CDE/SOC 312: Adolescence

PART A: 

Ever since she can remember, people have been telling Sara she could be a movie star. She is extremely pretty, exuding innocence and simplicity. At the age of 10 she began her menstrual periods. She was so ashamed she initially didn’t tell her parents or any of her friends. “I felt betrayed by my body,” she says. “It was doing things I didn’t understand.”  Sara’s older sister, who she did confide in, told her she machines that dispensed extras. By her 12th birthday she had the fully developed breasts and rounded hips of a much older teenager. The kids at school called Sara chubby. Sara has become so embarrassed about her body that she has stopped hanging out with her girlfriends, preferring to hide out in her room. When Sara goes out in public, she wears baggy sweatshirts and jeans and hunches her shoulders in an effort to hide her shape. She is starting to get poor grades in PE because she doesn’t want to “dress-out”. She can’t wait for her girlfriends to catch up and is tired of being taller than the boys.  At the age of 14, Sara is beginning to embrace the changes in her body. She is the envy of many girls her age, not to mention popular with older boys. She begged her mother to let her date high school boys, but then became petrified and overwhelmed when they tried to kiss her and touch her body. If the attention from the guys at school wasn’t confusing enough, older men—guys practically as old as her uncles, eeeuuuu!—are always making remarks about her looks, as if all of a sudden she had become public property. Sara has also noticed that people, including her parents, have started treating her more like an adult. She has been getting into fights with her mother over her new expectations and her desire for new freedoms. Sara has also been getting in fights with her brother. He seems to have hit puberty as evidenced by how much he seems to be growing. Annoyingly he now always wants to hang around with Sara and her friends, who have started to notice him. This is giving him an enlarged sense of himself that Sara finds unbearable. Sara just wants her family and friend life to get back to normal.

Questions (be sure to situate your answers within course learning materials):

  1. Beyond start of  menstruation  and  the  development  of  breasts,  what  other  physical  changes  of puberty is Sara experiencing?
  2. What are the most likely reasons for Sara’s earlier initiative of puberty?
  3. When will her girlfriends and the boys catch-up?
  4. How has puberty impacted Sara’s self-image? Would this be the same for a boy going through early puberty?
  5. What social and psychological consequences of early maturation is Sara dealing with? Why is early maturation harder on Sara than her brother?