Adolescence as a social construct and understanding Puberty

I found a lot of interesting points within the reading assigned. First, I found one quote on page 17 of the text to be extremely insightful. The quote states that "to say that adolescence is a social and cultural construction is to recognize, first of all, that adolescence meant something very different in the past and that it may mean something very different in the future". As a future history, geography, sociology or psychology teacher, this point was very significant to me. I had actually never thought of adolescence as a social construct until I read this portion of the text. However, it makes a lot of sense. Another quote that goes along with the afore-mentioned one is on page 16 and states that "the meaning of adolescence is different in different cultures and at different historical moments". This ties into all of the social studies fields that I am wanting to teach. Different cultures (sociology) in different areas of the world (geography) at different points of history (history) think of adolescence in different ways (psychology). I never would have thought that the concept of adolescence could encompass this many different fields of study but it definitely does and I definitely found it to be a social construct after reading this portion of the text.
What I found most interesting in chapter 2 was that parents seem to be very hesitant to talk to their kids about puberty. Puberty is a natural part of life that everyone has to go through at some point so it causes me to wonder why it makes parents and other adults so uncomfortable. I came to the conclusion that maybe the parents that feel the most uncomfortable talking about puberty with their kids, didn't have a parent talk to them when they were going through puberty. They may not know how to go about it. This conclusion is shown from page 40 where it states that "the fact that many adults were unprepared for puberty and did not discuss it with their parents may add to their discomfort". (This was in the context of an explanation as to why parents may find it hard to talk to their kids about puberty) This means that in today's society it is really important and necessary for parents to make an effort to talk to their kids about it, and hopefully their kids will feel comfortable talking to their kids about it someday. I also found it interesting that on page 29 the author stated that "even educational materials reflect society's ambivalence toward puberty. Much more explicit information is given to teenagers in many Western European countries than in the United States." This makes me wonder why it is that we are sheltering our kids in this country more than kids are in other countries. Does this hurt our kids in their understanding and coping of puberty or does it not have any impact at all. I don't know the answer to this but it would be interesting to do a study and see what the results say.