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Having more male friends may also make dating violence more likely,
the study also found.
“Girls who make an early transition to puberty look more mature than
their later-maturing peers and that makes them attractive to boys,
including those who are in their friendship group,” said senior
study author Sara Jaffee of the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia.
“Statistically speaking, the more friends they have who are boys,
the greater the odds that some of those boys will be abusive in a
dating relationship,” Jaffee said by email. “Moreover, girls who
make an early transition to puberty are at risk for low self-esteem
and for depression, and these characteristics may give them fewer
coping skills to leave relationships that ultimately become
abusive.”
Puberty in girls typically starts around age 10 or 11, but can
sometimes begin much earlier. Girls usually undergo hormonal shifts
and start developing breasts before they begin menstruating. This
process is starting sooner today than it did a generation ago, and
though the exact reasons aren’t clear, rising obesity rates are
suspected to be one factor contributing to the shift.
For the current study, researchers examined data on a nationally
representative sample of 3,870 adolescent girls, based on surveys
conducted starting in 1994 when participants were 13 to 17 years
old.
All of the participants had experienced at least one sexual
relationship, and about two-thirds of them had only had one.
The researchers asked the girls if their partners ever insulted them
in public, swore at them, threatened them with violence, pushed or
shoved them in public, or threw something at them.
Girls who went through puberty sooner were more likely to be dating
and more likely to have experienced such abuse in these
relationships, researchers report in Pediatrics.
Having more relationships, being older, living in a family with
lower household income, having lower self-esteem, and engaging in
more antisocial behaviors at the start of the study were also
associated with higher odds of dating abuse. White girls reported
more abuse than Hispanic girls, the study also found.
One limitation of the study is that researchers relied on teens to
accurately report and recall on the timing of puberty and on any
sexual relationships or abuse, the authors note.
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Even so, the findings add to a growing body of evidence linking
early puberty in girls to higher odds of dating violence, said
Catherine Mary Schooling, a public health researcher at the City
University of New York who wasn’t involved in the study.
Because some evidence links obesity to earlier puberty, the findings
should offer parents another reminder of the importance of helping
children maintain a healthy weight, Schooling said by email.
Another problem is that girls’ bodies may be developing faster than
their brains, said Bruce Taylor, a public health researcher at the
University of Chicago who wasn’t involved in the study.
“(With) early puberty onset girls’ bodies are telling them that they
are ready for adult-like behavior but developmentally their minds
are not ready and are still operating like an adolescent’s brain
which has not developed the appropriate coping skills to address
relationship conflicts,” Taylor said by email.
“The early-puberty-onset girls are generally at greater risk for
behavioral and emotional problems, and the matter is exacerbated by
having more opportunities for problems by having a larger friendship
group of boys,” Taylor added.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2pszBwe Pediatrics, online May 8, 2017
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