Posted on 06/11/2016 3:45:18 PM PDT by heartwood
“What we found was the girls who had earlier breast development had a higher risk of depressive symptoms, or more depressive symptoms,” said Dr. C. Mary Schooling, an epidemiologist who is a professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health, and was the senior author on the study. “We didn’t see the same thing for boys.”
...Earlier onset of breast development in girls was associated with a higher risk of depression in early adolescence even after controlling for many other factors, including socioeconomic status, weight or parents’ marital status...
The biological transition of puberty, of course, occurs in a social and cultural context. One very important effect of developing early, Dr. Mendle said, is that it changes the way that people treat you, from your peers to the adults in your life to strangers. “When kids navigate puberty they start to look different,” she said. “It can be hard for them to maintain friendships with kids who haven’t developed, and we also know that early maturing girls are more likely to be harassed and victimized by other kids in their grade.”
(Excerpt) Read more at well.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Other medical theories are that of better nutrition, better health care, and artificial light.
Um, from the attention paid to my breasts? And the men’s obvious assumption that I should welcome the attention and explicit comments made by creeps to my 15 y.o. self?
Despite my figure, I did not look one year older than I was. Short and baby-faced.
General culture can tell a lot of lies, can’t it.
The article didn’t go into much detail about the social factors that the researchers (both in Hong Kong and the U.S.) might have associated with the increase in depression. It would be interesting to know how similar the social environments of pre-teens/teens in Hong Kong and the U.S. are.
I don’t think you’re going to get much support here for the contention that females should have a choice other than to accept unwelcome sexual attention/contact. We are expected to consider it a compliment and to respond either positively or with silent submission.
[[[[Oh, no. I was a late developer, but I went to extremes when I did. I dressed modestly, and too many men still acted as if I had grown my breasts on purpose to get attention.
Revealing clothes don’t help matters, but clothes are not the main problem. The problem is the men - only a few in some groups, and a great many in others.]]
Yep it’s the men.
I clobbered an old man with a frying pan for grabbing me when I was teen. Wasn’t dressed revealing (t-shirt and jeans) at the time either .
And I can vouch for the relative sexual looseness of American society for decades, having grown up in it.
I’m a guy, but I still remember when, as a boy, I was getting eyeglasses, and the eye doctor (who also sold eyeglasses) suggested Playboy frames. No kidding... they came in preteen boys’ sizes.
My mom was NOT aghast... she was for the latest and coolest stuff as long as society seemed to back it. I got the Playboy frames. Nobody, not even the religious congregation where I went, bothered to ask if this was appropriate. Nope, boy, you’re supposed to be the tiger and the girls the meat, they might as well have told me.
What. A. Bunch. Of. Unholy. Hooey. That. Was.
Some studies have shown that physical molestation of girls or exposure to sexual material/stimuli can trigger the changes in the brain that signal the glands to produce the hormones that result in puberty.
It’s a very interesting area of endocrinology. 15 or 20 years ago, scientists believed that most of the decline in the age of menarche was traceable simply to body weight/fat levels, but more study has shown that this is only one of a wide variety of factors behind the phenomenon.
Oh, it sounds plausible to me, but it seems to me it would take deep involvement to have a profound effect.
And on top of that, some people might just be born more sensitive to such things.
How would it be ethically researched would be a major question to me. Reviewing cases after the fact might be the only acceptable method, but that leaves open the hypothesis that those predisposed to mature faster might also “send precocious signals” when younger too.
Kinsey actually carried out evil experiments in the name of science, and came up with claims so weird that they can’t be considered research with integrity in any case.
All your points are accurate, and you’re right that no decent people would conduct experiments with sufficient controls to give clear data. At this point, it’s a hypothesis supported by some data.
One point that has been made is that the very young girls, 9 or 10 years old, whose pregnancies get public attention have all been victims of long-term abuse.
I recall one such study that claimed sexual activity brought on early puberty, in both girls and boys, and resulted in shorter stature as an adult.
So you have concluded that men thought you were trying to get their attention because you had breasts? That's pretty much a non-sequitur by definition.
Further, how was it "obvious" that you should welcome that attention?
I heard a segment on some talk radio just this week about the increasing frequency of girls as young as 7 developing breast tissue, signaling the beginning of puberty. 7! They offered no cause.
The shorter stature correlates with earlier puberty regardless of the cause, because growth hormone levels decline as the reproductive hormone levels increase. That’s the kind of thing that’s easily studied.
As far as the cause of early puberty, there are a lot of elements to consider, and scientists can only investigate so much. Many hypotheses have some support, but far short of proof.
Relations between the sexes in this area is touchy at best (ask Adam and Eve with their initial loincloths of fig leaves).
If someone actually TALKED about her breasts, that would be more difficult than just wondering what people thought. But it sounds like they talked.
Anyhow, the attempts of modern culture to separate sexual symbolism from marriage have only left it a worse wreck. I don’t doubt there are misunderstandings. But without the family paradigm being the overarching paradigm, there is no context in which to forge an integrated understanding. (And thus is my quota of professor talk for the night.)
It's very complicated.
I tend to suspect environmental estrogen as far as declining age of puberty for girls, myself.
That is supported by some studies, but not by others.
Kudos for clobbering the cad. Nevertheless, your subjective assessment of what a man should and should not find attractive in the manner of dress is flawed in that by definition the behavior of others is not subjective.
Reality is often more complicated than any theory.
Modern medicine is finding this out in more than one arena. Sometimes several factors have to be in confluence in order for an effect to take place. The maddening search for the exact mechanism of “mad cow disease” is one such conundrum today. Just about everybody believes that prions, a kind of oddly folded protein, are in the middle of it, and yet what else interacts with the prions is less clear. A prion contamination does not guarantee getting “mad cow disease” though it empirically raises the odds. There are four or five main theories competing for acceptance.
I’ve read quite a bit about this, because I have a lot of daughters.
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