The first sign of puberty is nearly always the development of the breasts, often one, the left, before the other. At about the age of eleven but sometimes as early as eight or as late as thirteen, mounds appear and the areola, the pigmented area around the nipple enlarges. Up to this time the sensitivity of the area is roughly equal in boys and girls but in girls it now begins to increase. Full breast development takes about two and a half years. Depending on her personal and family attitudes and those of her friends, a girl will either welcome or conceal these changes.

Pubic hair development normally starts a few months after the breasts begin to develop but can start before. A few girls, perhaps because of guilt about masturbation, believe that hair growth is a sign of abnormality or even a sign of changing sex and so may cut it or shave it off. Around this time the vagina starts to produce an increased amount of whitish, acidic fluid.

Coinciding with, or just before, these changes, the girl experiences a physical growth spurt. This reaches a peak soon after the pubic hair begins to appear, and then the rate of growth begins to slacken. About two and a half years after the first signs of breast development, menstruation first occurs.

Many women say they were never warned in advance about their periods starting, but most mothers say they prepared their daughters. This apparent contradiction can be explained. Because the subject concerns sex and because the mother has unwittingly inspired anxiety in relation to sex over the childhood years, her daughter does not want to know and banishes the information from her consciousness even though she has in fact been given it.

Whatever the explanation, a girl’s first period can be a shock which leads to fears of injury or illness. Depending again upon environmental attitudes some girls welcome their first period while others are ashamed. All girls probably worry to some degree about their lack of control over the event. Earlier, hard-won mastery over the other body functions in childhood now seems to be partly lost and many worry about the shame they might feel if they ever leaked blood, making their period obvious to others.

The average age at which a girl’s first period occurs is probably one measure of the affluence of a society, and in the West it has been falling for centuries. The link with affluence is food. The better nourished a population the earlier the girls start to menstruate. In fact girls that are over-nourished start even earlier. This is a good case for staying slim. The decline has reached its lowest limit so far in the generation of girls born in the years immediately after the Second World War. The first period now usually occurs at about thirteen years, but may be as early as eleven or as late as fifteen and still be quite normal. Various factors can affect the age of onset, blind girls tending to start early, whereas girls living at a high altitude or those who have younger brothers usually start late.

A girl can become pregnant before her first period but most girls are infertile for the first year or so of having periods because they are not yet ovulating (producing eggs). After this there is a slow build-up towards maximum fertility in the early twenties.

Early periods may be prolonged, heavy or irregular. Signs that a girl is becoming fertile are regular and predictable periods, especially if they are accompanied by premenstrual symptoms such as breast tenderness or pain and painful periods.

Hair usually begins to appear in the armpits at about the time of the first period. The onset of all these changes of puberty varies from girl to girl and any one girl may not follow the usual sequence. The whole process can take from one to five years to complete.

Along with these specific sexual changes, fat is deposited under the skin, making a girl’s contours more plump and rounded. This makes her body sexually attractive to men. At this stage many girls are confused by their feelings. They have impulses both to show and to conceal their bodies but by the end of early adolescence they have usually come to terms with their emerging sexuality. Under hormonal influences their interest in sex heightens. A girl’s desire to grow up and be treated as a woman is exciting to her but also fear-inspiring, giving her a simultaneous desire to remain in, or regress to, childhood as a form of escape from the realities of impending womanhood. Other contradictions arise from the fact that she has a need to be seen by males as desirable whilst at the same time fearing she might not be acceptable to them or that she may appear brazen or cheap.

As a result of these feelings early adolescence is often stressful for a girl. Unlike the early adolescent boy, her entry into the sexual arena is dramatic and swift. Because her biological drives are so strong, her parents are often concerned and this can lead to family conflict towards the end of early adolescence. Her earlier good relationship with her father may worsen as he tries to control her comings and goings but the cruellest battle is often fought with her mother. In some families these rows can become very bitter with the father physically punishing the girl and the mother accusing her of being a whore.

Many, perhaps most, girls openly rebel at some stage and tell their mothers that they hate them. If the parents ‘win’, the girl’s subsequent development may be impaired, but the greater danger is that the girl may feel she can win by running away or having early intercourse simply to spite her parents. Many experts in this field believe that girls who behave like this are simply seeking love from a man to replace the parental love they have lost but others believe that much more often it comes about because a girl wants to punish her mother.

So the answer for parents of early-adolescent girls is to try to understand their desires and fears and to do all they can to cope with the situation without reaching a stage of open warfare. The best plan is simply to keep the channels of communication open.

With her many conflicts and bodily changes it is easy to see why the early-adolescent girl can be so moody and changeable. It is also fairly obvious why many girls fail in the tasks of early adolescence. The origins of a lot of mental ill health in women can be traced back to early adolescence as can an inability to cope with the female role. Some girls opt out by becoming fat or by developing anorexia nervosa, thus regressing, Peter Pan-like, to childhood, ceasing to menstruate and losing their breasts. Others become over-devoted to academic work, to religion, or to animals. Some girls act out their distress and become sexually delinquent and other try to seduce an older man who is sometimes the exact opposite to their father. Others, especially those who had a poor relationship with their mothers in early childhood, may secretly wish to return to childhood and ‘solve’ the problem but over-react in the opposite direction and rush into ‘adult’ pursuits such as sex and drink.

Early adolescence is the time when a girl accepts, or fails to accept, that she is a sexual being. This involves much more than simply realising that she will eventually have intercourse and possibly babies. She has to accept that she has sexual interests, wishes, desires and pleasures and that her life will never be the same again. She has now entered the sexual arena and has to take her chances with the rest of us.

*14\164\2*

Related Posts:

• GAMES FOR HYSTERICAL COUPLES – GAME 5: TALK DIRTY TO ME (INTRODUCTION)
• GAMES FOR DEPRESSED COUPLES – GAME 4: HOPELESS SEX (PART 3)
• GAMES FOR PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE COUPLES – GAME 3: NUDE HAMLET (PART 1)
• GAMES FOR BORED COUPLES – GAME 1: SEDUCTION SURPRISE (BY THE WIFE) (PART 3)
• JUNK SEX VS. LOVING SEX – INTRODUCTION
• PROSTATITIS
• GENITAL ANATOMY: SCROTUM
• PROSTATE CANCER
• MALE ANATOMY: PENIS
• BENIGN PROSTATIC HYPERPLASIA (BPH)

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.