Puberty

“ The period of adolescence is ushered in by a series of physical and psychical changes which make a well defined initial period called puberty. The period of puberty is about two years in length, and in the average case among American boys, covers the period between the fifteenth and seventeenth years, and is completed when the youth can produce fertile semen capable of fertilizing the human ovum. It is now universally recognized, however, that when the youth reaches this point in his development, while he may be called a man, he represents manhood in its lowest terms. ”

“ An interesting change in a girl’s life.—In the previous talk, we found that God has planned for a most interesting change to take place in a girl’s life. This change from girlhood to womanhood, called puberty, and covering a period of eight years, is brought about by certain changes in the sexual organs. At birth these organs are inactive and remain so until the girl, in this climate, is thirteen or fourteen years of age. In the Southern states it occurs a year sooner. In Central America, puberty comes when the girl is ten and eleven. ”

“ The term puberty will so often be used in the following chapters that a brief account of the phenomena of puberty may appropriately be given at the outset of this work. Puberty is a name given to the age at which a boy becomes capable of being a father. In temperate climates this age is reached at about fifteen years, though some boys attain it at twelve and some not until seventeen. The one obvious and invariable sign of puberty is a change of pitch in the voice, which assumes its bass character after an embarrassing period of squeaky alternations between the high and low tones. ”

“ Some things hasten puberty.—There are some{189} things that will hasten puberty. Several thousand miles South, puberty comes on a boy a few months sooner than it does here. Several thousand miles North, puberty comes later than here. Thus we see that a warm climate tends to hasten the arrival of puberty, and a cold climate will tend to retard it. This is the main reason why puberty, in the colored race, comes a few months sooner than it does in the white race. For centuries the negro lived in the hot climates of Africa. ”

“ In climates where puberty is delayed to the fourteenth and fifteenth years, girls are healthier, more energetic and live longer than in warm climates. This would indicate that the longer puberty is delayed in a girl’s life, if she is otherwise healthy, the better for her. If the girl keeps company with wild girls, enjoys obscene jokes, reads cheap novels, entertains impure thoughts or handles her{139} sexual organs, she may cause puberty to come on six months sooner than it naturally would come—a misfortune indeed for her. ”

“ The time of puberty and the years following it are therefore justly acknowledged to be a critical time for the female organization. The real meaning of the physiological changes which constitute puberty is, that the woman is thereby fitted to conceive and bear children, and undergoes the bodily and mental changes that are connected with the development of the reproductive system. At each recurring period there are all the preparations for conception, and nothing is more necessary to the preservation of female health than that these changes should take place regularly and completely. ”

“ Owing to rapid growth and to the want of stability of the young girl's tissues, the years immediately succeeding puberty are not only those of rapid physiological change, but they are those during which irreparable damage may be done unless those who have the care of young girls understand what these dangers are, how they are produced, and how they may be averted. ”

“ Upon the attainment of a certain age, the individual becomes sexually perfect, and is then capable of the generative act. This period is called puberty. In man, puberty commonly occurs between the ages of ten and fifteen years, varying considerably in different climates. In this country, and in other countries of about the same latitude, puberty usually occurs at the age of fourteen or fourteen and one-half years in females, and a few months later in males. ”

“ You say ‘We marry our girls when they reach puberty,’ and you take as indication of that stage one only, and that the least certain, of the many changes which go to make up maturity. It is the least certain because the most variable, and dependent more upon climate and conditions of life than upon any true physical development. No one would deny that a strong country girl of thirteen was more mature physically than a girl of eleven brought up in the close, unwholesome atmosphere of a crowded city, yet you say the latter has attained to puberty, and that the former has not. ”

“ Imagine the state of mind of the girl who has never heard a word about menstruation, and awakens one morning with blood flowing from the genital organs; or that of the boy, who has his first nocturnal seminal emission, without having received any information as to its significance. Similar considerations apply to some of the other signs of puberty; and especially to the growth of the pubic hair, which has made many a child extremely anxious. ”

“ If marriage is delayed too long in either sex, say from thirty to forty-five, the offspring will often be puny and more liable to insanity, idiocy, and other maladies.
3. Puberty.—This is the period when childhood passes from immaturity of the sexual functions to maturity. Woman attains this state a year or two sooner than man. In the hotter climates the period of puberty is from twelve to fifteen years of age, while in cold climates, such as Russia, the United States, and Canada, puberty is frequently delayed until the seventeenth year. ”

“ At puberty (from the age of 11-15) a boy becomes capable of paternity, a girl of maternity; during adolescence (from puberty to 25) the body in general, and the reproductive organs in particular, grow and mature. ”

“ But at puberty the hair increases in thickness and in quantity, and becomes abundant in places where it was hardly noticeable before—the upper lip and face in boys, and the armpits and lower part of the abdomen in both boys and girls.
And so the first apparent physical sign of puberty in a girl is the gradual appearance of hair in the armpits, on the mons Veneris and the labia majora. But all the genital organs are undergoing rapid development ”

“ Indeed there are a few faint indications of an earlier age node, at about the age of six, as if amid the instabilities of health we could detect signs that this may have been the age of puberty in remote ages of the past. I have also given reasons that lead me to the conclusion that, despite its dominance, the function of sexual maturity and procreative power is peculiarly mobile up and down the age-line independently of many of the qualities usually so closely associated with it, so that much that sex created in the phylum now precedes it in the individual. ”

“ Now, clearly, all that can be reasonably meant by saying that a boy of, apparently, from 12 to 16 has a mystical tendency, is that the physiological changes incident to puberty are accompanied by a mass of feeling of a vague and formless character. ”

“ The year of gradual development before the onset of menstruation is by some referred to as the pre-pubertal year; and the first year after the onset of menstruation is the post-pubertal year. The period from puberty to full sexual maturity is called adolescence, and this term is applied generally to the period between thirteen and eighteen. For at eighteen the boy and the girl have reached full maturity. Mentally we acquire things as long as we live, and even physically the body gets larger for some years after eighteen. ”

“ The nature and secretion of the testicles, the meaning of the ovaries and of menstruation, as well as the significance of metabolism and the urinary excretion, should be clear in their main lines to all boys and girls who have reached the age of puberty.
At puberty there arises a new and powerful reason why boys and girls should receive definite instruction in matters of sex. Before that age it is possible for the foolish parent to imagine that a child may be preserved in ignorant innocence. [25] At puberty that belief is obviously no longer possible. ”

“ Depend upon it, we are living in an age corresponding to that of puberty in an individual. There are no very marked changes from 361childhood up to this period, except that of increase in size; and then, everything being ripe for it, there is a marvelous sudden transformation in six months or a year, and the child assumes all the characteristics of the man or woman. ”

“ With the approach of puberty they make considerable growth. However, it is not common for a girl’s breasts to develop to any considerable size before she is married. When she becomes a mother, the hundreds of tiny glands in her breasts form milk from her blood with which to nourish her child.
The creative energy.—From the dawning of puberty, all through life, day and night, asleep and awake, the breasts and other sexual organs are generating an energy that is being distributed throughout her entire being. It is this energy that helps to develop the girl into perfect womanhood. ”

“ Of the Andamanese, a pigmy race, Portman and Molesworth write that puberty appears in boys and girls round about the fifteenth year. Bodily growth is finished at eighteen years, and is in any case after maturity very trivial. ”

“ Long observation proves that if, during the first two or three years which follow the attainment of puberty, the health of the girl is successfully guarded, and this, her most important physical distinction, meets with no derangement, her life-long health is well-nigh secured ”

“ Habits of vigorous physical exercise tend to delay the access of puberty. For this reason, together with others, country boys and girls generally mature later than those living in the city by several months, and even a year or two. Anything that tends to excite the emotions hastens puberty. The excitements of city life, parties, balls, theaters, even the competition of students in school, and the various causes of excitement to the nervous system which occur in city life, have a tendency to hasten the occurrence of the change which awakens the sexual activities of the system into life. ”

“ At the age of puberty when it begins to free itself from the spell of the family, it enters into life with so to say a surface of fracture entirely in keeping with that of the father and mother. The frequent and often very deep depressions of puberty emanate from this ”

“ The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty NOW it is remarkable that the foregoing two rules--not to touch the ground and not to see the sun--are observed either separately or conjointly by girls at puberty in many parts of the world. ”

“ The circumstances which may influence, within physiological limits, the appearance of menstruation should be considered in connection with cases of this kind. Climate and social position are the principal ones. The epoch of puberty descends in the scale of age in proportion to the average height of the temperature of various countries, and vice versâ. Social position and city life show a marked effect in hastening puberty as compared with the simpler manners and plainer life of rural populations. ”

“ The oncoming of puberty, with its alarming manifestations, especially in the girl, has often left them unmoved and still silent. They have taken care that our elementary textbooks of anatomy and physiology, even when written by so independent and fearless a pioneer as Huxley, should describe the human body absolutely as though the organs and functions of reproduction had no existence. The instinct was not thus suppressed; all the inevitable stimulations which life furnishes to the youthful sexual impulse have continued in operation. [185] Sexual activities were just as liable to break out. ”

“ Since most attention is paid to the sexualisation of clothes for girls, it is important to be especially aware of girls’ physical development. Girls are, on average, reaching puberty at an earlier age now than ever before. ”

“ The females arrive at the age of puberty neither very early nor very late, but according to their own statements they rarely have children, even with every possible provocation, till at least three years later, and I am inclined to think the statement is substantially correct. ”

“ It is obvious, therefore, that a girl upon whom Nature, for a limited period and for a definite purpose, imposes so great a physiological task, will not have as much power left for the tasks of school as a boy, of whom Nature requires less at the corresponding epoch. The functions of circulation, respiration, digestion, perspiration, nutrition and menstruation, though involuntary, are all important, dependent one upon another, and all develop at the proper time. Puberty is the proper time for the appearance of menstruation, one of the most important and sacred of her functions. ”

“ Physical Changes in Puberty—Physical Changes in the Genital Organs and in the Rest of the Body—Psychic Changes—Puberty and Adolescence—Nubility.
Puberty is the most wonderful, the most significant period in a girl's life. Important as it is in a boy's life and development, it is still more so in a girl's. ”

“ The early exercise of the genital organs hastens the attainment of puberty, in many cases, especially when the habit is acquired early, but at the same time saps the vital energies so that the system is unable to manifest that increased energy in growth and development which usually occurs at this period. In consequence, the body remains small, or does not attain that development which it otherwise would. The mind is dwarfed as well as the body. Sometimes the mind suffers more than the body in lack of development, and sometimes the reverse is true. ”