Progressing quickly through puberty may cause long-term problems

New research suggests that kids may experience less anxiety if they progress slowly through their awkward teenage years.

Children who go through puberty at a faster rate are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior and suffer from depression and anxiety, according to a study published in the September issue of the Developmental Psychology journal. The 21-page study, which looked at data from 364 white males and 373 white females for six years, was led by a team of researchers from Duke University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Davis.

Previous studies examined the timing of puberty and its effects on behavior, but this study also takes tempo into account, measuring how fast or slow children go through puberty, said Renate Houts, postdoctoral associate in Duke’s psychology and neuroscience department.

“There haven’t been nearly as many [studies] that examine how quickly adolescents go through puberty,” Houts said. “This is one of the first.”

Kristine Marceau, primary author of the study and a graduate student in developmental psychology at Penn State, noted that the study’s focus on the duration of puberty is especially intriguing.

“Tempo really hasn’t been looked at in the past, in part because it’s hard to measure,” she said. “You have to get multiple measurements over a long period of time.”

The prevalence of “internalizing” problems, such as anxiety or depression, and “externalizing” problems, such as acting out or violent behavior, were gauged along with the rate of risky sexual behavior, Marceau said. The study found that all three factors are associated with faster puberty rates.

Houts noted, however, the results of the study do not establish causation between faster puberty rates and behavioral problems.

“This wasn’t an experiment,” she said. “It was a correlational study. We can’t say going through puberty slower or faster causes these behavioral problems.”

The researchers analyzed data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. They incorporated psychological examinations, personal interviews and physical examinations of the 737 children.

Marceau said only white children were used because the study was trying out a “novel methodology” and different ethnicities go through puberty in different ways.

“We weren’t sure that findings for the white kids would hold up for the smaller minority sample,” Houts said. “To get our study published and to [limit variables], we had to use only white children.”

Both Houts and Marceau said future studies would investigate behavioral changes in children of other ethnicities.

Kelly Crace, executive director of Duke Counseling and Psychological Services, wrote in an email Sept. 7 that the findings resonated with his observations as a counselor.

“It is a profound challenge to develop a corresponding emotional maturity when managing accelerated physical maturity,” he said.

Crace suggested accelerated passage through puberty resulted in a gap between one’s emotional health and physical age.

“While this gap can have many consequences, the most salient consequence is the lack of sophisticated methods of managing the important emotions associated with adulthood, such as fear, loss, disappointment, ambiguity and ambivalence,” he said.

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