Developmental and clinical researchers have only just discovered the phenomenon of adolescent romance as a topic of serious scientific inquiry. This discovery may be related to the overwhelming evidence that adult romantic relationships are failing at alarming rates. Dramatic increases in the rates of divorce, out of wedlock childbirth, and relationship violence lead to questions about the developmental precursors of romantic love and commitment. What's wrong with love and can it be fixed? This book brings together a diverse group of experts from various disciplines to address a serious gap in the understanding of adolescent development. Part I focuses on romantic relations and sexual behavior from the perspective of normative adolescent development. Part II centers on high-risk adolescents and Part III explores the practical implications of current theory and research for clinicians, educators, and health administrators. Together the chapters in this integrative and clinically useful book lay a foundation for understanding how adolescents successfully navigate the tumultuous waters of young love.

Romantic relationship formation and the engagement in sexual behaviors are normative and salient developmental tasks for adolescents and young adults. These developmental tasks are increasingly viewed from an ecological perspective, thus as strongly embedded in different social contexts, including the proximal social domains of parents, peers, and partners. This volume brings together seven recent empirical studies on adolescents’ and young adults’ romantic relationships and sexuality in the context of relationships with parents, peers, and partners. In this editorial introduction, we describe two important recent changes in the theoretical perspectives on emerging romantic relationships and sexual activity: from risky behaviors to normative tasks, and from individual to contextualized processes. We then discuss recent advances in empirical research on romantic relationships and sexuality of adolescents and young adults. After that, we review the seven studies in this volume, and discuss the contributions of these studies to the existing literature. Finally, we discuss directions for future research regarding how to further incorporate the interrelational perspective in empirical research on these topics, and how to bridge the gap between the research fields on romantic relationships and sexuality. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Originally published in 2000, this was the first volume to examine adolescent romantic relationships.

In this classic edition top scholars in family research examine the nature and origin of adolescents’ contemporary patterns of sexual and romantic relationships, from the evolutionary roots of these behaviors to policies and programs that represent best practices for addressing these issues in schools and communities. The text offers interdisciplinary expertise from scholars of psychology, social work, sociology, demography, economics, human development and family studies, and public policy. Adolescents and young adults today face very different choices about family formation than did their parents’ generation, given such societal changes as the rise in cohabitation, the increase in divorce rates, and families having fewer children. This book examines these demographic trends and provides a backdrop against which adolescents and emerging adults form and maintain romantic and sexual relationships. This book addresses such questions as: *What are the ways in which early family and peer relationships give rise to romantic relationships in the late adolescent and early adult years? *How do early romantic and sexual relationships influence individuals’ subsequent development and life choices, including family formation? *To what extent are current trends in romantic and sexual relationships in adolescence and emerging adulthood problematic for individuals, families, and communities, and what are the most effective ways to address these issues at the level of practice, program, and policy? Ideal as a supplement in graduate or advanced undergraduate courses on interpersonal (romantic) relationships, adolescent development, human sexuality, couples and/or family and conflict, sociology of children and youth, family therapy taught in human development and family studies, clinical or counseling psychology, social work, sociology, communications, and human sexuality this book also appreciated by researchers and clinicians/counselors who work with families and adolescents.

Adolescents and emerging adults today spend an estimated seven hours daily attending to media. The media teens attend to commonly present relationships between men and women as a "game" or "competition" in which women seduce through their physical appearance and the masculinity of men is defined through sexual conquest. A growing body of research suggests that viewing this sexualized media may contribute to adolescents' and emerging adults' understanding of and behaviors around romantic and sexual relationships. Using social cognitive theory of gender development, scripting theory, and heterosexual script theory as a framework, Scripting Adolescent Romance presents methods and analyses of data from in-depth interviews with 16 high school and young college students, and focus groups with over 100 individuals in this age group. Findings provide a rarely seen view inside youths' private spaces--their bedrooms and their social media spaces. In often highly-personal conversations, youth provide in-depth information about how they understand and navigate virginity, romantic relationships, sexual situations, and interpersonal violence. Their discussions of "Netflix and chill," Facebook stalking, and the scorecard script illuminate aspects of romance and sex that may be uniquely characteristic of today's young people. This book is a must-read for parents of adolescents, and promises to be an enjoyable, insightful text for classes about media effects, adolescent development, gender roles, and sexual health.

Educators will find much useful information in this book. It offers insights for program and curriculum planning and suggests numerous topics for stimulating discussions with teens. It also raises provocative issues about how the developmental needs of youth can be served more effectively by families, communities, and educators. The book holds the potential to define personal relations as an integrated line of study that serves to develop theory and research beyond contextual boundaries. The contributors analyze the ways in which critical interpersonal bonds are forged and maintained. The relationships discussed are: The parent-teen connection; the impact of cultural diversity on teens' social development; same-sex friends as well as opposite-sex friends during adolescence; heterosexual, bisexual, gay and lesbian romantic relationships; adolescent crowds (or cliques); and relationships involving non-kin adults. The authors also explore conceptual issues that cut across relationships and the problem of integrating the views of both individuals in a relationship.

In recent years, dating and romantic partners have been recognized as important peer relations within adolescence and research in this area is just emerging. Peer groups and peer pressure are more well established areas of research into adolescence, with recent studies focusing on peer groups and anti-social behaviour. The book will be the first in a series of three that examines the latest research in key areas of developmental psychology, edited by Rutger Engels and Hakan Stattin. This volume will present four areas of peer research: the ‘deviancy training’ mechanism of peer influence; behavioural genetic analytical techniques in understanding peer selection; romantic partners as peer relationships; and in-school and out-of-school peers studies.