Coping with Autonomy: The Challenge of Adolescence

Adolescence, a relatively recent social construct is a time one's life commonly associated with change. For many people, this time between the ages of 13 and 22 signals a watershed in most people's lives where many vocational decisions are made. It is during one's adolescence that a human becomes most autonomous, making informed decisions for themselves, leaving the home to create new lives and carving out their own particular life paths. This essay will attempt to define autonomy, and also to discover how people become more autonomous during adolescence. …