ABSTRACT
From the point of view of adults, adolescence is understood as a problem to be managed, and the center of that problem is the adolescent body with its awakening desires and lack of discipline. Of course, that awkward age of early puberty in which the body begins to develop sexual desire and the brain moves toward abstract thinking has existed throughout human history, but not until the twentieth century did this period become identified as a unique stage in human development. Before then, puberty was indicative of change in status between childhood and adulthood. Romeo and Juliet may have been young lovers, but by the standards of the seventeenth century, they were also adult lovers.
