Early Puberty Often More Hazardous

An anonymous reader writes "CNN is reporting that scientists are taking a look at the social ramifications of hitting puberty early. From the article: "'There is something unique about early maturity (relative to one's peers) that opens opportunities for victimization experiences,' the study's authors write. 'It's not puberty that is what ultimately causes kids to get victimized,' study co-author Dr. Alex Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Florida, told Reuters Health. 'Early puberty seems to open up a different set of doors and social experiences to kids,' he said, explaining that early maturing youngsters may start socializing with the opposite sex and with older, bigger, and stronger youth earlier than those who do not experience puberty early."

Comments

Hair care products theory

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Here's a link to an article about the hair care products. It says the research is not conclusive, but rather suspicious. Apparently about half of all black girls in the United States start developing secondary sex characteristics before age 8 (yikes! didn't know that), while the rate is much lower for black girls in other parts of the world (e.g. Africa).

Bull. I hit puberty late. Here are my observations

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I was always below average in height relative to my male peers growing up. I got pubes late, I didn't have to shave until I was 17, my voice changed late, women noticed me late, guys picked on me... basically, my testosterone kicked in way later than it might have ideally and it was a real pain in the ass for me, actually. I didn't date until after high school and I didn't have sex until 21. I was surprised when women finally started noticing me because I had gotten to the point where I assumed I would stay mostly invisible.

The only yang to that yin that I can come up with is that I'm now 6'2", the guy who I was always jealous of who got laid at 12 is now 30 with a nice beer gut and half bald (and looks 38), and I have to sort of beat off the women now. I'm 33 and everyone says I look 26. At my 10 year reunion I was like the skinniest guy there. So maybe it's related to an aging-speed thing. Both my sister and I absolutely look younger than our peers now (but some of that might have to do with me living the bachelor life and trying to look good).

But damn, the cost was high. I tried playing sports with neighborhood kids growing up but invariably I would get bloodied up, which then turned me off from team sports completely (I played tennis and rode my bike instead). I'm a really social guy now (and some team sports are OK) but from 7th-10th grade I was so shellshocked that I barely had a friend and spent most of my time indoors hacking away on a computer (Microsoft Basic on a Mac Plus, lol) with my mom yelling at me to go outside (caught between a rock and a hard place).

So perhaps being any kind of outlier is more painful in general.