Seven is the New Thirteen: Column From the Bearpit

Click here for some great mommmy and baby freebies from BabiesOnline.com

Click here for some great mommy and baby freebies from BabiesOnline.com

Main Page
Site Index
Getting Pregnant
Pregnancy
Parenting
Pregnancy and Parenting Journals

Fertility
Nutrition
Pregnant Moms
Morning Sickness
Women's Health
Child Health

Seven is the New Thirteen

A recent British study into the age of starting menstruation made alarming reading. The study found that 1 in 6 British girls were having their first period at the age of 8, as opposed to 1 in 100 who did so at the start of the century. Now, statistics like this are always open to interpretation - I would be especially interested to know what statistics were actually kept on this at the start of the century. But it certainly fits in with general research that proves that our children will be taller and heavier than we are, just as we are in general taller and heavier than our parents. Standards of nutrition and health care are rising with the generations, and as puberty is triggered by body weight/fat it makes sense that it will become earlier.

However I quail at the thought of 8. In Australia and the USA, school starting ages are later than they are in the UK (4 is average in the UK now, 5 or 6 in Australia and the USA). Does this mean that we will soon see sanitary disposal units in Infants toilets? My daughter has just turned 7 and, because of the discrepancy between school starting dates in England and Australia, is in a class of children a year older than her. This means that her friends are all either 8 or are about to turn 8, and they are still really little girls. I cannot even start to imagine one of them having her first period! When I was at primary school, no one started their periods then. The few that started in their first year of secondary school were considered to be precociously mature. The second year of secondary school seemed to be the norm for one's first period when I was young. Have things really changed so much in one generation?

I was commenting to a friend the other night that seven seems to the new thirteen. Tamsin suddenly seems to be hovering between wanting to be 'grown-up' and wanting to be a little girl - something that I expected to happen around the age of twelve or thirteen. We bought her some slightly 'older' clothes for her recent birthday, largely because she has grown out of most of her other stuff, but also because most of her clothes were quite 'little girlish' and I did feel that she was old enough for something very slightly older.

Then a couple of nights ago I found her wandering around the house, chatting on the cordless phone to her friend about make-up! I found this somewhat traumatizing. I have so far stemmed the use of the phone (on the grounds that I wanted to use the Internet, which will no longer hold water as we have just had a cable modem installed) or that it was her bathtime and I didn't care if her friends went to bed later than her. A friend who is just turning eight is having a slumber party to celebrate - I don’t remember eight-year-olds having slumber parties! I was a little reassured when Tamsin asked if she could take her favorite teddy bear along too!

If one girl in six is having her first period at eight, some of our attitudes may have to change. Tamsin's class have had 'family education' recently, a quite scientific explanation of reproduction (though maybe they have not been really taught how to extrapolate into the real world - we were talking about getting a dog, and she asked if we could get a boy dog. This was on the grounds that if we got a girl dog she would need an operation to prevent her having puppies. I rather weakly pointed out that boy dogs also needed an operation to prevent girl dogs having puppies). But although she was happy to show me her homework from the classes and point out the Reproduction section of her pocket encyclopedia, no mention seems to have been made anywhere of menstruation. And it's a subject I have always avoided with them, insisting on going to the loo alone when I have my own period, because I feel that there should be at least one little tiny bit of my life where I have a bit of privacy!

So I worry that there's a real chance that in a class the size of Tamsin's, which has approximately 11 boys and 11 girls, one or two of those girls may well have their first period this year. (And as it's a mixed Grade 2 and Grade 3 class, some of those girls are approaching nine, so statistically it may already have happened). And although I know that that's nothing to actually worry about and that worrying isn't the attitude we should be fostering in young girls, if it happens this early are they actually mentally mature enough to understand and to cope? Children may be growing up earlier in many ways but are they developing emotional and mental maturity earlier?

Judy Edmonds was born in England, grew up in Australia and is married to Graham Peters, a fifth-generation Australian. From 1990-1999 they lived in England - it was meant to be a two year working holiday but it took on a life of its own. They returned to Australia in May 1999, and are enjoying readjusting. Judy worked as an academic librarian until the birth of Tamsin in 1993, and since then has been a full-time mother to her and to Angus, born 1996. She is now embarking on a new career as a freelance journalist. Her writing can be found all over the Internet now, and she is the owner/editor of an Australian parenting EZine, Chloe & Jack.