Compare photos of yourself from late elementary school and high school to get a vivid sense of the changes that occur during puberty. From the size of our thighs to the shape of our nose, we become a different-looking person during the early teenage years. Although children’s timetables vary, today puberty—which lasts about five years from start to finish—typically is a pre-teen and early adolescent change (Archibald, Graber, & Brooks-Gunn, 2003). Moreover, today, as you saw with Samantha, who started menstruating at age 10 and has just gotten pregnant at age 30, the gap between being physically able to have children and actually having children can be twice as long as infancy and childhood combined.

This lack of person–environment fit, when our body is passionately saying “have sex” and society is telling us to “just say no” to intercourse, explains why issues relating to teenage sexuality provoke such anxiety among Western adults. Our concerns are recent. They are a product of living in the contemporary developed world.

As my sisters and I went about doing our daily chores, we choked on the dust stirred up by the herd of cattle and goats that had just arrived in our compound. . . . These animals were my bride wealth, negotiated by my parents and the family of the man who had been chosen as my husband. . . . I am considered to be a woman, so I am ready to marry, have children, and assume adult privileges and responsibilities. My name is Telelia ole Mariani. I am 14 years old.

(quoted in Wilson, Ngige, & Trollinger, 2003, p. 95)

As you can see in this quotation from a girl in rural Nigeria, throughout most of history and even today in agrarian cultures, having sex as a teenager was “normal.” The reason is that puberty was often society’s signal to find a spouse (Schlegel, 1995; Schlegel & Barry, 1991). The fact that a young person’s changing body meant entering a new adult stage of life produced a different attitude toward the physical changes. In our culture, we downplay puberty because we don’t want teenagers to act on their sexual feelings for years. In traditional societies, people might celebrate the changes in a coming-of-age ceremony called the puberty rite.

233

Celebrating Puberty

Puberty rites were emotional events, carefully scripted to highlight a young person’s entrance into adulthood. Often, children were removed from their families and asked to perform challenging tasks. There was anxiety (“Can I really do this thing?”) and feelings of awe and self-efficacy, as the young person returned to joyfully enter the community as an adult (Feixa, 2011; Weisfeld, 1997).

So as this photo shows in one South African tribe, after a private group initiation, boys returned to their tribe and were labeled as “warriors” in a community celebration. In the Amazon, males were required to prove their manhood by killing a large animal and then, metaphorically, “die”—by drinking a hallucinogen and spending time in isolation to “be born again” as adults. Among the Masai of Africa, male children first faced the challenge of undergoing a painful circumcision without showing distress. After passing this test, they entered a segregated compound to learn military maneuvers before proudly returning home and taking wives (Feixa, 2011).

For girls, menstruation was the standard marker to celebrate one’s arrival into womanhood. In the traditional Navajo Kinaalda ceremony, for instance, girls in their first or second menstrual cycle, guided by a female mentor, performed the long-distance running ritual, sprinting for miles. (Imagine your motivation to train for this event, when you understood that the length of your run symbolized how long you would live!) The female role model massaged the girl’s body, painted her face, and supervised her as she prepared a huge corn cake (a symbol of fertility) to be served to the community during a joyous, all-night sing. The Navajo believe that when females begin menstruating, they possess special spiritual powers, so everyone would gather around for the girl’s blessings as they gave her a new adult name.

Today, however, girls may menstruate at age 10 or even 9. At that age—in any society—could people be ready for adult life? The answer is no. In the past, we reached puberty at an older age.

The Declining Age of Puberty

You can see this fascinating decline, called the secular trend in puberty, in Figure 8.1. In the 1860s, the average age of menarche, or first menstruation, in northern Europe was over 17 (Tanner, 1978). In the 1960s, in the developed world, it dropped to under 13 (Parent and others, 2003). Then, after a pause, about 20 years ago, the menarche marker began to slide downward again (Lee & Styne, 2013).

This means, a century ago, many girls could not get pregnant until their late teens. Today, many girls can have babies before their teenage years.

Researchers typically use menarche as their benchmark for charting the secular trend because it is an obvious sign of being able to have a child. The male signal of fertility, spermarche, or first ejaculation of live sperm, is a hidden event.

234

In addition, because it reflects better nutrition, in the same way as with stunting in early childhood (remember Chapter 3), we can use the secular trend in puberty as an index of a nation’s economic development. In the United States, African American girls begin to menstruate at close to age 12. In impoverished African nations, such as Senegal, the average age of menarche is over 16 (Parent and others, 2003)!

Given that nutrition is intimately involved, what exactly sets puberty off? For answers, let’s focus on the hormonal systems that program the physical changes.

Puberty is programmed by two command centers. One system, located in the adrenal glands at the top of the kidneys, begins to release its hormones at about age 6 to 8, several years before children show observable signs of puberty. The adrenal androgens, whose output increases to reach a peak in the early twenties, eventually produce (among other events) pubic hair development, skin changes, body odor, and, as you will read later in this chapter, our first feelings of sexual desire (McClintock & Herdt, 1996).

About two years later, the most important command center kicks in. Called the HPG axis—because it involves the hypothalamus (in the brain), the pituitary (a gland at the base of the brain), and the gonads (the ovaries and the testes)—this system produces the major body changes.

As you can see in Figure 8.2, puberty is set off by a three-phase chain reaction. At about age 9 or 10, pulsating bursts of the hypothalamic hormone stimulate the pituitary gland to step up production of its hormones. This causes the ovaries and testes to secrete several closely related compounds called estrogens and the hormone called testosterone.

As the blood concentrations of estrogens and testosterone float upward, these hormones unleash a physical transformation. Estrogens produce females’ changing shape by causing the hips to widen and the uterus and breasts to enlarge. They set in motion the cycle of reproduction, stimulating the ovaries to produce eggs. Testosterone causes the penis to lengthen, promotes the growth of facial and body hair, and is responsible for a dramatic increase in muscle mass and other internal masculine changes.

Boys and girls both produce estrogens and testosterone. Testosterone and the adrenal androgens are the desire hormones. They are responsible for sexual arousal in females and males. However, women produce mainly estrogens. The concentration of testosterone is roughly eight times higher in boys after puberty than it is in girls; in fact, this classic “male” hormone is responsible for all the physical changes in boys.

Now, to return to our earlier question: What primes the triggering hypothalamic hormone? As Figure 8.2 illustrates, many forces help unleash the pulsating hypothalamic bursts—from genetics, to exposure to light; from possible chemicals in our water and food, to environmental stress (more about this fascinating force later). Central to this process is a threshold amount of a hormone called leptin, which is tied to the level of body fat (McCarthy, 2013; Lee & Styne, 2013). This explains why boys and girls whose bodies are stunted due to lack of food reach puberty at older ages. It accounts for the role that the obesity epidemic may play in the declining age of puberty in recent years (Lee & Styne, 2013; more about this later). These puberty primers unleash a cascade of physical changes.

235

Puberty causes a total psychological as well as physical transformation. As the hormones flood the body, they affect specific brain regions, making teenagers more emotional, sensitive to social cues, and interested in taking risks (as you will read in Chapter 9). Scientists divide the physical changes into three categories:

Now, let’s offer a motion picture of these changes, first in girls and then in boys.

For Girls

The first sign of puberty in girls is the growth spurt. During late childhood, girls’ growth picks up speed, accelerates, and then begins to decrease (Abbassi, 1998). On a visit to my 11-year-old niece, I got a vivid sense of this “peak velocity” phase of growth. Six months earlier, I had towered over her. Now, she insisted on standing back-to-back to demonstrate: “Look, Aunt Janet, I’m taller than you!”

236

About six months after the growth spurt begins, girls start to develop breasts and pubic hair. On average, girls’ breasts take about four years to grow to their adult form (Tanner, 1955, 1978).

Menarche typically occurs in the middle to final stages of breast and pubic hair development when growth is winding down (Christensen and others, 2010; Peper & Dahl, 2013; Lee & Styne, 2013). So you can tell your 12-year-old niece, who has just begun to menstruate, that, while her breasts are still “works in progress,” she is probably about as tall today as she will be as an adult.

When they reach menarche, can girls get pregnant? Yes, but there is often a window of infertility until the system fully gears up. Does puberty unfold in the same way for every girl? The answer is no. Because the hormonal signals are complex, in some girls, pubic hair development (programmed by the adrenal androgens) is underway before the breasts begin to enlarge. Occasionally, a girl does grow much taller after she begins to menstruate.

The most fascinating variability relates to the rate of change. Some children are developmental “tortoises.” Their progression through puberty is slow-paced. Others are “hares.” They speed through the body changes. For instance, while breast development on average takes four years, the process—from start to finish—can range from less than two to an incredible nine years! (See Mendle and others, 2010.)

New research suggests the pace at which children progress through puberty is affected by when the process starts. Girls who begin to develop earlier often proceed at a slower rate. Late starters pass through puberty for a shorter time. So if your 13-year-old niece is worried because she has just begun developing breasts, you can tell her that she may catch up a bit with the rest of the class now that her puberty system has locked into gear.

In tracking puberty in females, researchers focus on charting pubic hair and breast development because they can measure these external secondary sexual changes in stages. But the internal changes are equally dramatic. During puberty the uterus grows, the vagina lengthens, and the hips develop a cushion of fat. The vocal cords get longer, the heart gets bigger, and the red blood cells carry more oxygen. So, in addition to looking very different, after puberty, girls become much stronger (Archibald, Graber, & Brooks-Gunn, 2003). The increases in strength, stamina, height, and weight are astonishing in boys.

For Boys

In boys, researchers also chart how the penis, testicles, and pubic hair develop in stages. However, because these organs of reproduction begin developing first, boys still look like children to the outside world for a year or two after their bodies start changing. Voice changes, the growth of body hair, and that other visible sign of being a man—needing to shave—all take place after the growth of the testes and penis are underway (Tanner, 1978). Now, let’s pause to look at the most obvious signals that a boy is becoming a man—the mammoth alterations in body size, shape, and strength.

Recall from Chapter 5 that elementary school boys and girls are roughly the same size. Then, during the puberty growth spurt, males shoot up an incredible average of 8 inches, compared to 4 inches for girls (Tanner, 1978). Boys also become far stronger than the other sex.

237

One reason lies in the tremendous increase in muscle mass. Another lies in the dramatic cardiovascular changes. At puberty, boys’ hearts increase in weight by more than one-third. In particular, notice in Figure 8.3 that, compared to females, after puberty, males have many more red blood cells and a much greater capacity for carrying oxygen in their blood. The visible signs of these changes are a big chest, wide shoulders, and a muscular frame. The real-world consequence is that after puberty, males get a boost in gross motor skills that give them an edge in everything from soccer to sprinting; from cycling to carrying heavy loads.

Do you know seventh or eighth-grade boys? If so, you might notice that growth during puberty takes place in the opposite pattern to the one that occurs earlier in life. Rather than following the cephalocaudal and proximodistal sequences (from the head downward and from the middle of the body outward), at puberty, the hands, feet, and legs grow first. While this happens for both sexes, because their growth is so dramatic, these changes are especially obvious in boys.

Their long legs and large feet explain why, in their early teens, boys look so gawky (and unattractive!). Adding to the problem is the crackly voice produced by the growing larynx, the wispy look of beginning facial hair, and the fact that during puberty a boy’s nose and ears grow before the rest of his face catches up. Plus, the increased activity of the sweat glands and enlarged pores leads to the condition that results in so much emotional agony: acne. Although girls also suffer from acne, boys are more vulnerable to this condition because testosterone, which males produce in abundance, produces changes in the hair and skin.

Are Boys on a Later Timetable? A Bit

Now, visit a middle school and you will be struck by the fact that boys, on average, appear to reach puberty two years later than girls. But appearances can be deceiving. In girls, as I mentioned earlier, the externally visible signs of puberty, such as the growth spurt and breast development, take place toward the beginning of the sequence. For boys, the hidden development—growth of the testes—occurs first (Huddleston & Ge, 2003; Lee & Styne, 2013).

If we look at the real sign of fertility, the timetables for girls and boys are not very far apart. In one study, boys reported that spermarche occurred at roughly age 13, only about six months later than the average age of menarche (Stein & Reiser, 1994).

Figure 8.4, below, graphically summarizes some changes I have been discussing. Now, let’s explore the numbers inside the chart. Why do children undergo puberty at such different ages?

238

I’m seventeen already. But I still look like a kid. I get teased a lot, especially by the other guys. . . . Girls aren’t interested in me, either, because most of them are taller than I am. When will I grow up?

(adapted from an on-line chat room)

The gender difference in puberty timetables can cause anxiety. As an early-maturing girl, I vividly remember slumping to avoid the humiliation of having my partner’s head encounter my chest in sixth-grade dancing class! But nature’s cruelest blow may relate to the individual differences in timing. What accounts for the five-year difference in puberty timetables between children who live in the same environment? (See Parent and others, 2003.)

Not unexpectedly, genetics is important. Identical twins go through puberty at roughly the same ages (Silventoinen and others, 2008; Lee & Styne, 2013). Asian Americans tend to be slightly behind other U.S. children in puberty timetables (Sun and others, 2002). African American and Hispanic boys and girls are ahead of other North American groups (Rosenfield, Lipton, & Drum, 2009; Lee & Styne, 2013).

But remember that in impoverished African countries—where children are poorly nourished—girls begin to menstruate, on average, as late as age 16. Recall from Chapter 5 that, in the United States, obesity rates are skyrocketing among African American elementary school girls and boys. Given that body fat is intimately involved, and the secular trend picked up steam during the past 20 years, does childhood weight predict when a boy or girl physically matures?

Overweight and Early Puberty (It’s All About Girls)

The answer is yes—if we consider female children only. Controlling for other forces, having a high BMI (body mass index) during elementary school does predict entering puberty earlier for girls (Rosenfield, Lipton, & Drum, 2009; Lee & Styne, 2013). Most tantalizing, rapid weight gain in the first nine months of life is strongly linked to menstruating at a younger age! (See Walvoord, 2010.)

239

Recall that this finding dovetails with the research in Chapter 5, suggesting that our overweight path is set in motion early in life. Now—in addition to foreshadowing later obesity—weight gain during infancy may even predict when we sexually mature. What I find strangest, however, is that the data for boys is inconsistent. Some studies show obese boys mature early; others suggest these children develop later than their peers! (See Lee & Styne, 2013.)

Now let’s turn to a more astonishing environmental influence predicting puberty, specifically in girls—the quality of family life.

Family Stress and Early Puberty (Again, It’s About Girls)

Drawing on an evolutionary psychology perspective, some developmentalists argue that when family stress is intense, nature might build in a mechanism to accelerate sexual maturity and free a child from an inhospitable nest (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991). Just as stress in the womb “instructs” the baby to store fat (recall the fetal programming hypothesis in Chapter 2), researchers believe that an unhappy childhood signals the body to expect a short life and pushes adult fertility to a younger age (Belsky, Houts, & Pasco Fearon, 2010).

I must emphasize that “genetics” is the most important force predicting your puberty timetable (when your mother or father developed). But, if a girl is temperamentally vulnerable, controlling for every other influence (genetics, body weight, and so on), her family life makes its small, tantalizing contribution, too (Ellis and others, 2011b). Early-maturing girls are more apt to grow up in mother-headed households (Graber, Nichols, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010; Neberich and others, 2010) and report intense childhood stress (Ellis, 2004; Allison & Hyde, 2013). In one longitudinal study, mothers’ use of power-assertive discipline during preschool—yelling, shaming, rejecting—was associated with earlier menstruation (Belsky and others, 2007a, 2010). Even being insecurely attached at age 1 predicts reaching menarche at a younger age (Belsky, Houts, & Pasco Fearon, 2010).

Why—specifically in girls—is the hypothalamic timer sensitive to body weight and family stress? We do not know. But, these surprising studies emphasize the developmental-systems theory message that underlies this book: To understand every aspect of who we are, look to a variety of influences—from genetics to gender, from physiology to parenting, to everything else.

Table 8.1 summarizes these points by spelling out questions that predict a female child’s chance of reaching puberty at a younger-than-average age. If you were an early maturer, how many—if any—of these forces applied to you?

Now that I’ve described the physical process, let’s shift to an insider’s perspective, exploring how children feel about three classic signs of puberty—breast development, menstruation, and first ejaculation—then, looking at the consequences of reaching puberty relatively early or late.

240

If you think back to how you felt about your changing body during puberty, you probably remember a mixture of emotions: fear, pride, embarrassment, excitement. Now, imagine how you would react if a researcher asked you to describe your inner state. Would you want to talk about how you really felt? The reluctance of pre-teens to discuss what is happening (“Yuck! Just don’t go there!”) explains why, to study reactions to puberty, researchers often ask adults to remember this time of life, or use indirect measures, such as having children tell stories about pictures, to reveal their inner concerns.

The Breasts

In a classic study, researchers used this indirect strategy to explore how girls feel in relation to their parents while undergoing that most visible sign of becoming a woman—breast development (Brooks-Gunn and others, 1994). They asked a group of girls to tell a story about the characters in a drawing that showed an adult female (the mother) taking a bra out of a shopping bag while an adolescent girl and an adult male (the father) watched. While girls often talked about the mother in the picture as being excited and happy, they typically described the teenager as humiliated by her father’s presence in the room. Moreover, girls in the middle of puberty told the most negative stories about the fathers, suggesting that body embarrassment is at its height when children are undergoing the physical changes.

Because society strongly values this symbol of being a woman (and our contemporary culture sees bigger as better!), other research suggests that U.S. girls feel proud of their developing breasts (Brooks-Gunn & Warren, 1988). However, among girls in ballet schools, where there are strong pressures to look prepubescent, breast development evokes distress (Brooks-Gunn & Warren, 1985). The principle that children’s reactions to puberty depend on messages from the wider world holds true for menstruation, too.

Menstruation

Think of being a Navajo girl and knowing that when you begin to menstruate, you enter a special spiritual state. Compare this with the less-than-glowing portrait Western societies paint about “that time of the month” (Brooks-Gunn & Ruble, 1982; Costos, Ackerman, & Paradis, 2002). From the advertisements for pills strong enough to handle even menstrual pain to its classic description as “the curse,” there’s no wonder that in the past, girls approached this milestone with dread (Brooks-Gunn & Ruble, 1982).

Luckily, upper-middle-class, baby boom mothers have changed these cultural scripts. When 18 to 20-year-old students at Oregon State University were asked in 2006 to write about their “first period experiences,” 3 out of 4 women recalled their moms as being thrilled (“She treated me like a princess”). One person wrote that, the day after she told her mother, “I saw an expensive box of chocolates and a card addressed to me. It said ‘Congrats on becoming a woman’” (quoted in Lee, 2008, p. 1332).

Positive responses make a difference. In contrast to earlier research, about half of these young women described menarche as positive or “no big deal.” But negative emotions linger. Even when they described their mothers as supportive, 1 in 3 students remembered feeling “disgusted” or, more likely, ambivalent—both ashamed and happy—when menarche arrived.

241

First Ejaculation

Daughters must confide in their mothers about menarche because this change demands specific coping techniques. Spermarche, as I mentioned earlier, is hidden, because this event doesn’t require instructions from the outside world. Who talks to male adolescents about first ejaculation, and how do teenagers feel about their signal of becoming a man? Read these memories from some 18-year-olds (Stein & Reiser, 1994):

I woke up the next morning and my sheets were pasty. . . . After you wake up your mind is kind of happy and then you realize: “Oh my God, this is my wet dream!”

(quoted in Stein & Reiser, 1994, p. 380)

My mom, she knew I had them. It was all over my sheets and bedspread and stuff, but she didn’t say anything, didn’t tease me and stuff. She never asked if I wanted to talk about it—I’m glad. I never could have said anything to my mom.

(quoted in Stein & Reiser, 1994, p. 377)

Most of these boys reported that they needed to be secretive. They didn’t want to let anyone know. And notice from the second quotation—as you saw earlier with fathers and pre-teen girls—that boys also view their changing bodies as especially embarrassing around the parent of the opposite sex.

Is this tendency for children to hide the symptoms of puberty around the parent of the other gender programmed into evolution to help teenagers emotionally separate from their families? We do not know. Where we do have massive scientific information is on the emotional impact of being early or late.

Being Early: It Can Be a Problem for Girls

Imagine being an early-maturing girl. How would you feel if you looked like an adult while everyone else in your class still looked like a child? Now imagine being a late maturer and thinking, “What’s wrong with my body? Will I ever grow up?”

Actually, the timing of development matters, but again the results differ for boys and girls. Early-maturing boys are more prone to abuse substances, particularly if these teens are low in impulse control (Castellanos-Ryan and others, 2013). They also may be at risk for depression if they have prior personality problems and an unhappy family life (Benoit, Lacourse, & Claes, 2013). But, because of being physically stronger (and so better at sports) and on time for the average girl, maturing early provides boys a popularity and self-esteem boost (Li and others, 2013).

Unfortunately, the research is consistently downbeat for the other sex: Hundreds of studies suggest early-maturing girls can have widespread difficulties during their adolescent years.

EARLY-MATURING GIRLS ARE AT RISK OF DEVELOPING EXTERNALIZING PROBLEMS. Because we choose friends who are “like us,” early-maturing girls may gravitate toward becoming friends with older girls and boys. So they tend to get involved in “adult activities” such as smoking, drinking, and taking drugs at a younger age. Maturing early heightens the tendency—described in the next chapter—for teens to make dangerous, impulsive decisions with their peers (Kretsch & Harden, 2014.)

Because they are so busy testing the limits, in one classic study, early-maturing girls tended to get worse grades than their classmates in the sixth and seventh grades (Simmons & Blyth, 1987). By their twenties, Swedish researchers found, early-maturing girls were several times less likely to have graduated from high school than their later-developing peers (Stattin & Magnusson, 1990).

Then, there is the main concern with having a mature body early on: having unprotected sex. Because they may not have the cognitive abilities to resist this social pressure and often have older boyfriends, early-maturing girls are more likely to have intercourse at a younger age (Graber, Nichols, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010). They are less apt to use contraception, making them more vulnerable to becoming pregnant as teens (Allison & Hyde, 2013). Imagine being a sixth or seventh-grade girl thrilled to be pursued by the high school boys. Would you have the presence of mind to “just say no”?

242

EARLY-MATURING GIRLS ARE AT RISK OF GETTING ANXIOUS AND DEPRESSED. As if this were not enough, early-maturing girls are also more prone to feel bad about themselves (Carter, Silverman, & Jaccard, 2013; Joinson & others, 2013). As I implied in the introductory chapter vignette, in fourth or fifth grade, these girls can be bullied by their peers, because they look so different from the other children in class (Allison & Hyde, 2013). Then, there is the shame (and peer harassment) attached to generally having a larger body size. Not only are early-maturing girls apt to be heavier during elementary school, but they also end up shorter and stockier because their height spurt occurs at an earlier point in their development (Adair, 2008; Must and others, 2005). Late-maturing girls are more prone to fit the tall ultra-slim model shape. Reaching puberty early sets girls up for a poor body image and low self-esteem.

So far, I’ve been painting a dismal portrait of early-maturing girls. But, as with any aspect of development, it’s important to look at the whole context of a person’s life. Early maturation may not pose body image problems in ethnic groups that have a healthier, more inclusive idea about the ideal female body size (more about this later).

Most important, these negative effects happen mainly when there are other risk factors in a child’s life. If a girl is exposed to harsh parenting (Deardorff and others, 2013) or if she is living in poverty, then, yes, early maturation can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back (Lynne-Landsman, Graber, & Andrews, 2010). But, when a child has close relationships with her parents, strong religious values, and doesn’t get involved with older “at-risk” friends, her puberty timetable will not matter at all (Stattin & Magnusson, 1990).

The risks linked with maturing early also seem dependent on the society in which a girl grows up. In one interesting international comparison, while early-maturing Swedish girls were more prone to get into trouble than late maturers, this was not true in Slovakia (see Figure 8.5). The reason, these researchers argue, is that Scandinavia is a permissive society that accepts adolescent sex, while Slovakia severely restricts these activities (Skoog and others, 2013). So, again, a protective milieu can cushion a girl (or any child) from acting on the behavioral messages her blossoming body gives off.

This brings up that important teenage milieu: school. In a classic study, researchers (Simmons & Blyth, 1987) found that early-maturing girls were set up to have problems when they transferred to a large middle school versus staying in a smaller K–8 school. In fact, in this landmark research, moving to middle school predicted getting poor grades and being more stressed out for every child.

Based on these findings, developmentalists have argued that it’s best not to “warehouse” boys and girls in middle schools during the stressful pubertal years (see Eccles & Roeser, 2003). But, the following study suggests we might rethink this classic scientific advice.

In tracking students in 36 rural school systems that did and did not offer middle school, the researchers were surprised to find that bullying was less frequent among the sixth graders who moved to middle schools. Moreover, the middle schoolers reported having more supportive class environments than children who remained in K–8 or K–12 schools (Farmer and others, 2011).

243

This study highlights the fact that with pre-teens (and every child), we need to go beyond a school’s structure to consider more basic questions: Is this a nurturing, authoritative environment (see Chapter 7)? Does this school have caring peer norms (see Chapter 6)? Moreover, imagine being locked into the calcified status-hierarchies that can solidify, based on spending your whole childhood with the same group of peers. The advantage of middle school is that it offers you (and everyone else) a liberating new start!

Now, let’s summarize these messages:

Question 8.1

Today, puberty occurs a decade or more before we can fully reach adult life.

Question 8.2

(a) The initial hypothalamic hormone triggers the pituitary to produce its hormones, which cause the ovaries and testes to mature and produce their hormones, which, in turn, produce the body changes. (b) Estrogens, testosterone, and the adrenal androgens.

Question 8.3

Calista

Question 8.4

earlier

Question 8.5

An early maturing girl

Question 8.6

Possible recommendations: Pay special attention to providing nurturing schools in sixth and seventh grade. Push for more adequate, “honest” puberty education at a younger age, possibly in a format—such as on-line—where children can talk anonymously about their concerns. Institute a public awareness program encouraging parents to talk about puberty with a same-sex child. Encourage mothers to speak positively about menstruation and have dads discuss events such as spermarche with sons. Make everyone alert to the dangers associated with being an early-maturing girl and develop formal interventions targeted to this “at-risk” group. Institute sensitive, school-based “respect your body” discussions—based on the UNESCO guidelines—for children beginning in the early elementary school years.