Positive Youth Development - Importance of Youth Development

Importance of Youth Development

During adolescence, young people experience profound physical changes, rapid growth and development, and sexual maturation, in addition to psychological and social changes. This often leads to issues with personal identity, sense of self, and emotional independence. In an attempt to cope with the complex changes and challenges of development, they may engage in behaviors considered to be experimental and risky Due to this, several important public health and social problems either begin or peak during these years including homicide, suicide, substance use and abuse, sexually transmitted infections, and teen and unplanned pregnancies. Addressing the positive development of young people can decrease these problems by facilitating their adoption of healthy behaviors and helping to ensure a healthy transition into adulthood

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Famous quotes containing the words importance of, importance, youth and/or development:

    The importance of its hat to a form becomes
    More definite. The sweeping brim of the hat
    Makes of the form Most Merciful Capitan,
    If the observer says so....
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    More than ten million women march to work every morning side by side with the men. Steadily the importance of women is gaining not only in the routine tasks of industry but in executive responsibility. I include also the woman who stays at home as the guardian of the welfare of the family. She is a partner in the job and wages. Women constitute a part of our industrial achievement.
    Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)

    And my youth comes back to me.
    And a verse of a Lapland song
    Is haunting my memory still:
    “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)

    Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.
    Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)