Are we growing up faster and faster? What is a youth?

As a kid growing up in rather insular industrial town, I was always impressed with my cousins and their friends whenever we went to Madras--even those who were younger than me seemed to be a lot more informed about the ways of the world than I was.  A completely different story, though, when we went to our grandmothers' places--even those a couple of years older than me seemed to be blissfully unaware of the world with which I was familiar.

As I got older, I felt that I was forever trying to catch up with those from the cities.  That same contrast of small and big town experiences carried over when I came to the US.  There I was as a graduate student and even high school students were immensely worldly wiser than me.

It was so tempting to conclude that kids were not being kids and were growing up too fast.  That in so many different ways they were losing their innocence before they could understand the ramifications of their actions.  The first, and only, cigarette that I ever smoked was when I was eighteen, and news reports were that quite a few kids here typically test out a smoke in their middle school years.  Alcohol, sex, porn, whatever ... everything apparently happened way early.

A few months ago, there was this report about girl kids:

[Most] researchers seem to agree on one thing: Breast budding in girls is starting earlier. The debate has shifted to what this means. Puberty, in girls, involves three events: the growth of breasts, the growth of pubic hair and a first period. Typically the changes unfold in that order, and the proc­ess takes about two years. But the data show a confounding pattern. While studies have shown that the average age of breast budding has fallen significantly since the 1970s, the average age of first period, or menarche, has remained fairly constant, dropping to only 12.5 from 12.8 years. Why would puberty be starting earlier yet ending more or less at the same time? 

It will be one heck of a tough time being a parent under such drastically changing conditions.  Even more complicating is this:

Adding to the anxiety is the fact that we know so little about how early puberty works. A few researchers, including Robert Lustig, of Benioff Children’s Hospital, are beginning to wonder if many of those girls with early breast growth are in puberty at all. Lustig is a man prone to big, inflammatory ideas. (He believes that sugar is a poison, as he has argued in this magazine.) To make the case that some girls with early breast growth may not be in puberty, he starts with basic science. True puberty starts in the brain, he explains, with the production of gonadotropin-releasing hormone, or GnRH. “There is no puberty without GnRH,” Lustig told me. GnRH is like the ball that rolls down the ramp that knocks over the book that flips the stereo switch. Specifically, GnRH trips the pituitary, which signals the ovaries. The ovaries then produce estrogen, and the estrogen causes the breasts to grow. But as Lustig points out, the estrogen that is causing that growth in young girls may have a different origin. It may come from the girls’ fat tissue (postmenopausal women produce estrogen in their fat tissue) or from an environmental source. “And if that estrogen didn’t start with GnRH, it’s not puberty, end of story,” Lustig says. “Breast development doesn’t automatically mean early puberty. It might, but it doesn’t have to.” Don’t even get him started on the relationship between pubic-hair growth and puberty. “Any paper linking pubic hair with early puberty is garbage. Gar-bage. Pubic hair just means androgens, or male hormones. The first sign of puberty in girls is estrogen. Androgen is not even on the menu.” 

All I can think is that I am incredibly thankful for not having any six year old at this time!

I suppose because of the biological aspects on multiple levels, the changes in girls are more dramatic than in boys.  But, boys, too, are apparently reaching puberty earlier than before!

Examining clinicians found that between their ninth and 10^th birthdays, 4.3 percent of white boys, 21 percent of black boys and 3.3 percent of Mexican-American boys showed pubic hair development, she said. Like genital growth, pubic hair development results from the natural, genetically programmed boost in production of male hormones, but environmental factors may play a role.
The analysis suggests U.S. boys overall may be beginning puberty up to a half year earlier than previous research indicated, Herman-Giddens said. The estimate is based on the onset of pubic hair growth, assessment of which is less subjective than that of testicular growth. The difference could be greater if the genital findings are accurate.

Here is the bizarre contrast though: After all that rush to grow up, there is now an emergent adulthood.  That is, while childhood quickly gives away to adolescence, it is one heck of a lengthy adolescence prior to real adulthood.  So, if adulthood is getting delayed, then why the rush out of childhood, right?

In the past, to become a good gatherer or hunter, cook or caregiver, you would actually practice gathering, hunting, cooking and taking care of children all through middle childhood and early adolescence—tuning up just the prefrontal wiring you'd need as an adult. But you'd do all that under expert adult supervision and in the protected world of childhood, where the impact of your inevitable failures would be blunted. When the motivational juice of puberty arrived, you'd be ready to go after the real rewards, in the world outside, with new intensity and exuberance, but you'd also have the skill and control to do it effectively and reasonably safely.
In contemporary life, the relationship between these two systems has changed dramatically. Puberty arrives earlier, and the motivational system kicks in earlier too.
At the same time, contemporary children have very little experience with the kinds of tasks that they'll have to perform as grown-ups. Children have increasingly little chance to practice even basic skills like cooking and caregiving. Contemporary adolescents and pre-adolescents often don't do much of anything except go to school. Even the paper route and the baby-sitting job have largely disappeared.
The experience of trying to achieve a real goal in real time in the real world is increasingly delayed, and the growth of the control system depends on just those experiences. The pediatrician and developmental psychologist Ronald Dahl at the University of California, Berkeley, has a good metaphor for the result: Today's adolescents develop an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake.

 Again, I am relived and happy not to have a teenager in the house!  Will be way stressful to find out that the ten year old has been watching porn, and lots of it!

At the end, one thing strikes me: this is not the kind of a post I had planned on writing when I began.  It was going to be a reflective, autoethnographic post on the growing up aspects of life.  But then, the post (re)wrote itself :)