Last month I made a cake for my daughter’s ninth birthday.  She wanted watermelon balls and balloons hung to the trees.  She received her presents joyfully- a stuffed animal, beading kit, gyroscope, and went off to play in a frosting induced bliss.

Yesterday I had to buy her a bra.

What is going on that our children are entering puberty so quickly?  Is she alone in this?
From CNN:

While previous studies have found that girls typically began showing signs of puberty at 10 to 11, a new report by the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society (LWPES), a nationwide network of physicians headquartered in Stanford, California, suggests that it is normal for white girls as young as 7 and black girls as young as 6 to start developing breasts. This conclusion was based on a study of 17,000 girls between the ages of 3 and 12 conducted by the Pediatric Research in Office Settings (PROS) network of 1,500 pediatricians nationwide and published in the April 1997 issue of “Pediatrics.”

OK, she was getting dark hair on her legs at 8 and there were some afternoons when I suggested she visit the deodorant.  But I was 12 before I needed this.  And guys, trust me when I say that a kid who can’t find her flip flips isn’t ready for this.

So why?  

Nobody knows for certain why girls are entering puberty earlier, but the most popular theory involves insecticides, which can break down into compounds that may have estrogenic activity in young girls, thus triggering the onset of puberty.

In this matter we’ve done the best we can, while realizing that there are pesticides all around us that we aren’t aware of.  My mom is ORTHO woman- I am LIKE HELL woman.  But we go to parks, visit folks…
We even buy organic milk just to avoid the growth hormones.

What else?

Others attribute the drop to in increase in childhood obesity. “My own bias is that a major contributor to earlier puberty is the increasing prevalence of obesity over the past 25 years … especially in 6- to 11-year-old girls,” says Paul Kaplowitz, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia, and author of the LWPES report. “It has long been known that overweight girls tend to mature earlier and thin girls tend to mature later.”

Not this bundle of muscle.  She rides dressage, jumps for hours on the trampoline, runs circuits aroundd the yard, scoots up and down the block at amazing speeds and does pull ups on her loft bed for fun.  Her legs and arms are rock solid.  Her belly is too, which is why I couldn’t figure out what all that jiggling was last time she trotted.

Verdict?  Not applicable.

So I have a lovely young girl who is undergoing changes that should be left for later years.  This is happening more frequently.  We also live in a highly sexualized culture, where women are valued above all for their ability to titilate men.  And Georgio is likely to get 2 Supremes which makes my daughter more at risk for losing her ability to choose what happens with her body.  

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