Social construction of puberty: norms, institutions and resistances

This article examines puberty as a socially constructed phenomenon using data from semi-structured interviews with 45 adolescents (aged 12-16). Drawing on feminist and constructivist frameworks, the research reveals three principal mechanisms of social construction: institutional adultocentrism that normalises adolescent bodies through medical and educational surveillance; gendered differentiation of bodily experiences that reproduces inequalities; and digital mediation that generates both opportunities for emancipation and new forms of normative control. The study highlights the need for more inclusive institutional approaches to puberty that recognise adolescent agency and the plurality of pubertal trajectories, moving beyond biomedical reductionism towards a more genuinely social understanding of this stage of life.