Becoming who we are: The Person-Centered Model of Gendered Adolescent Interpersonal Aggression

Our Person-Centered Model of Gendered Adolescent Aggression builds on the social ecological approach well-established within public health. Our model presupposes that: GAIA is normative rather than deviant and social rather than natural; GAIA is not desirable and is harmful to all involved; and the development of structures and practices that affirm the worth and dignity of all young people is the preferred approach to reducing adolescent aggressive. Our continuous process and person-centered approach is designed to place adolescents, within the context of their environments, at the core of model so we can better understand how young women and men come to have their early socio-emotional, sexual or intimate heterosexual relations defined by power, inequity, and aggression. The social ecological approach does not detail the processes whereby factors at each level of the social ecology affect individual behavior nor does it specifically address the central role of gender. Thus, the starting point of the model is the writing of Robert Connell, whose Theory of Gender and Power outlines three structures that give rise to gendered social relationships: the gendered division of labor, gendered division of power, and gendered construction of sexuality. These structures provide the macro-environment, at the socio-cultural and social network levels, for both young women's and young men's use of aggression in their adolescent relationships. Finally, theories of social information processing and adolescent's subjective socio-emotional interpretations of themselves, their partners, and the situation influence the micro-environment (the dyadic and intrapersonal levels) that helps give rise to GAIA.