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
also started menstruation early. She had to secretly grapple with sanitary napkins made for bigger bodies, in bathrooms that didn’t have bins for their disposal or
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.
CDE/SOC 312: Adolescence
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?
