What Is Minipuberty?

And Why Is It Important For Reproductive Health

According to environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Shanna Swan, Ph.D., we would do well to maintain ongoing conversations about fertility. That’s because, as it turns out, even experiences you have growing up can affect your reproductive health later on.

Specifically, your body goes through a few developmental periods that can have downstream effects as you age: “Sensitive periods are important—those are the periods when the body is rapidly dividing or growing,” she says on the mindbodygreen podcast. “Obviously prenatal is very important, and then soon after birth [there’s what’s called] the minipuberty.” Wait, what?

Here, Swan breaks down this developmental stage and why it’s so important for reproductive health.

According to Swan, reproductive health really does start that young: She explains that the minipuberty “is thought to be very important for hormonal and reproductive development.”

We did some more digging: Apparently, minipuberty occurs between birth and 6 months of age for boys and 2 years of age for girls, and it marks the development of various characteristics including the genital organs and fertility, body composition and growth, cognitive abilities related to speech, and potentially behavior—like perhaps emotional regulation in males.

A little sex ed. for you: Adolescent puberty happens when the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (or HPG) axis becomes activated, which causes an increase in sex steroid hormones (which causes changes in body shape, an increase in body hair, et al.).

However, this activation actually occurs twice before that: once in utero and once in the first months of life. These first two activations do not bring about an increase in sex hormones, so they’re categorized more generally as “endocrine puberties.” They’re just as important for reproductive health, but you don’t necessarily see any changes to the body.

This minipuberty stage is important because it may allow for the early observance of and medical intervention in reproductive or sexual development disorders, if needed. As one study recounts, it forms a “platform for future fertility,” as it essentially sets the groundwork for your sex organs to mature and functions as a “window of opportunity” to evaluate the HPG axis—since that “window” is closed until you start puberty once again around 10 years later. More research is needed on the specific ways minipuberty affects future fertility, but it sure is a neat concept, no?

What should you do about it?

As of now, specific exposures and interventions that affect minipuberty is unknown. “I personally have not studied the effect of childhood exposures [to chemicals], and few people have studied the effect of childhood exposures on child health,” notes Swan. But if she had to give marching orders, she would recommend teaching the young child good habits for reproductive health early on. “Eat healthy foods, avoid [phthalates], put their shoes at the door, and so on and so forth,” she says. By doing so, “You’re teaching them to protect their overall health and hopefully their reproductive health as well.”

Aside from the riveting science lesson, Swan’s mention of minipuberty is an important reminder that reproductive health isn’t only relevant if you’re thinking about having a baby. In fact, some fertility markers are relevant to health and longevity as a whole.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

April 23, 2021April 22, 2021

The Best Puberty Books for Your Growing Kiddo

By Steph Auteri

My 6-year-old daughter owns about a dozen books about bodies, babies, and consent (par for the course when your mom is a sex writer). I maintain a separate shelf in my bedroom that holds eight more books I’ll pass along to her — or read myself — as she gets older. And then I have several more that are just for me: books about how to be a sex-positive parent from birth on.

But there is a gap (gasp!) in my collection. This summer, my daughter turns seven. And though I didn’t experience menarche until I was 13, there are some kids who enter puberty as early as eight years old. And god knows I don’t want Em to be blindsided by blood in her underwear or other bodily changes.

And so, I recently did what any mildly obsessed mother would do: I went in search of the best puberty books for kids. Here’s what I found.

Celebrate Your Body by Sonya Renee Taylor

This book is billed as the ultimate puberty book for girls. It doesn’t hurt that it’s written by the amazing Sonya Renee Taylor, a social justice activist and the founder of The Body Is Not an Apology movement. I’ve mentioned this book on the site before but, as a reminder, it prepares girls for what happens to their bodies and minds during puberty and also gives them a heads up in regard to peer pressure, social media safety, self-care, and more.

The Girls’ Guide to Sex Education by Michelle Hope

The subtitle of this book says that it contains over 100 answers to urgent questions about puberty, relationships, and growing up. Examples include: What is a period? Why are my boobs sore? How do I use a tampon? How do I wash my private area? The Q+A format helps make the content easily digestible…and easier to navigate for those girls who have very specific questions about their changing bodies. And parents aren’t left behind either. The foreword explains how parents can best approach sex education with their kids using the book as a tool.

Best Puberty Books for Boys

Guy Stuff by Cara Natterson and Micah Player

You didn’t think I’d leave you and your sons high and dry, did you? This book, written by a pediatrician, provides boys with tips on how to take care of themselves as they move through puberty. Organized by body part, it contains info on everything from underarm care to sources of stink to acne, erections, and more.

Growing up Great! by Scott Todnem and Anjan Sarkar

Billed as the ultimate puberty book for boys, this title lays out the changes kids can expect during puberty and gives them tips on how to maintain their overall health and well-being. The book also includes a glossary of puberty terms and a plethora of coping mechanisms as they grapple with the emotional impacts of growing older.

Best Puberty Books for Kids of All Genders

The Every Body Book by Rachel E. Simon and Noah Grigni

Of course, my favorite puberty books are those that are geared toward all genders. Because it’s important for kids to know about and gain empathy around what their peers are experiencing. This one is another sex-positive book I’ve mentioned before, an LGBTQ+-inclusive guide that covers sex and gender, love and attraction, sexual intercourse and, most important of all (for our purposes here), the physical and emotional changes that go hand-in-hand with puberty.

Wait, What? by Heather Corinna and Isabella Rotman

God, I love that sex ed comics are a thing. And who better to put together a sex ed comic about puberty than the founder of Scarleteen and the cartoonist, illustrator, and sex educator who’s been featured there (and who has multiple comics about sexuality under her belt)? This particular graphic novel covers all the essentials about pre-teens’ and teens’ changing bodies and shifting emotions. The diverse cast of characters discusses everything from body image to sexual and gender identity to consent.

Sex Positive Talks to Have with Kids by Melissa Pintor Carnagey

This book is geared toward parents — and covers way more than just puberty — but I had to include it. The other month, I interviewed Melissa for a piece about how to normalize talking to your kids about periods and, my god, I have never seen someone get so excited about menstruation. In this book, Melissa advises families on how best to raise sexually healthy children. Pick this one up if you’re grappling with how to start conversations with your kids about bodies, consent, pleasure, and more.

Puberty Is Gross But Also Really Awesome by Gina Loveless and Lauri Johnston

Finally, this brand new book provides a humorous take on puberty, acknowledging all the stuff that seems super gross but is, in actuality, super awesome. There are chapters about body changes, identity, health, self-confidence, bullying, crushes, and my god I could go on. I am so excited about this book.

Godspeed, parents, and good luck to your kids, too. I promise…puberty isn’t the big bad you think it is.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

March 23, 2019March 23, 2019

Let’s Stop Ignoring the Truths of Puberty.

We’re Making It Even More Awkward.

Sex education in U.S. schools is lacking, but new efforts to broaden its scope are bubbling up.

By Maya Salam

“I’d rather they just don’t teach anything if they can’t be honest.”

— Susan Lontine, a Colorado state representative who introduced a bill that would mandate teachings about safe sex, consent and sexual orientation in the state’s public schools

By the time I was 15, most of my knowledge about puberty was gleaned from one-dimensional tales on TV and in movies. I learned what it meant when a pubescent boy carried a book in front of his body (cue laugh track) and that when girls develop breasts, boys (and men) “can’t help but” ogle them. That’s about it.

In the last year or so, TV and film have made strides in representing pubescent girls as complex and awkward beings who also happen to be sex-obsessed (a trait normally reserved for adolescent boys), my colleague Amanda Hess pointed out in a recent piece about the shows “PEN15” and “Big Mouth” and the movie “Eighth Grade.”

“The lustful adolescent girl is having her moment,” wrote Hess, a Times culture critic. “It is not, to be clear, an altogether glorious time,” she said, adding that “girls’ feelings matter, too. And these girls feel so much.”

Such nuances and acknowledgments of female sexuality are largely missing from sex education in U.S. schools, where curriculum is lacking over all.

The majority of states don’t mandate sex ed at all, and just 13 require that the material be medically accurate. Abstinence education remains a pillar of most programs. And that is saying nothing of more complex issues like consent, sexual orientation and gender identity. (In seven states, laws prohibit educators from portraying same-sex relationships positively.)

Simultaneously, the influence of pornography is growing. “Easy-to-access online porn fills the vacuum, making porn the de facto sex educator for American youth,” Maggie Jones wrote in The New York Times Magazine last year. Her article pointed to a study in which high schoolers reported that pornography was their primary source for information about sex — more than friends, siblings, schools or parents.

“There’s nowhere else to learn about sex, and porn stars know what they are doing,” one boy told Jones.

But to keep up with the times, new efforts to broaden the scope of sex ed are bubbling up.

A pornography-literacy course, titled The Truth About Pornography, was a recent addition to Start Strong, a peer-leadership program for teenagers headquartered in Boston and funded by the city’s public-health agency.

In Colorado, a new comprehensive, student-supported sex education bill is working its way through the state’s Legislature. It would require the teaching of safe sex, consent and sexual orientation, as well as bar abstinence-only sex education. If passed, Colorado would be the ninth state to require that consent be taught.

And today, the first guide to gender-inclusive puberty education was published by Gender Spectrum, a nonprofit organization that works to create gender-sensitive and inclusive environments for children.

Among other principles, the guide — intended to give educators tools they can incorporate into existing course materials — stresses the complexity of gender as the interrelationship between one’s body, identity and expression. The point, according to Gender Spectrum, is to “ensure that no student’s passage through puberty is stigmatized or made invisible.”

Perhaps leading the way is the British government, which last week announced a major change to the nation’s sex education curriculum, the first revision in decades. Starting in 2020, it will cover topics including same-sex relationships, transgender people, menstruation, sexual assault, forced marriage, pornography and sexting.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

January 31, 2018January 31, 2018

Puberty is starting earlier for many children

– sex education must catch up with this new reality

Some girls as young as six and seven are showing the early signs of puberty.

By Celia Roberts

The British government is consulting on a new curriculum for sex and relationship education in English schools. This change provides a timely opportunity to update how, when and what children are taught about puberty.

Astonishingly, the Department for Education (DfE) guidance on sex education has not changed for nearly two decades. But after concerted lobbying, research, and the recommendations of multiple committees of MPs, in 2017, the Children and Social Work Act finally acknowledged the need to provide “sex education for the 21st century”.

New statutory guidance for schools will be published following the public consultation, which closes in mid February. From 2019, secondary schools will be obliged to offer relationships and sex education, and primary schools to offer relationships education. Parents will retain the right to remove their children from sex education – other than that which is covered in the science curriculum – but will not be allowed to remove them from relationships education.

These changes are underpinned by widespread concern about the negative effects of digital technologies on young people’s sexual lives, particularly sexting, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and “strangers online”. The new curriculum will, it seems, teach children and young people what healthy relationships look like in the fraught context of smart phones, online porn and Instagram.

The new puberty

But the new curriculum should also take account of what is happening to the bodies of young people in the 21st century. Not only do kids seem to be growing up much faster today, many of them are actually starting to develop physically earlier than ever before.

According to many scientists and clinicians, we are living in the era of “the new puberty” in which increasing numbers of girls start to develop sexually at age seven or eight. In the 1960s, only 1% of girls would enter puberty before their ninth birthday. Today, up to 40% of some populations in both rich and poor countries are doing so.

Sexual development is also being stretched out for longer, with many girls starting to grow breasts and pubic hair two to three years before they have their first period. While there is less evidence that boys’ development is changing so rapidly, some studies also indicate that earlier entry into puberty’s initial stages is becoming more common.

The causes of these changes remain unclear. Many scientists point to the simultaneous increase in childhood obesity, while others study the effects of environmental chemicals, such as Bisphenol A or BPA (which is found in some plastics), on the body. Other research has explored the effects of social factors, including family structures, experiences of early life trauma and socioeconomic disadvantage. This range of explanations points to how complex a phenomenon puberty is.

The current DfE guidance states that:

All children, including those who develop earlier than the average, need to know about puberty before they experience the onset of physical changes.

But it leaves schools to decide, in consultation with parents, “the appropriate age” to teach children about puberty. In 2017, the Personal, Social and Health Education Association argued that this should be when they’re age seven. But talking to seven-year-olds about breasts, pubic hair, body odour and genital changes may not be easy for many teachers, or for many parents. Being seven is supposed to be a time of freedom, play and innocence.

Updating sex education

Children who develop early, present a challenge both to cultural thinking about sex and to sex education policy. While many parents and young people want updated sex education, this usually comes with the proviso that such education be “age appropriate”. Although very important, this phrase is painfully vague – and it’s unclear whether it refers to chronological age, emotional age or stage of physical development.

Today, some seven-year-olds may be emotionally young but also starting to grow breasts and pubic hair. Other early developers who have experienced early life stress – such as abandonment or abuse – may feel more mature than their peers and be ready earlier to learn about puberty and sexuality. The widening gap in the timing of boys’ and girls’ sexual development also poses a challenge. Teaching girls separately, or earlier than boys – the strategy in my own child’s primary school – risks reinforcing harmful gender norms and notions of secrecy around issues such as menstruation.

Instead, perhaps we could try to disentangle puberty from teenage sexuality and to develop accounts of puberty that do not frame it as the dawn of adolescence. A seven-year-old with breasts is not “becoming a woman”, and a menstruating nine-year-old is probably not going to want to have intercourse anytime soon.

Ultimately, this means moving beyond traditional portrayals of female bodies that focus on reproductive capacity in order to explore wider meanings and experiences of being a girl. Growing up is also about new horizons, such as strength, health, even pleasure. Sex and relationships education might even then include puberty as something to be anticipated, noticed, even celebrated – rather than as yet another risk.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!