Ser adolescente en el Perú: Aproximaciones a las adolescencias del bicentenario

Summary

The presentation reports on “Being an Adolescent in Peru,” a four-year research project developed through a partnership between UNICEF and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). Its purpose was to understand how Peruvian adolescents experience their identities, relationships, schools, sexuality, futures, and social environments—areas the presenters said had received less nuanced attention than academic achievement or extreme-risk cases.

Project design and methodology

The presentation focuses on the study’s qualitative phase, which was intended to map adolescents’ experiences and help develop a broader questionnaire.

• Researchers interviewed 66 students from public schools in Lima, Cusco, and Tarapoto, seeking variation across coastal, highland, and jungle regions.
• The sample included students from urban and rural schools and considered factors such as gender, grade level, school performance, teachers’ perceptions of behavior, and whether students worked.
• Each participant took part in three semi-structured interview sessions, each lasting about 90 minutes. Researchers also observed some schools and classes.
• Site and school selection drew on regional Human Development Index data, the 2017 census, and Ministry of Education data on enrollment, location, and school performance.
• The team used inductive and deductive thematic analysis.
• The researchers stressed that this was a qualitative study, designed for depth rather than statistical representativeness. A validated questionnaire was being prepared for a later, representative quantitative study.

The project examined 14 areas, including identity and well-being; gender and sexuality; future plans and work; family, peer, partner, and teacher relationships; learning and school culture; civic participation; violence; social representations of adolescence; and technology use.

Main findings across the study

• Adolescence in Peru is both shared and diverse. Adolescents described common concerns and experiences, but these are shaped by intersecting factors. Rurality and gender can intensify exclusion and constraints; worries about the future were especially pronounced among older adolescents and those with lower academic performance.
• School is a major common socializing environment. It seemed to connect adolescents’ experiences more consistently than the neighborhood or community. Community ties were largely absent from many urban accounts and appeared more clearly in rural settings, often through extended-family relationships.
• Autonomy is understood relationally. Adolescents did not generally frame growing up as simply becoming independent from others. Their aspirations were strongly tied to the well-being of their close—especially nuclear—family. Many felt responsible for repaying their parents for the opportunity to study.
• Well-being is also relational. Adolescents linked their own well-being to that of family members and caregivers, as well as to material security and professional success. Their social worlds were centered largely on home and school, alongside substantial technology-mediated interaction.
• Family relationships are loving but often short on time. Participants often spoke affectionately about their parents, while also describing limited time together and a strong fear of abandonment. Supervision was often interpreted as care, particularly against a backdrop of absent or inconsistent caregiving. The presenters described parenting as “precarious”: they saw signs of support and dialogue, but caregivers often lacked the time or capacity for consistent, more democratic engagement.
• Some subjects are poorly discussed with adults. Sexuality and gender, and often politics and civic participation, were among the topics adolescents felt were left to adults or not adequately addressed. Peers and digital spaces often became important sources of discussion and information.

Sexuality, gender, and the future

• Adolescents’ accounts of sexuality were marked by fear, silence, and gaps in understanding concepts such as sex, gender, orientation, and identity.
• Many had absorbed an abstinence-centered message and associated dating with sex, sex with pregnancy, and pregnancy with the end of their future. This fear discouraged exploration and contributed to the perception that sexuality is inappropriate for adolescents.
• Despite confusion, some participants defended people’s right to love whom they choose. The researchers linked these more accepting views mainly to peer and digital interactions, rather than to family or school discussion.
• University was often treated as the automatic answer to “What will you do after school?” Adolescents expressed strong concern about attending university and succeeding, but often had little support for considering different paths. The researchers described this as an “identity mortgage”: a future plan that was expected and celebrated, but not always deeply explored.
• Adolescents often relied on a strong personal-agency message—believing they could achieve their goals through self-belief—while having limited practical support for turning expectations into plans.

Adolescents’ views of adolescence

Presenter César Aranibar discussed how adolescents’ ideas about adolescence can shape their identities and how others treat them.

• Participants’ views fell into positive, neutral, and negative perspectives. Positive views emphasized making responsible choices and protecting one’s future; neutral views described a stage of change; negative views associated adolescence with risk, rebellion, drugs, uncontrolled sex, poor school engagement, or “going down the wrong path.”
• Many adolescents described adolescence as a period of growth and becoming mature and responsible, rather than as a valuable stage of exploration in its own right. Maturity was often equated with studying, working, helping parents, and avoiding mistakes.
• The presenters argued that this outlook can be protective in some ways, but can also make adolescents anxious about failure and discourage exploration.
• Participants felt that families, schools, neighborhoods, and especially the media often portrayed adolescents as rebellious, irresponsible, or on the wrong path. They also reported hearing stigmatizing messages at school, including that some students did not belong there because they were underperforming or had problems.
• The team urged adults and institutions to move from deficit-based stereotypes toward a view of adolescence grounded in potential and opportunity, noting that public policies and programs are shaped by adult assumptions about young people.

Relationships with family, peers, teachers, and community

Presenter Henry Guillén emphasized that relationships are central to human well-being and adolescent identity development. The study examined both what adolescents expect from important relationships and how they experience them.

• Adolescents valued supportive, respectful relationships, meaningful shared activities, and the absence of aggression and violence.
• Family remained important during adolescence. Its role changes and is complemented by peers and teachers, rather than simply being displaced.
• Peers are significant sources of support and reference. Adolescents valued loyalty, trust, listening, understanding, communication, and respect in a friend. They also recognized that friendships can be harmful, but did not describe friends only as negative influences; peers could help them stay on what they considered the “right path.”
• Teachers could provide trusted support, not only academic instruction. Some adolescents described teachers as people with whom they could discuss concerns they could not raise at home. At the same time, the quality of these relationships depended on avoiding aggression and humiliation.
• Community relationships varied by setting. They were more visible in rural contexts, where the community could function like an extended family, and much less present in many urban accounts.
• Romantic relationships and falling in love were discussed more often by older students. Adolescents valued understanding, fidelity, respectful treatment, support, and communication in a partner, while identifying jealousy, infidelity, disrespect, and physical or psychological violence as negative features. Exploration was often held back by fears about pregnancy, violence, and jeopardizing the future.

School culture, learning, and violence

Presenter Franco Rengifo focused on peers, school culture, and learning.

• Adolescents described school as a central setting for learning and relationships, but often as hierarchical and authoritarian. They did not always understand the purpose of rules, punishments, uniforms, or student leadership, and said there was little space to discuss how rules were made.
• Punishments could seem arbitrary or disproportionate. The presenters noted that democratic or supportive practices existed in some individual teachers’ efforts but were not consistently embedded institutionally.
• Learning was often experienced as transmission and repetition: students listened, practiced exercises, and prepared for exams, with less emphasis on building knowledge or applying it to everyday life.
• Adolescents valued teachers who listened, showed interest, explained rules, mastered their subjects, motivated students, and gave second chances. They criticized teachers who were disrespectful, impatient, disengaged, humiliating, discriminatory, or abusive.
• Violence appeared across family, school, and other environments. Physical violence was easiest for adolescents to identify; symbolic and psychological violence were less readily recognized.
• Students seemed more able to identify how to report school violence than family violence. Violence at home could be normalized as discipline and was harder to discuss. Participants also raised concerns about gender-based violence and violence against LGBTQ+ people.

Pandemic, next steps, and discussion

• The researchers said that many challenges worsened during COVID-19, but were present beforehand: limited comprehensive sex education, weak support for life planning, difficult school dynamics, and insufficient attention to adolescents in public policy.
• The team described a follow-up project, “Being an Adolescent 2.0,” intended to re-interview participants who had been in their second year of secondary school and were now in their fifth year, examining the pandemic and other changes in their lives.
• In the Q&A, the researchers explained that 66 participants was a substantial sample for qualitative work, especially because each completed three interview sessions and the team also conducted observations. They said a later quantitative stage would provide broader representativeness, with less interview depth.
• Asked about regional differences, the presenters said the clearest broad contrast was often between rural and urban school settings, rather than simply between the highlands and jungle. Rural contexts showed stronger community connections, while other differences varied by topic and demographic factors.
• Asked about teenage pregnancy and policy, the presenters said pregnancy was not studied as a standalone topic, but fear of pregnancy was prominent in adolescents’ accounts of sexuality. They also questioned whether adolescents feel represented in public decisions, given that adults often make decisions about them without involving them.

Speakers and sources featured

• María Angélica Pease Dreibelbis — opening presentation and overview of general findings; referred to in the subtitles as “Nani.”
• Henry Guillén Zambrano — methodological design and findings on adolescent relationships.
• César Aranibar Chacón — social representations of adolescence. The auto-generated subtitles render his surname inconsistently.
• Franco Rengifo — peers, school culture, and learning.
• Stefano de la Torre and Estefanía Urbano — additional members of the research team, mentioned as contributors but not presenters in this session.
• Research participants: 66 students from public schools in Lima, Cusco, and Tarapoto; the presentation includes a quoted adolescent identified as Yahaira.
• Institutional and research sources: UNICEF, PUCP, the PUCP Psychology, Culture, and Gender research group, and education-related committees of Peru’s Ministry of Education.
• Audience members: participants asked questions during the closing Q&A; the subtitles identify some names, but automatic transcription makes several uncertain.