Dunn - The New Puberty

AMANDA DUNN is the politics and society editor for The Conversation. Prior to that she was a reporter and editor with The Age for 16 years.

THE NEW
PUBERTY

AMANDA DUNN

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

Level 1, 715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

www.mup.com.au

First published 2017

Text Amanda Dunn, 2017

Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2017

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

Cover design by Design by Committee

Typeset by Sonya Murphy, TypeSkill

Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Dunn, Amanda, author.

The new puberty/Amanda Dunn.

9780522870763 (paperback)

9780522870770 (ebook)

Includes index.

AdolescenceSocial aspects.

PubertySocial aspects.

Adolescent psychology.

For Molly

Contents

I

Whats Happening to Our Kids?

Chapter 1

Of Boobs and Pubes

Why Kids Seem to Be Going through Puberty Earlier than Ever

W HAT IS YOUR most vivid memory of puberty? Is it stuffing tissues in your bra to make your boobs look bigger? Is it a period that arrived unexpectedly and shocked or embarrassed you? Is it looking sideways at the other boys in the class who were taller, bigger and hairier than you and wondering what was wrong with you? Is it people making fun of your growth spurt, or an unwanted erection?Your flat chest? Or do you remember constant anxiety and insecurity about who you were, what you were good at, whether people liked you, what made you special?

I have a vivid memory of realising I had hit pubertyas it turned out, it was when puberty hit me. I was in Year 6, so about 11 years old, standing in a crowded tram heading into Melbourne. It was 1984 and I fancy that, in keeping with the times, I may have been sporting a side ponytail (and it may have been permed, but thats a whole other book). Without warning, the man standing in front of me turned around and accidentally elbowed me in the chest. The pain was terrible, like something hard yet tender and a little bit alien had taken residence in my body, shocking me so much I almost burst into tears. Well, I thought, when Id regained my composure, this is new. I had no idea what breast buds were, but they had introduced themselves to me in no uncertain terms.

As it turned out, my puberty was one of those protracted oneseverything seemed to happen later for me than most of my friends. And when puberty finally did knock on my door, it was not particularly welcome. In the skewed world of ballet in which I was absorbed, breasts or hips or a womanly shape of any kind were generally frowned upon, as was the solid physique I was sporting, which I would continue to sport into adulthood. My development was, to me, something to be embarrassed about rather than celebrated and embraced.

Whatever your own memory of making the often-awkward transition from child to adult, chances are it is not a particularly happy one either. Why should this be so? Puberty is as old as human life and a vital, natural functionwithout it, life would come to an abrupt end. So why should it be so miserable for so many of us?

The primary answer to that question is that were still as awkward as hell when it comes to talking about pubertyto our friends, our parents and particularly to our kids. The education system struggles too. Sexuality education happens on an ad-hoc basis, and flares into controversy more often than is necessary. Governments tread warily, and so do schools. There is a strange cultural reticence behind thisas though talking about those physical changes, and the burgeoning sexuality and reproductive capability they represent, is something shameful and a bit dirty. Its high time we acknowledged how damaging that is and changed our approach, especially in light of what I began to notice over a decade ago.

In the early 2000s, I was a schools reporterlater health reporterfor Melbournes Age newspaper. One day I found myself at a primary school for a story and, watching the students mill around at lunchtime, something struck me: the senior girls, the Year 5s and 6s, were so big. They were tall, they had obvious breaststhey looked like grown women wearing little girls faces. This seemed to me to be a radical shift from when I had been in Grade 6 two decades earlier. Again and again when I went into primary schools, I was struck by how physically developed the kids seemed.

I was not the only one who noticed this change. Media stories started to appear reporting that puberty was happening earlier, and how worrying this was, particularly for the parents of girls. But the focus seemed to be mostly on when girls had their first period, and the evidence was patchy. Some reports included a medical expert saying, somewhat confusingly, that the age of menarche (pronounced men-arkee)a girls first periodhad dropped significantly in the past century but had recently plateaued (which is in fact the case, but like most matters of health and human development, its complicated).

At the same time, there were constant stories about the sexualisation of young girls; the aggressive marketing to them of adult clothing, make-up and ideas; the sense that they were being pushed out of childhood too soon, for nefarious money-making reasonswith huge psychological and social implications. For boys and girls more generally, there was also the encroachment of social media and the proliferation of all kinds of other entertainment that meant they were being exposed to adult ideas and issues earlier than ever before, that the barriers that had once protected childish innocence were being broken down.

In early 2015, when I returned to The Age from maternity leave, I wrote a story based on the research done by Professor George Patton, head of adolescent health research at Melbournes Royal Childrens Hospital and an international expert on puberty. Having taken a keen interest in adolescent health as a roundsperson, I had worked many times with Patton and his colleague, Professor Susan Sawyer, on a range of issues to do with young peoples physical and emotional development.

Patton is overseeing a project called the Childhood to Adolescence Transition Study (CATS). He and his team are investigating exactly when puberty begins, how it unfolds, why children reach it at varying ages and stages, and the impact it has on all facets of childrens lives. The researchers are particularly interested in an earlier, and largely unknown, form of puberty known as adrenarche, which happens to children at around eight years of age. They have found that while there are no physical signs of development at this age (which is about Year 3), there is a distinct hormonal shift that affects childrens emotional wellbeing and their relationships. Boys seem to be particularly affecteda neat reversal of puberty proper, during which, in general, girls are more affected. This means that the entire pubertal process is longer and begins earlier than we thought, and thats even before factoring in that physical development is starting earlier.

Why does this matter? Well, going through puberty earlier is a big deal because it marks, at least from a physical point of view, the end of childhood and the start of adolescence, and the beginning of sexual and reproductive maturity. And because of that, no matter how smooth a kids puberty might be, its hard to escape feeling just a little melancholy that it is encroaching further into childhood, a time we like to think of as unselfconscious and free of adult concerns. For girls in particular, physical puberty, or gonadarche, immediately sexualises the body, in a way that is understandably concerning when it strikes young children. It has implications for their physical, social and emotional wellbeing. Much about these complex issues, and the point at which they intersect with puberty, remains a mystery, even to adolescent health experts.