been distinctively marked as to gender, class, race and culture.22
The metanarratives in developmental psychology cannot be challenged on the grounds that they are “marked” by such factors as gender, race, and class; all theories are marked. Instead, they can be contested on the grounds that not only do they deny their marked status, but they also inherently discourage “sensitivity to difference” in development. Considering Gadamer’s and Heidegger’s suggestions that all interpretive efforts operate within a hermeneutic circle, and combining their ideas with Lyotard’s and Harding’s, it becomes clear that an openness to the unexpected and the unfamiliar cannot be maintained if one listens only for what is expected theoretically. How can one hear differences if one’s ears are attuned only to that which is familiar or seemingly universal?
In my own work, I have been acutely aware of the professional demands to position my study within the rubric of a validated developmental metanarrative. Using such a universal framework to ground my research, however, was at odds with the purpose of my investigation. How could I put the stories of a sample of adolescents who have rarely been studied into a framework that had been developed in a different context and time? Why would I use a theory that either bears no relationship to these adolescents’ realities, or specifically denies their realities in its search for universals? Although existing developmental theories are fundamental to our very definitions of development, and do successfully, at times, identify what seem to be common experiences within and across certain groups, I resisted listening with only one ear. I listened with both ears—the one familiar with existing “developmental metanarratives” and the other attentive to something new and unexpected. I listen with what Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century called a “passion for what is possible.”
Theories of Adolescence
A third professional bias that influenced my study relates to particular theories of adolescence. Unlike the other two biases, however, I engaged rather than resisted this prejudice. While there exists an abundance of theoretical and empirical work on adolescent development, there has been a preference among social scientists, teachers, and other professionals for specific theories of adolescence. Certain theorists have dominated the adolescent scene for many decades (e.g., Erik Erikson, Peter Blos, Harry Stack Sullivan) or over the past decade (e.g., Carol Gilligan, Robert Selman), and their ideas have profoundly affected the ways we think about adolescent development. The core beliefs of these theories are critical to spell out because they reside in our psyche and in the culture at large; and they determine, to a great extent, what is considered sound and accurate data on adolescents.
One of the most pervasive beliefs about adolescents initially proposed by psychoanalysts and neo-psychoanalysts that has been fiercely adhered to since its introduction is the idea that adolescents are struggling to find an identity.23 The aim of this struggle is to find a sense of self that is stable and continuous—adolescents want to answer the question, “Who am I?”24 The identity struggle of adolescents, the topic of hundreds of articles, novels, and movies, forms the core of how we define adolescence. Closely related to this concept of identity are the concepts of autonomy and independence. Adolescents are striving for autonomy, freedom, and independence.25 Indeed, adolescence has become synonymous with the arduous struggle for an independent selfhood or for an autonomous sense of self. Adolescents are moving away from their parents emotionally and physically—“trying to free [themselves] from parents who made and partially determined [them],”26—and are relying more on their peers for guidance and support.27 This vision of adolescence perceives this period in the life span as a time of searching, separating, and distinguishing oneself from others. It is also a model that is primarily based on studies of boys and has been criticized by numerous psychologists as being a “male model” of development.28
Responding to the absence of girls and women in developmental research, Carol Gilligan and her colleagues began to investigate the experiences of girls and women. Gilligan and her colleagues found that girls are struggling to stay connected to themselves and to others during adolescence. Adolescent girls typically find it difficult to be themselves—to be authentic—and to be in relationships with others. The research of Gilligan and her colleagues indicates that adolescent girls often feel the need to silence their real thoughts and feelings in order to be cared for by others.29 Their work, along with similar research on girls and the research on adolescent boys, have reinforced the widely held belief that adolescent girls are more relationship oriented and adolescent boys are more interested in separation, independence, and autonomy.30 For example, adolescent girls have intimate and self-disclosing friendships, whereas adolescent boys have competitive relationships with their male peers that focus on sports and playing games.31 While these assertions have frequently been based on comparisons across studies using entirely different research methodologies,32 they are firmly maintained and repeated frequently in the research and popular literature on adolescents.
These concepts and beliefs about adolescent boys and girls pervade our understanding of what it means to be an adolescent and have significantly affected my study. While I have attempted to generate theory from the data, I have never been theory neutral or absent. I have been responding to the theories I have been taught. I was struck by and drawn to stories in the teens’ interviews that tell a different story from what we have heard. Yet, I was also pulled to stories that tell a similar story. And, as the reader will hear shortly, both types of stories are present in the interviews. While I sought to derive data-driven themes, these themes are always implicitly and explicitly a reaction to our popular theories of adolescence.
The Decentered Experience
Following feminist theory, I resisted framing my project within the unitary truths implied in many developmental theories, and refrained from creating my own unitary and totalizing truths as I listened to and analyzed the interviews. I tried to avoid creating theories that exclude or do not consider the fragmented, contradictory, ambiguous nature of human experience.
Recent feminist writers have emphasized the need to question and even break apart notions such as the unitary self. The “self,” feminist theorists such as Linda Nicholson and Susan Suleiman have argued, is not a unified concept but has many conflicting sides—sides that are at times incommensurable and contradictory. Like the self, one’s experience in the world also has many sides. Jane Flax encourages us to “tolerate and interpret [such] ambivalence and multiplicity. If we do our work well, reality will appear even more unstable, complex and disorderly than it does now.”33 I would add that developmental psychologists would also benefit from embracing a psychology, espoused by many psychoanalysts, that recognizes the multiple and contradictory ways in which the people we study experience their worlds, along with the numerous and conflicting ways we study and listen to people’s experiences.
A problem evident in much of the research on urban adolescents from low-income families is that these adolescents are often portrayed as one-dimensional and static. They are frequently described by researchers as “hopeless,” “present-oriented,” or having low or high self-esteem without any acknowledgment that these adjectives or phrases may only be true for some of these adolescents part of the time. As suggested in my study, an adolescent may be “hopeless” when speaking about the state of the world, but optimistic when speaking about her or his own future; “present oriented” when speaking about an abstract future, but “future oriented” when discussing her or his own life; having low self-esteem when discussing relationships with friends in general, but having high self-esteem when speaking about a best friend.
In the present study, I listened for the shifts and conflicting aspects of the adolescents’ perspectives or worldviews. The “sense of self” among these adolescents was not static but moving in many different directions at once. In my analyses, I aimed to capture some of this movement. I, as a reader, was also going in many different directions and, therefore, I noted in my analyses the various interpretations or experiences I had as I read the adolescents’ interviews.
Although my findings are centered on various themes that I detected in the interviews, none of the themes I discuss are neat and