THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702090050
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 52 lines
Behind the debate over parental notification is a question about teen-agers: Can they make rational decisions? When faced with one of the hardest choices of their lives, do they think like adults, or like children?
One University of Virginia researcher, who has studied teen-age behavior for a decade, says that by age 15, most teen-agers can weigh alternatives as well as most adults.
But psychologists still debate how much emotional factors influence young people, and whether emotion skews their decisions more than it does in adults, said Joseph P. Allen, an associate professor of psychology at U.Va.
Allen has spent 10 years studying how teens make decisions, and how their choices are part of family dynamics. Part of his work involved videotaping and observing interactions between parent and children, then following the children as they moved into adulthood. He also treats troubled families.
Fifteen is not a magic age, he said. Some teens develop adult decision-making skills earlier or later.
``They're very good at understanding the logical consequences of their actions that younger children aren't,'' he said. For example, a teen-ager faced with the possibility of major surgery can weigh the risks, benefits and alternatives as well as a much older person.
R. Nathan Slotnick is a local obstetrician who handles high-risk pregnancies. In some of his cases, the presence of genetic defects in the fetus forces a teen-ager to grapple with abortion.
Slotnick says he has seen no correlation between age and the ability to ask good questions and make an informed decision.
``I have seen teens that are more mature than my 30- to 40-year-old moms,'' he said. ``Then, I have had teens who are very immature.''
Having the ability to make good decisions doesn't ensure that a person will use it. Allen says psychologists debate how much a teen's logical skills may be overwhelmed by her emotional immaturity.
Some psychologists think that emotion has a stronger effect on a teen than on an adult.
Is she influenced more by others? Is she hampered by a short-term viewpoint? Does she lack the ability to appreciate risks?
``We don't have much in the way of real information,'' he said.
What they do know, he said, is that teens who don't have good decision-making skills often come from families with problems. And if a girl won't tell her parents about a pregnancy, that might be a red flag of other family trouble, he said.
``When we're thinking about parental notification, we might not think about it in terms of the average parent, because the average parent is probably going to have their child come to them.''
KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1997 ABORTION PROPOSED BILL
PARENTAL NOTIFICATION