Innocence is a part of us all...
Innocence is often associated with small children, and losing ones innocence is often associated with adolescence. In my opinion based on what I have seen in my experiences and texts I have explored there is a push-pull attitude toward innocence in adolescents.
Lesko points out a development of physical features in adolescents and how people are put into a box based on puberty and their physical development. Putting a time frame on development . . . allows the unnamed observer to consume the human life course and adolescence at a glance (Lesko 119). Lesko does not talk directly about innocence, but I believe the emotional and self-awareness development pressure on adolescents is just as strong as the physical development.
In addition to adolescents having to be aware of their own self-awareness and emotional state they have to deal with others around them and gauge their own emotional state based on others. Lesko refers to this aspect as the panoptic gaze. Adolescents notice if others around them contain their innocence or not and therefore the individual either keeps or loses their innocence based on how many people around them are keeping or losing it.
When people do not fit into their development stage for their age group, they often got teased or outcasted. Similar things happen within the aspect of innocence. There is a self-struggle and an outward struggle. As the adolescent reaches high school they are expected to behave in certain social manners. Adults expect innocence, while peers expect the stripping of innocence. How the self feels and reacts to this push and pull of innocence varies.
The five texts that I focus on both praise keeping innocence and express that losing innocence is inevitable, but the longing to have innocence occurs if one succeed in losing it.