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USA - Puberty May Be Coming Earlier for US Girls: Study

There are things families can do to minimize the possible risk of early puberty in young daughters, including eating more fruits and vegetables and eating together as a family.

By Genevra Pittman - August 9, 2010 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Girls in the U.S. may be continuing to hit puberty at earlier ages, according to new research.

The findings suggest earlier development than what was reported in a 1997 study and show a worrying pattern, say the study's authors, led by Dr. Frank Biro of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Girls who hit puberty earlier are more likely to engage in risky behavior, Biro's team notes, and might be at a higher risk for breast cancer, than their peers who develop later.

"This could represent a real trend," Dr. Joyce Lee, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Michigan who was not involved with the new research, told Reuters Health.

Doctors are unsure of what could be causing girls to develop at a younger age, but rising obesity rates may be to blame, they say.

In a study published today in Pediatrics, Biro's team examined about 1,200 girls aged 7 and 8 in Cincinnati, New York and San Francisco. Researchers, as well as the girls' doctors and nurses, used a standard measure of breast development to determine which girls had started puberty.

Compared to the 1997 findings from girls across the U.S., girls in the current study - especially white girls - were more developed at a younger age. As previous research has shown, there were also large differences in development based on race.

At age 7, approximately 10 percent of white girls and 23 percent of black girls had started developing breasts - compared to 5 percent of white girls and 15 percent of black girls in 1997, the authors write.

Among 8-year-olds in the study, 18 percent of white girls and 43 percent of black girls had entered puberty - an increase from around 11 percent of white girls from 1997, but the same as black girls in that year.

This study and another published today in Pediatrics suggest that being overweight, both as a young child and growing up, makes girls more likely to enter puberty earlier. In the second study, Dr. Mildred Maisonet from Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health and her colleagues observed that gaining weight quickly in infancy - a predictor of later obesity - was linked to early puberty in girls in Great Britain.

Biro's team found that girls with a higher body mass index (BMI) - a ratio of weight and height - at age 7 and 8 were more likely to be developed than their thinner peers.

Those authors warn that their study population, although diverse, doesn't necessarily represent what's happening in all U.S. girls. But they are continuing to follow the girls in the study to see when the rest of them hit puberty, and what other factors might be related to their rate of development.

Biro thinks that rising rates of obesity could be a major reason why girls seem to be developing faster than they did even 13 years ago. "We're on the opposite side of an increase in BMI that has been seen in this country and in other countries," he told Reuters Health.

Researchers know that heavier girls are more likely to enter puberty early, Lee, of the University of Michigan, said. That could be because overweight people have more of a hormone known to be linked to development - but it could also be a matter of the actual nutrients that girls get from their diet, she said.

Lee and Biro said doctors are worried about both the psychological and physical health of girls who hit puberty at a young age.

Studies have shown that girls who develop early are more at risk for depression and often start having sex earlier than girls who develop later.

"For the 11-year old that looks like she's 15 or 16, adults are going to interact with her like she's 15 or 16, but so are her peers," Biro said. Girls who develop early "look physically older," he said. "It doesn't mean that they're psychologically or socially more mature."

In addition, women who spend more of their lives menstruating are at a higher risk for breast cancer - which, depending on when they hit menopause, could be a worry for girls who develop early.

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Great Books List

(feel free to send us your favorites)

Girls Speak Out® Bibliography-- ages 10 and up
Compiled by Milly Lee, author, librarian and a founding Girls Speak Out Foundation board member.

When she was a child growing up in San Francisco, Chinese-American Milly found few books about children like herself. There were some Asian stories, but they were set in an exotic land of long ago. Milly felt strongly that stories of children like her needed to be voiced.

When her family was nearly grown, Milly returned to college, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of San Francisco, to become a school librarian. She was active in professional organizations such as the American Library Association, California Reading Association and the California School Library Association. Since retirement, she became a writer to share her stories with children. NIM AND THE WAR EFFORT (1997) was her first children's book, followed by EARTHQUAKE (2001) and LANDED (2006) published by Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Alegria, Malin. Estrella's Quinceanera. Simon & Shuster 2006. A Mexican-American girl who dreads her big fifteenth birthday party finds what she wants across two cultures.

Allende, Isabel. House of Spirits. Harper Collins 1985; Daughter of Fortune. Harper Collins, 1999; Portrait in Sepia. Harper Collins, 2001. Magical spiritualism and political and social history of some adventurous girls and women.

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Algonquin, 1991. Latina girls growing up funny, and serious.

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Bantam, 1969. A powerful story of hard times and survival in an award winning autobiography.

Ashby, Ruth & Deborah Gore Ohrn, ed. Herstory: Women Who Changed the World. Viking, 1995. Inspirational words from those who reclaimed women's history.

Atwood, Margaret. Handmaid's Tale. Doubleday1990; Robber Bride. Doubleday, 1993. Strong girls who challenged their oppressors.

Avi. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Orchard, 1990. Newberry award winning story of a 13 year old girl at sea who uses her wits to survive. Avi's other titles are highly recommended as well.

Beales, Melba. Warriors Don't Cry. Pocket, 1995. The true story of the girl who integrated a school in the South.

Carroll, Rebecca. Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America. Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1997. Interviews that explore young black girls' attitudes.

Choi, Sook Nyul. Year of Impossible Goodbyes. Houghton Mifflin, 1991. A North Korean girl trapped in an occupied country.

Cleary, Beverly. Girl from Yamhill: a Memoir. Morrow, 1988. The true story of a beloved author's childhood. Read her other titles, especially the Ramona stories.

Coleman, Penny. Rosie the Riveter. Crown, 1995; Fannie Lou Hamer & the Fight for

The Vote. Millbrook, 1993; Mother Jones & the March of the Mill Children. Millbrook, 1994. Photos and inspiring stories of women who stood up, took risks and wrought changes.

Coles, Robert. The Story of Ruby Bridges. Scholastic, 1995. The poignant story of the only African-American child in her school in 1960.

Conway, Jill Kerr. Written by Herself. Vintage, 1990. Road from Coorain. Vintage, 1990. Autobiographies of a remarkable Australian woman who became the president of a renowned women's college in America.

Creech, Sharon. Walk Two Moons. HarperCollins, 1994. Newberry award winning story of a thirteen year old Native American girl's search for her missing mother. All the titles of this author are recommended.

Crew, Linda. Children of the River. Delacorte, 1989. Sundara fled Cambodia, then struggles to fit into America.

Cushman, Karen. Catherine Called Birdy. Clarion, 1994. The Midwife's Apprentice. Clarion, 1995. The Ballad of Lucy Whipple. Clarion, 1996. Engrossing tales of girls living in medieval times. Lucy Whipple was a spunky girl who came to California during the Gold Rush.

Divakaruvi, Chita. Mistress of Spices. Anchor/Doubleday, 1997. A mysterious Indian woman doles out spices and remedies in her new country.

Dorris, Michael. Morning Girl. Hyperion, 1992. A gentle sister and brother live in a tropical paradise.

Farmer, Nancy. The Ear, The Eye and The Arm. Orchard, 1994; A Girl Named Disaster. Orchard, 1996. Framer's imaginative works have won the Newberry Award, the National Book Award and the Printz Award.

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Doubleday, 1995. A timeless World War II story of growing up while hiding from the Nazis.

Freedman, Russell. Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery. Clarion, 1993. The inspiring story of a shy young woman who became the First Lady of the USA.

Furlong, Monica. Wise Child. Random House, 1987; Juniper. Knopf, 1991. Growing up female in Britain during the Dark Ages, a time when women healers faced prosecution.

Garden, Nancy. Annie on My Mind. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982. Still being challenged, and still an excellent story of two teenagers who fell in love.

George, Jean Craighead. Julie of the Wolves. HarperCollins, 1972. Survival story of a remarkable Intuit girl growing up in the frigid north.

GirlSource. Ten Speed Press, 2000. Written by young women, it's packed with good information about mental health, sexual health, relationships, women's rights, and planning for college or a career.

Grant, Brianna. We Are Girls Who Love to Run/Somos Chicas y A Nosotras Nos Encanta Correr. Awarded a Bronze Medal for the 2008 Moonbeam Children's Book Award in the Body-Mind-Spirit category.

Hamilton, Virginia. Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush. Putnam1982. A teenager resents taking care of her retarded brother. Read other stories by this excellent award-winning African-American author.

Hesse, Karen. Letters from Rifka. Holt, 1992. A young Jewish girl's story of coming to the USA from the Ukraine.

Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki. Farewell to Manzanar. Bantam, 1973. A moving story of a Japanese family's victory over racism during World War II in an internment camp.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes were Watching God. HarperCollins, 1990. Love among people in folk speech.

Jenkins, Lyll Becerra de. The Honorable Prison. Dutton, 1988. A true story of survival during South African political turmoil.

Jiang, Ji Li. Red Scarf Girl. HarperCollins, 1997. An autobiography about growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. Vintage, 1989. Painful growing up while female, Chinese and smart in a small central California town.

Levine, Gail Carson. Ella Enchanted. HarperCollins, 2003. A different twist to the Cinderella story now made into a movie.

Levinson, Nancy Smiler. She's Been Working on the Railroad. Lodestar, 1997. Women built railroads, too.

Lowry, Lois. Number the Stars. Houghton Mifflin, 1989. Thrilling story of a 10 year old girl being smuggled out of Nazi Germany.

Lyons, Mary. Letters from a Slave Girl. Scribner, 1992; Sorrow's Kitchen. Macmillan, 1990. Stories of escaping from slavery based on Harriet Jacob's autobiography.

Macy, Sue. Winning Ways: A Photohistory of American Women in Sports. Holt, 1996. The stories of amazing physical strength and endurance of females.

Malone, Mary. Maya Lin: Architect & Artist. Enslow, 1995. The early life of the architect of, among other structures, the Vietnam War Memorial in the USA.

McCunn, Ruthanne Lum.Thousand Pieces of Gold. Beacon, 2004. Moon Pearl. Beacon. 2000. Two stories of very independent Chinese women who prevailed despite adversity.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Knopf. 1970. Morrison's first novel is about the most powerless in her society, an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove who cannot satisfy America's beauty myth.

Munoz-Ryan, Pam. Riding Freedom. Scholastic, 1998; Esperanza Rising. Scholastic, 2000. Both award-winning California stories, one of a stagecoach driver who isn't what others believed; and the other about a rich young girl who had to give up much to learn to survive as a migrant worker.

Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Random, 2003. Books brought together a group of women who supported each other while living dangerously in Iran.

Namioka, Lensey. Ties that Bind, Ties that Break. Delacorte, 1999. Going against her culture, a young Chinese girl refuses to have her feet bound and she suffered the consequences of her choice.

Nye, Naomi Shihab. Habibi. Simon & Schuster, 1997. A love story of a Palestinian girl and an Israeli boy.

Parks, Rosa and James Haskin. Rosa Parks: My Story. Dial, 1992. The woman who refused to move to the back of the bus because she was black sparked a civil rights movement.

Paterson, Katherine. Lyddie. Lodestar, 1991. The Great Gilly Hopkins. Crowell, 1978. The story of girls working hard to free themselves from miserable lives as mill girls.

Peck, Richard. A Long Way from Chicago. Dial, l1998; A Year Down Yonder. Dial, 2000. Newberry award winning stories of Grandma Dowdel's amusing take on life.

Pettit, Jayne. Maya Angelou: Journey of the Heart. Lodestar, 1996. The acclaimed poet's struggles to find expression through her writing.

Rappaport, Doreen. Living Dangerously. Harper Collins, 1991. Stories of six strong American women who led daredevil lives while challenging limits.

Rinaldi, Ann. A Ride into Morning: The Story of Tempe Wick. Harcourt, 1991. The courageous story of 14 year old Tempe Wick during the American Revolutionary War.

Rylant, Cynthia. Missing May. Orchard, 1992. Summer's beloved aunt dies and she and her uncle struggle until a young boy comes into their lives.

San Souci, Robert. Cut from the Same Cloth: American Women of Myth, Legend, and Tall Tales. Philomel, 1993. Extraordinary folk tales from diverse American cultures.

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Putnam, 1989.The Bonesetter's Daughter. Putnam, 2001. Stories of a Chinese-American family and their spiritual and cultural ties.

Temple, Frances. The Ramsay Scallop. Orchard, 1994. A young 13th century girl goes on a pilgrimage.

Thomas, Marlo. Free To Be.... Running Press Book Publishers, 2002. The first of a series of landmark books showing the importance of and fun in celebrating yourself.

Tsukiyama, Gail. Women of the Silk. St. Martin's Press, 1991. Chinese women were able to maintain their independence by working in the silk industry.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mother's Gardens. Harcourt, 1983. The Color Purple. Harcourt, 1982. Stories of the richness of life despite poverty, slavery and prejudice.

Wong, Jade Snow. Fifth Chinese Daughter. University of Washington Press, 1990. The first novel to depict home life in San Francisco's Chinatown as experienced by a young girl who grew up to be an award winning author and ceramic artist.

Yang, Erche Namu. Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World. Little, 2003. Singer Namu sheds light on the unique matriarchal and matrilineal Moso culture of one of China's minority people.

Additional titles can be found in Once Upon a Heroine by Alison Cooper-Mullin, Jennifer Marmaduke Coye. Contemporary Books, 1999 and Shirleen Dodson's 100 Books for Girls to Grow On. Harper, 1998.

Real Connections in Her Real World: Girls and Social Networking from the Inside Out
By Andrea Johnston, President, Girls Speak Out Worldwide

What does it mean when girls and their families are inundated with beliefs that without constant access to hand-held technology and computers, and immediate recording of reactions and observations, they will be left out, which means left behind, without a voice, becoming a blank screen, which scares anyone struggling to find a place in society?

Girls’ need for social networking was documented decades ago when we first learned about girls’ psychology, which was then centered on a phenomenon called the “lost voice.” According to research done at Harvard by then-professor Carol Gilligan, girls were sacrificing parts if not all of their unique true selves to fit in with limiting cultural norms. In the process, they lost their voice, or their ability to speak as an individual who challenges sexist views of her gender. Subsequent research showed that girls were also at a higher risk for depression and decreasing self-esteem in adolescence, and African-American girls resist better than other girls.

In the early 1990s, when I was traveling around the country meeting with groups of girls helping them hold onto their true selves, they asked for more and more information from each other and women in the room about the successes, struggles and choices they might encounter as females. It was often preventative, and it was always personal and in-person. Our shared stories would inspire girls to move ahead feeling secure; the time between meetings was an essential part of their processing and integrating what fit their needs, plans and personalities.

In 1997, at the closing session of the First Girls’ Conference held at UNICEF House in New York City, a 13 year-old told us, “If I knew at 7 what we learned here, I would have made better choices. I would have understood I didn’t have to give up who I am, and that I wasn’t alone.” As adults, we were moved to get our message out to younger and younger girls, helping them find the real time and space to connect from the inside-out.

For a time, we believed girl power would be institutionalized, that is, there would be a concerted and sustained movement to liberate girls from stereotypes and support their development as healthy, unique individuals who would find themselves on a level playing field with boys, and as they grew up, with men. We knew this required creating safe and exciting places where girls could talk about their feelings and life-events, evaluate what they heard, find ways to have an effect on people in their lives, and hopefully organize and do something to change what was unfair. Circles as places of connection became ubiquitous as the form in which girls met, played, created and talked.

Here we are now at the end of the first decade of a new century, and girl power is not institutionalized as we had hoped. Yes, girls are still finding ways to express themselves that move them forward as integrated and liberated individuals, but the outlook a decade ago was more hopeful as messages began to reflect differences as valuable, and as girls from a variety of backgrounds came together and probed beneath the surface to find root causes and new waves of resistance. But media is much more pervasive than it ever has been. A 2009 PEW report on online use by teens indicates that 93% of American 12-17 year olds use social networking sites (SNS), which really are VSNS, virtual sites. Almost half of these teens have broadband at home, and 75% of them create blogs.

What does this mean for tween and teen girls whose sophisticated relational awareness and strong interpersonal skills are always online in the age of iPhones and tweets? What is happening when virtual social networking is replacing in-person talking, probing and connecting and downtime to process what’s going on? Today thumbs, especially those of girls between the ages of 9 and 17, are no longer just a measure of our evolutionary status. They’re instrumental in bringing technology into girls’ lives 24/7, and with hand-held devices come symptoms that are taking us back to the depressing mental health statistics regarding girls’ development of the last century.

A false notion of social networking is being mass-marketed in a new form, with SNS as its generic new initials; and it’s time to evaluate its consequences by gender, and implement positive uses. What does it mean when girls and their families are inundated with beliefs that without constant access to an online community and immediate recording of reactions and observations, they will be left out, which means left behind, without a voice, becoming a blank screen, which scares anyone struggling to find a place in society?

Hand-held metallic devices that connect girls to each other (and a media still selling stereotypes) have more value today than furry, warm pets: cell phones, PDAs, laptops, WiFi, Tweeters, Twitterers, Facebook and whatever emerges even as I write this are among the pseudo-connectors girls bond with and carry with them. A May 26, 2009 New York Times article, Texting May be Taking a Toll, states that girls receive an average of 80 messages a day, or 2,272 text messages a month, and some parents are finding over 14,000 messages a month billed to their daughter’s phone number. If it doesn’t ring, it vibrates, and it does it all day and night. According to the article, “ The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.” How many of our conversations have become dead zones because a ring tone and/or buzzing command a child’s attention as if it was life or death ?

A few weeks ago, a friend who is a school superintendent in a suburb of New York City, explained why she is troubled by what is happening in her district (two grade schools, two middle schools and a high school): girls are deteriorating in increasing numbers. Girls who are medicated, which is something that seems to go along with the insecurity of being a helicopter parent, and girls who are unmedicated, are falling apart. They’re engaging in destructive behaviors such as multiple sexual relationships and STDs, and failing academically. They’re also relatively privileged financially, which to me, as someone who works equally with girls who live in comfort as well as in poverty, is a bell-ringer. I know that with disposable money comes more and more personal technology, and that means palms are now telling fortunes in different ways. They’re pulsing with frantic attempts to make connections that feel right and make girls fit in—and they need to be routinely shut off.

Think about a girl who is regurgitating everything into her social networking accounts; she’s the new variation on adolescent eating disorders. She texts all the time, and when asked, confesses to being obsessed with what she can download next and listen to later as well. If she was eating fast food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and she complains about her gain in weight, and a20doctor is concerned about juvenile diabetes and heart problems, you know where to look. It’s a no-brainer, right, that her food diet needs to be modified? Exploring foods that will support her health and well-being can even be a family activity. Chances are she might become a vegetarian, and insist everyone join her, because that kind of rebellion seems an appropriate response to a pre-teen and teen, and who knows, it may work out for everyone. The point is that we know, adults and children, what is good for us, but sometimes, we need other people to make sure we do it. Isn’t guiding part of connecting and or networking, and isn’t that what a girl also needs as she matures?

If your daughter, student, niece, friend, neighbor, texts and/or talks for the equivalent of breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack time and bedtime, and is confused, stressed, unfocused, depressed or irritable, not to mention secretive and distant, look at what she’s doing with her time. Help her find alone time, a refuge and silence. Maybe insist on it. She’s living at home, and chances are adults can control how technology functions there, at least until changes settle in and she can help construct a reasonable way to react and process wherever she finds herself.

Thousands of girls have let me know firsthand that a girl will locate and vibrate to her inner voice, and develop a positive self-image, no matter what is happening in her life, if she is has the time and space to find her voice and check in with it. This is true no matter where a girl lives or how she lives (it’s even been documented among children in armed conflict). But first, she has to be able to distinguish her inner voice to recognize it, isolate it from the cacophony. Then she needs to experience its resonance, and learn to trust it.

In my years working with girls in Kenya, Cameroon and Sierra Leone where there is little hand-held technology, where even cell phones are luxuries only a few adults have, there is less to chip away when getting to what matters. In non-technological communities, there is less noise (texts are noisy voices in our heads, aren’t they?), and truths are louder. It’s easier to find what is right for you although getting it may be harder because without technology there is often a lack of access to schooling, information, goods and services. Yet because there’s no sorting through what so many other people are saying almost at the same time, and with little or no explanation, I find that they get it sooner about our real strengths and abilities even when local custom says boys and men rule the hearth and pocketbook. Real social networking sites such as schoolrooms and huts are launching pads that move girls to doing something about traditional patriarchal beliefs much quicker and with their feet planted in rather than floating above self-determination.

Parents, teachers and supportive adults can have a real voice in girls’ lives in ways that encourage connection and offer balance. Girls hear what adults say when it’s offered as what we experience and conclude; she has to feel comfortable trying it on and seeing if it works for her now--or later. Many girls have told me, “I got it about being myself, but it took time to really get it. I had to think about it, and figure out what I really wanted.” The key here is THINK ABOUT IT. We used to call this “processing”, and it is different from reacting, and it’s essential to positive social networking. It's something President Obama tells reporters, especially, that he's doing, too.

Girls have the inner resources to be strong and healthy, along with the resilience to bounce back when negative events happen. However, once they are offered relevant and authentic information and support, they must have the space and time to think about it.

When you look at girls and social networking,

• Think of the palm and thumb as also leading to her heart and head.
• Think about a balance between technology and emotional and social connections.
• Find a way to ensure that a girl in your life has the quiet, space and time to learn who she is from the inside-out.
• Impose limits on technology that reduce excessive availability and social pressure, and
• Incorporate uses that validate soul-searching and reflection.

Girls need a smorgasbord of choices, and they have many options in part because media and technology connect a global, not local, community. But this technology connection is in its infancy, and we have to understand and control how to live with such overwhelming choices, some of them founded in greed and control, others reflecting justice and freedom.

A girl does need a tool to help decide which ideas, beliefs and actions are expressive of her identity, and help her make positive connections. That tool is her true self, which is the source of happiness and hope. Talking together, in person, actually sharing face time, about the value of listening to and communicating with her true self, is more important than anything we can buy her.

NOTE: Andrea is collecting stories and opinions for a book on what women would change about their childhoods knowing what they know now and using what is available now. Contributions can be confidential. Please contact gspeakout@aol.com for more information.