Study: More U.S. girls starting puberty early

[Dale_M]

Girls in the United States are entering puberty at earlier ages than they have in the past, a new study reports.

As early as age 7.

Early puberty in girls is a growing public health concern because studies have shown that girls who start puberty earlier are more likely to develop breast and uterine cancer later in life. The National Institutes of Health funded the study as part of a larger investigation into the environmental factors that contribute to breast cancer risk.

Cancer risk isn’t the only concern surrounding early puberty. Early development in girls has been linked with poor self-esteem, eating disorders, and depression, as well as cigarette and alcohol use and earlier sexual activity.

“If an 11- or 12-year-old girl looks like she’s 16, people will interact with her as if she were 16,” Biro says. “Early maturation increases the rate of risk-taking behaviors and lowers academic performance. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but it could.”

cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/09/girls.starting.puberty.early/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

Its not known why puberty is occurring earlier, but suspicions point to the increase in childhood obesity and chemicals in the environment – most notably bisphenol-A (BPA), which is found in many hard plastic products.
cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/09/girls.starting.puberty.early/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

 

[CatholicGerman]

Its not known why puberty is occurring earlier

Yes it is. The early onset of puberty among the various races matches the rate of fatherlessness among those races. The correlation is astounding, and scientists have presented much evidence that, in this case, the correlation does equal causation.

The rates for white girls are increasing because their rates of fatherlessness are increasing. The rates for black girls are increasing more slowly because their rates of fatherlessness are increasing more slowly (as they are already mostly fatherless). CNN won’t report that, because a lot of their viewers are Baby Mammas.

Don’t you just love how they blame it on plastics?

Being without a father when girls are young can bring on early puberty, according to a Canterbury University researcher.

PhD candidate Jacqueline Tither compared 68 pairs of sisters from father-absent homes with 93 pairs of sisters from father-present homes in New Zealand.

The sisters in each pair were full biological siblings who were at least two years apart in age and, in the father-absent families, the biological parents had split up prior to the younger sister getting her first period.

She found that common processes such as separation, divorce and departure of the father from the home could substantially change the age at which girls entered puberty.

Ms Tither’s findings, which will be published in this month’s Developmental Psychology Journal, back up previous research into early puberty.

More from The Guardian:

On average, a girl whose father divorces or separates from her mother and leaves the family home before she is 10 comes into puberty five months earlier than a girl from an intact family. But the impact of fathers is not limited to whether they are physically present.

In intact families, girls reach puberty later if they have a positive rather than a negative relationship with their father; the more he is involved in her upbringing, the later she will have her first period.

If the father is absent through illness or work rather than as a result of divorce or separation, the girl’s pubertal age is unaffected. Interestingly, too, an absent mother or a girl’s quality of relationship with her, does not affect the point at which she comes into puberty.

 

[Dale_M]

Yes it is.

The early onset of puberty among the various races matches the rate of fatherlessness among those races. The correlation is astounding, and scientists have presented much evidence that, in this case, the correlation does equal causation.
hmmm… I dunno. Its a very intriguing result. However, the first article has a fairly small sample, and the second article provides no source for its claims. The second article does refer to an article in Pediatrics, but if you look it up, it is a study of obesity’s effect on early puberty. There is no mention of fathers.
pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/119/3/e624

I think the results in the first article are suggestive, but hardly conclusive. And certainly a far cry from indicating causation. Indeed, no mechanism for causation is shown although there is a brief speculation about what it could be. And surely the presence/absence of a father doesn’t explain the entire early puberty phenomenon - so there would be the matter of determining how much influence it has.

Further study is definitely required.

Don’t you just love how they blame it on plastics?

Oh, there has been many studies over the past decade which have suggested an estrogenic effect in some of the chemicals used in some plastics. Bisphenol A is only the latest culprit to be identified. It was of concern because of its ubiquity, including in plastic bottles for feeding baby formula.

However, I am not aware of any studies which have been conducted to show a connection between plasticizers and early puberty. (I think it would be hard to study - how do you determine exposure? How do you establish controls?)

I know we have had discussions here at CAF suggesting that estrogens from birth control pills, flushed into the sewage system, are not removed by water purification and so is present in drinking water. Perhaps that too would be worth investigating?

Incidentally, the early puberty phenomenon has been shown to be also occurring in Denmark, and not just the US and New Zealand.
pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/123/5/e932

 

[Apryl]

Yes it is. The early onset of puberty among the various races matches the rate of fatherlessness among those races. The correlation is astounding, and scientists have presented much evidence that, in this case, the correlation does equal causation.

The rates for white girls are increasing because their rates of fatherlessness are increasing. The rates for black girls are increasing more slowly because their rates of fatherlessness are increasing more slowly (as they are already mostly fatherless). CNN won’t report that, because a lot of their viewers are Baby Mammas.

Don’t you just love how they blame it on plastics?

So, blaming it on plastics is incredulous… but you state (as if it’s a fact) that Black girls are ‘already mostly fatherless’

Not only are your comments illogical, they are insulting.

Reminds me of a woman I know who was unforgiving with the idea of someone else having their cat declawed, but she would get an abortion at the drop of a hat and had no guilt for the ones she had.

There may be some correlation between a father not being in the household and the children reaching the onset of puberty earlier… but do you have any idea WHY?

Are you suggesting that if they were around males for more hours in the day, they onset wouldn’t take place? Or what?

 

[Lutheranteach]

I would go with the obesity angle. A woman has to have a certain percentage of body fat to begin and continue to have a monthly cycle and some hormones need a certain fat percentage in the body to activate. It makes sense. We, as a population, are just enormous compared to most of the world’s peoples.

 

[CatholicGerman]

Yes, but Denmark has similar rates of fatherlessness as we do. Furthermore, the study you cited (which I have read before) specifically rules out certain environmental factors and obesity as causes. The study also points to a strong family-correlation (early puberty runs in families, it is not spread evenly or randomly throughout the population). They say that this points to “genetic factors”, but that is just a guess. Single motherhood also tends to run in families (once begun, matriarchy tends to become entrenched), so behavioral factors cannot be ruled out as a root cause.

Furthermore, breastfeeding has been on the rise in all Western cultures (including Denmark and America), and among all races, and the quality of plastics used in baby bottles has been increasing, which suggests that the plastics in bottles cannot be the root cause of the earlier puberty. Unfortunately, the Denmark study completely ignores family status, so it does not speak to this topic.

Timing of puberty follows a familial pattern and, therefore, seems to be controlled by strong genetic factors, although environmental factors also must play a role. Thus, nutritional status, chronic diseases, migration to a healthy environment (as with foreign adoption), frequent infectious diseases, pollution, and exposure to chemicals with endocrine-disrupting properties are all likely candidates for influencing the endogenous endocrine milieu and, therefore, affect the differentiation and development of hormone-dependent reproductive tissues such as the breast (for review see ref 1). However, the etiologies of the apparent change in pubertal development found in American girls remain unknown.

Interesting that they note adoption, as it has been suggested that girls who are adopted into healthier environments enter puberty earlier, rather than later.

In the study period, 655 children developed precocious puberty during 5627763 person-years at risk. Adopted children were followed during 39978 person-years at risk, during which 45 girls and 6 boys developed precocious puberty. The risk of developing precocious puberty was significantly increased 10 to 20 times in adopted girls compared with girls with Danish background. The risk of developing precocious puberty depended on the country of origin. In children immigrating with their family, the risk of developing precocious puberty was only marginally increased. Older age at adoption significantly increased the risk of precocious puberty in adoptees independent of region of origin. The incidence rate ratio was significantly higher in children adopted after the age of 2. In children immigrating with their family, we found no effect of age at migration.

That highlighted sentence is important, as it points out that it is not the stress of the move, but the change in family and their awareness of it, that is causing the early onset of puberty.

Another thing both studies point out is that it isn’t really that the puberty begins so much earlier as that it progresses so quickly (which is called precocious puberty). It’s as if the body recognizes the dangerous situation it is in, and rushes through puberty, in order to increase the chances of reproductive success. A similar rush is seen after a famine.

This is further evidence that it is prepubescent stress that incites early puberty, rather than environmental factors. Here is the abstract to a further Canadian study that substantiates that claim:

The relations between intactness of the parental unit (e.g., father absent at age 14) and pubertal timing in both men and women were examined in a US national probability sample. In both men and women, an absent father at age 14 predicted an earlier age of puberty (e.g., early menarche or voice change). There was little evidence that an absent mother or the presence of a stepfather, independent of a father’s absence, was related to early puberty in either men or women. The results extend previous research and suggest that certain psychosocial factors (i.e., father absence) may affect growth and development in both adolescent girls and boys.

This is a particularly interesting one because it notes, as some other research does, that early puberty is increased in both boys and girls in fatherless homes.

 

[CatholicGerman]

Some further research on subject:

From Vanderbilt:

Girls who had close, positive relationships with their parents during the first five years of life tended to experience relatively late puberty, compared to girls who had more distant relationships with their parents. More specifically, the researchers found that the quality of fathers’ involvement with daughters was the most important feature of the early family environment in relation to the timing of the daughters’ puberty.

Girls who enter puberty later generally had fathers who were active participants in care-giving; had fathers who were supportive to the girls’ mothers; and had positive relationships with their mothers. But it’s the fathers’ involvement, rather than the mothers’, which seems to be paramount to the age of the girls’ development. The researchers believe that girls have evolved to experience early socialization, with their “antennae” tuned to the fathers’ role in the family (both in terms of father-daughter and father-mother relationships) and that girls may unconsciously adjust their timing of puberty based on their fathers’ behavior.

The researchers found that girls raised in father-absent homes or dysfunctional father-present homes experienced relatively early pubertal timing.

It may be that obesity and plastics are correllated with early puberty, but the statistical correllation is much lower (or even non-existent) in every study done on the subject, than the one with fatherlessness. Furthermore, correllation may not be causation here. Fatherless children are also more likely to be obese, less likely to be bottle-fed, and less likely to eat fresh (rather than canned or prepared) food. So if obesity and exposure to chemicals are the root cause, healthy marriages would be a solution to the problem.

If it were something merely “in the water” or some other portion of the environment, the correlation would be geographic, rather than by family status. That there is no geographic correlation once family status has been controlled for (single mothers tend to be poor, so they will cluster in certain neighborhoods), suggests other causes.

 

[CatholicGerman]

So, blaming it on plastics is incredulous… but you state (as if it’s a fact) that Black girls are ‘already mostly fatherless’. Not only are your comments illogical, they are insulting.

Why are they illogical? Because you do not like them? How is that logical?

The black illegitimacy rate is now at 72.3% (2008 from US Department of Health and Human Services, see Table 1). Most of those children who are born out of wedlock are born to single or cohabiting mothers, and most of those cohabiting relationships (which are inherently more fragile than marriages) will dissolve before those children reach puberty. Most black children will enter puberty in a home without their biological father.

This is fact. The idea that this isn’t going to have profound effects on children’s mental and physical development is a bunch of feminist poppycock.

 

[CatholicGerman]

Yes, but Denmark has similar rates of fatherlessness as we do. Furthermore, the study you cited (which I have read before) specifically rules out certain environmental factors and obesity as causes. The study also points to a strong family-correlation (early puberty runs in families, it is not spread evenly or randomly throughout the population). They say that this points to “genetic factors”, but that is just a guess. Single motherhood also tends to run in families (once begun, matriarchy tends to become entrenched), so behavioral factors cannot be ruled out as a root cause.

Furthermore, breastfeeding has been on the rise in all Western cultures (including Denmark and America), and among all races, and the quality of plastics used in baby bottles has been increasing, which suggests that the plastics in bottles cannot be the root cause of the earlier puberty. Unfortunately, the Denmark study completely ignores family status, so it does not speak to this topic.

Interesting that they note adoption, as it has been suggested that girls who are adopted into healthier environments enter puberty earlier, rather than later.

That highlighted sentence is important, as it points out that it is not the stress of the move, but the change in family and their awareness of it, that is causing the early onset of puberty.

Another thing both studies point out is that it isn’t really that the puberty begins so much earlier as that it progresses so quickly (which is called precocious puberty). It’s as if the body recognizes the dangerous situation it is in, and rushes through puberty, in order to increase the chances of reproductive success. A similar rush is seen after a famine.

This is further evidence that it is prepubescent stress that incites early puberty, rather than environmental factors. Here is the abstract to a further Canadian study that substantiates that claim:

This is a particularly interesting one because it notes, as some other research does, that early puberty is increased in both boys and girls in fatherless homes.

 

[CatholicGerman]

Another article from the BBC:

Young girls who suddenly started to mature sexually were also less able to control their impulses than those who hit puberty at a later stage, he said. This might in part explain why rates of teenage pregnancy have risen in recent times.

I thought this was interesting, because it suggests a biological reason for why teenage pregnancy tends to run in families. Most teenage mothers are unmarried, so the children tend to be fatherless, which would lead to early puberty, which leads to… teenage motherhood. So, it’s a vicious cycle.

Here’s New Zealand research on the dietary link to early puberty:

The research also found that prenatal nutrition did more to lower the age of puberty than any later changes to the diet of the offspring.

The paper says the age of first menstruation for humans declined dramatically in the last century - from age 17, to 12 in Europe, although the rate of decline is slowing.

"This fall is usually attributed to improvements in child health and nutrition since the early 19th century, when the age of menarche [start of menstruation] was highest.

“This led to the hypothesis that the age of menarche is directly linked to a critical degree of body fat; however, although prepubertal nutrition and the age of puberty are certainly associated in some way, this concept did not stand up to critical analysis of the data.”

This suggests that it is the obesity (or starvation, as in a famine) of the mother that leads to early menarche in the daughter. This would be the obesity-connection, as most obese children have obese mothers. This also explains why the Danish study could not find a connection between obesity and early puberty. The connection is over the mother, not directly through the child (obese women are more likely to be single mothers). The fact that the children are also obese, is secondary to the root cause (chaotic circumstances during pregnancy).

From the Daily Mail, quoting research from BMJ:

Obese single women are four times more likely to have an unplanned pregnancy than women of a healthy weight, despite having sex less often, researchers said today.

They are also 63 per cent less likely to seek advice on contraception, 66 per cent less likely to take the Pill, according to the largest ever study into obesity and sexual health…

The research, published online in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), involved more than 12,000 men and women in France, aged 18 to 69.

Quoting a Pediatrics study:

A study in this month’s issue of the journal Pediatrics looked at the association between the prevalence of obesity (defined as a BMI in the greater than 95th percentile) in preschool-age children and exposure to three specific household routines. They studied more than 8500 four-year-olds in the United States, measuring association of obesity (Body mass index, or BMI in the greater than 95th percentile) with three routines: eating dinner as a family at least five nights per week, getting adequate sleep (greater than 10.5 hours) on weeknights, and limiting all screen-viewing (television, dvds, computers) to less than two hours on weeknights.

Overall, 18 percent were obese. Of the children who were exposed to all three routines, 14 percent were obese. Of those who were exposed to none of the routines, 25 percent were obese. This translates to an obesity rate that is 40 percent lower in children exposed to household routines – including regularly eating dinner as a family, obtaining adequate nighttime sleep, and limiting screen-viewing time to less than two hours on weeknights. While this is only one study looking at three very specific elements of lifestyle, it included a large group of children from all over the United States.

 

[CatholicGerman]

Fatherless children are also more likely to be obese, less likely to be bottle-fed

Of course I mean, *more *likely to be bottle-fed.

 

[Rolltide]

It’s also worth mentioning that any or ALL (or even none!) of things things could be contributing to early puberty. People tend to look for a nice neat solutions, when something like this could in fact have multiple causes.

 

[josephdavid]

It’s also worth mentioning that any or ALL (or even none!) of things things could be contributing to early puberty. People tend to look for a nice neat solutions, when something like this could in fact have multiple causes.

What about the hormones used in foods today? We are injecting large sums of hormones in our meat, dairy and also chemicals in our foods via factory farming.

 

[Rolltide]

There’s also the residue of medicines which are increasingly turning up in trace amounts in water supplies.

 

[Apryl]

What about the hormones used in foods today? We are injecting large sums of hormones in our meat, dairy and also chemicals in our foods via factory farming.

Yeah… I think of how many kids get a regular meal from a McDonald’s ™ or other such places. How many hormones and steroids are in those processed foods?

When I was a kid… ok, so a billion years ago… we didn’t get fast food until we were at least in the 4th grade in school… and then, it wasn’t a regular thing at all. If we traveled, we ate in restaurants if we couldn’t eat our own food.

 

[CatholicGerman]

Again, if it were caused by plastics, the Awful American Diet, or some other broad-based environmental-contamination factor, than it would be more equally apparent across the general population, rather than being so limited to certain family types. There is obviously something else going on, or at least something more going on.

My original point in responding to this post was to point out CNN’s dishonesty in mentioning possible environmental factors while leaving out the most essential environmental factor of all: the child’s family life. They did this despite overwhelming and widely-reported evidence that this is a major contributing factor, so I can only assume purposeful omission on their part.

 

[sw85]

So, blaming it on plastics is incredulous… but you state (as if it’s a fact) that Black girls are ‘already mostly fatherless’

Not only are your comments illogical, they are insulting.

Reminds me of a woman I know who was unforgiving with the idea of someone else having their cat declawed, but she would get an abortion at the drop of a hat and had no guilt for the ones she had.
**
There may be some correlation between a father not being in the household and the children reaching the onset of puberty earlier… but do you have any idea WHY?**

Are you suggesting that if they were around males for more hours in the day, they onset wouldn’t take place? Or what?

If I can posit one possibility which, to my knowledge, enjoys the benefit of no empirical evidence but certainly sounds plausible:

Illegitimacy is strongly correlated with poverty. Poverty is strongly correlated with unhealthy eating, specifically the consumption of fattier (hence less expensive foods). And apparently, the overconsumption of fat results in the early onset of puberty.

 

[Cat]

If I can posit one possibility which, to my knowledge, enjoys the benefit of no empirical evidence but certainly sounds plausible:

Illegitimacy is strongly correlated with poverty. Poverty is strongly correlated with unhealthy eating, specifically the consumption of fattier (hence less expensive foods). And apparently, the overconsumption of fat results in the early onset of puberty.

This makes sense, but there must be more to it. In the past, many families have been fatherless, as life was dangerous in the U.S. and men were often killed in wars or doing dangerous work at home. Lots of pioneer girls grew up without a father.

And many of the pioneer families were terribly poor and ate a non-varied diet of beans and sour-dough bread–few fruits and vegetables. When you read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “little house” books and read between the lines, you see that for months on end, Laura and her family had very little to eat.

Yet girls of this time did not have early onset of puberty. Of course, back then, poverty meant eating beans, whereas today, poverty means eating mac n cheese, white bread, white flour, white sugar. So there must be some correlation between this “poverty” diet and early onset of puberty.

My personal feeling is that there is some human evolutionary process (within the species–I’m not suggesting the ridiculous notion that humans will be turning into a new species!)occurring here to ensure the survival of homo sapiens. Our population in the U.S. has dwindled; I believe we are at zero population growth. Doesn’t it make sense that nature will work to reverse this? One way to increase the production of babies is to increase the number of women who are ready to be pregnant, at least physically. There is no reason for boys to be affected by this, as men retain their fertility throughout their lives, and even an old man can impregnate a young girl. (Sorry, I know it sounds gross, but it’s nature.)

So perhaps if we increased the size of our families, we would see a decrease in early onset of puberty over the next 40 years. Just a theory.

 

[Apryl]

Illegitimacy is strongly correlated with poverty. Poverty is strongly correlated with unhealthy eating, specifically the consumption of fattier (hence less expensive foods). And apparently, the overconsumption of fat results in the early onset of puberty.

Thank you! This makes a bit of sense

Because I know of many children who are born Out of Wedlock, but the parents stay together, or the mother marries someone else, or else the mother is in the household with her parents so she has a second mother and a father, so it’s not just the ‘not being married’, which I realize in Black households is a deplorable 72+% according to the census figures.

I just had to call you on your statement since it reeked of bias and patronization.

 

[sw85]

This makes sense, but there must be more to it. In the past, many families have been fatherless, as life was dangerous in the U.S. and men were often killed in wars or doing dangerous work at home. Lots of pioneer girls grew up without a father.
**
And many of the pioneer families were terribly poor and ate a non-varied diet of beans and sour-dough bread–few fruits and vegetables. When you read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “little house” books and read between the lines, you see that for months on end, Laura and her family had very little to eat.

Yet girls of this time did not have early onset of puberty. Of course, back then, poverty meant eating beans, whereas today, poverty means eating mac n cheese, white bread, white flour, white sugar. So there must be some correlation between this “poverty” diet and early onset of puberty.**

My personal feeling is that there is some human evolutionary process (within the species–I’m not suggesting the ridiculous notion that humans will be turning into a new species!)occurring here to ensure the survival of homo sapiens. Our population in the U.S. has dwindled; I believe we are at zero population growth. Doesn’t it make sense that nature will work to reverse this? One way to increase the production of babies is to increase the number of women who are ready to be pregnant, at least physically. There is no reason for boys to be affected by this, as men retain their fertility throughout their lives, and even an old man can impregnate a young girl. (Sorry, I know it sounds gross, but it’s nature.)

So perhaps if we increased the size of our families, we would see a decrease in early onset of puberty over the next 40 years. Just a theory.

As you yourself have just observed, poverty in the past is qualitatively different from poverty today. The poor of today generally still have enough money to purchase a reasonable amount of food. That food simply tends to be less lean/healthy and therefore markedly richer in fat. What we are seeing today is unlike anything in history because there has simply never been a time in history when even the poor were so rich that they never had too little to eat.