with dirt, becomes a ‘blackhead’, which can be squeezed out with the fingernails, with some difficulty and pain. When the pores become plugged, it is easy for ordinary pus germs, which are usually on the skin anyway, to work down and cause infections under the plugs. These first show as red pimples, which later get white tops on them (`whiteheads’) as the white blood cells collect to try to destroy the germs. Continue Reading »

Adolescence Body Odour

Body odours become much stronger in adolescence—partly as a result of glandular changes and skin changes, partly as the result of axillary (armpit) hair on which perspiration collects and is decomposed by bacterial action. It is essential that teenagers, in a society like ours which considers body smells offensive, take a careful soap or shower daily and follow with an underarm deodorant.

Adolescence Hair and Scalp

Sweat is more profuse and oily in adolescence, which means that hair on the head gets to look greasy and straggly in a shorter time. Dandruff appears in winter and may become profuse. The hair should be washed once a week, more often if necessary. If dandruff is troublesome, a dermatologist should be consulted. Continue Reading »

Teenager Ache in the Groin

A boy who is involved in petting which causes him to have erections for long periods without orgasm is apt to develop an ache which seems to be located vaguely in the lower abdomen or in the groin (the groove between abdomen and thigh) or in the testicles. This ache may last for a day or so at a time. The medical name for the condition is varicocele.

Erection of the penis is brought about partly by a constriction of the veins which lead the blood away from the penis. This same constriction causes an engorgement of the veins coming from the testicles and the seminal vesicles and this is the explanation of the ache in varicocele. In Nature’s scheme of things, sexual excitement is expected to lead to intercourse with orgasm, and that puts an end to the constriction of the veins. Continue Reading »

Self-Consciousness and Fear of Illness Several factors make an adolescent uncomfortably aware of himself and worried about his physical and mental health: his rapidly changing body draws his attention inwards. So do his turbulent new feelings. A tendency to guiltiness about sex—even in this day of much greater tolerance— often lies behind his vague fears that he may have harmed his body, that he has acquired a venereal or other disease, that he is losing his mind.

Underlying these factors is the uneasy sense of having lost his earlier identity as a child of the family and of not yet having acquired an independent one as an adult.

A teenager because of such worries has a special need of a sympathetic teacher at school or a social worker, or an understanding doctor or clergyman. Continue Reading »

The development of positive, stable character traits should flow directly from spiritual growth. If a person’s religious activities—Sunday school, Bible reading, prayer, and so on—are not accompanied by virtuous behavior, then his or her faith is shallow, false, or self-deluding.

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. Continue Reading »