Child and Adolescent Wellbeing and Violence Prevention in Schools

Phillip T. Slee, Grace Skrzypiec, Carmel Cefai, Phillip T. Slee, Grace Skrzypiec, Carmel Cefai

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138104785
• eBook ISBN: 9781351590877
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This invaluable book offers a comprehensive guide for educators in understanding and promoting wellbeing and violence prevention initiatives in schools and communities. Ittranslates research and theory into practice with a strong evidence-based application.

The book is presented in five thematic sections, namely: culture and wellbeing; young females and wellbeing; bullying; cyberbullying and student violence; interventions to promote wellbeing; and interventions to promote violence prevention. An introductory chapter provides an overview of the field and a commentary chapter draws the five themes together.

Written by experienced researchers and educators, each of the 21 chapters provides practical information and research on school, classroom or community applications, trends and issues in the field, and practical ideas for wellbeing and violence prevention measures. Issues of culture, gender and youth voice are specifically addressed.

SECTION II

Young females and wellbeing

Chapter 6	Bullying and blooming: Addressing the challenges faced by adolescent girls experiencing the early onset of puberty
Chapter 7	Girls’ diminishing wellbeing across the adolescent years
Chapter 8	Eve-teasing in the guise of school bullying and cyberbullying
Chapter 9	Adolescent transgressional behaviour: Gender differences

6

BULLYING AND BLOOMING

Addressing the challenges faced by adolescent girls experiencing the early onset of puberty

Donna Swift

Introduction

The early onset of puberty can produce a significant disparity between a girl’s physical appearance and her emotional resilience. This holds implications for her involvement in bullying. Distinct from her female peers because of her physicality, she may become a target or an agent of bullying behaviour, and potentially she may become both.

Specific studies exploring the relationship between early pubertal onset for girls and bullying are scarce. To further understand this topic, this chapter synthesises qualitative insights drawn from The Girls’ Project¹ (Swift, 2011), and the Girls of Concern Study² (Swift, 2014). The former involved ethnographic research carried out in New Zealand’s largest policing district, and focused on rural and urban girls between the ages of 12 to 18 years. Data collection involved 104 in-depth interviews with girls referred by authorities because of their use of violent and antisocial behaviour; 60 focus groups drawn from naturally forming clusters of girls; as well as 1700 completed questionnaires by year 9 and 10 girls enrolled in single sex, co-ed, and area high schools. The second study returned two years later to communities in the same district. Small focus groups were used to gather information from 61 girls between the ages of 9 to 12 years, 51 girls between 13 and 15 years, and 10 young women in their 20s. Thirty-five professionals representing government organisations, non-government agencies, educational services, and community interest groups were also interviewed. These comprehensive studies identified personal challenges the participants faced and significant trends emerged, early onset of puberty being one.

This chapter begins with a summation of the physiological aspects of female puberty and provides an overview of the discourse surrounding early onset. Focus then turns to the social politics of blooming early and how this shapes girl-to-girl bullying. The concluding section offers several key approaches to intervention.

Understanding puberty

Puberty and menarche are often linked synonymously as the start of an adolescent girl’s journey into reproductive maturity. This mindset overlooks the physiological processes that begin years before her first period. Independent yet overlapping gonadarche, hormonal secretions signaled by the pituitary gland, and adrenarche, and the increase of androgens, begin this trajectory (Allison & Hyde, 2013; Greenspan & Deardorff, 2014). This is followed by thelarche (breast budding) and pubarche (armpit and pubic hair growth), along with acne and growth spurts, and then finally, menarche, the first menstrual period (Ellis, 2004). Changes in breast size, the distribution of subcutaneous fat, hip to waist ratio, and the appearance of body hair are all visual signals that puberty is taking place (Copeland et al., 2010).

Greenspan and Deardorff (2014), summarising historical changes in age of puberty among Western females, noted that in 1860 the average age of menarche was 16, when girls were well into their teenage years. Sixty years later, the median age of menarche decreased to 14 years. Improved quality of diet and less energy output are the supposed reasons for this significant drop. Today, almost 100 years later, the average age of menarche occurs during intermediate school at 12.5 years. This suggests that the speed at which age of menarche is decreasing has slowed. However, Greenspan and Deardorff (2014) documented a profound trend in the decreasing age of breast budding. Compared to the 1970s, the current age of menarche has decreased by only three months, while the onset of breast development has decreased by two years. In other words, girls on average begin menstruating approximately six months earlier than girls 40 years ago, but their breast development begins two to three years earlier, at a time when many are still in primary school. This means that girls experience a greater spread of time between the first visual physical sign of puberty and menarche. Twenty years ago, less than 5% of girls began breast budding, the visual sign of puberty, before 8 years of age. Today, it is greater than 10% (Greenspan & Deardorff, 2014).

Conventional notions of precocious or premature puberty were linked primarily to pathological disorders rooted in hormones and genetics (Ellis, 2004). Theories advanced explanations of environmental factors such as nutritional intake, pre-pubertal weight, and energy expenditure, as well as exposure to endocrine disruptive chemicals, such as antibiotics (Mishra, Cooper, Tom, & Kuh, 2009). Subsequently, life history frameworks, utilising evolutionary perspectives, have posited how changing social environments and unfavourable childhood psychosocial experiences intersect with puberty developmental pathways, thus adapting, through acceleration, reproductive timing for optimal procreation response (Hochberg & Belsky, 2013).

In the last decade, literature attests that psychosocial stressors hasten pubertal timing, and offer a range of debated explanations, including maternal psychopathology (Allison & Hyde, 2013), lack of maternal attachment in infancy (Belsky, Houts, & Fearon, 2010), physical and sexual abuse (Foster, Hagan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008), child maltreatment (Mendle et al., 2011), low socioeconomic status (Arim, Tramonte, Shapka, Dahinten, & Willms, 2011), and the presence of stepfathers or absence of a biological father in the home (Allison & Hyde, 2013).

An overview of the consequences of early onset of puberty indicate that, compared to their peers, these girls are at greater risk of negative health outcomes, such as lifetime obesity, and susceptibility for breast and other reproductive cancers (Ellis, 2004; Mishra et al., 2009). They are also prone to mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, that emerge through social frustration and dissatisfaction with body image (Copeland et al., 2010; Mendle et al., 2013; Mendle, Turkheimer, & Emery, 2006). Often ostracised by peers because of their changing bodies, these girls are more likely to engage in adverse social activities as a result of seeking association with older youth who are at a similar developmental stage, increasing their vulnerability to negative influences, delinquency, anti-social behaviour, drugs and alcohol, and sexual activity at a young age (Allison & Hyde, 2013; Mrug et al., 2014; Stattin, Kerr, & Skoog, 2011).

Pre-pubescent participants from the Girls of Concern study reticently admitted acceptance of the bodily changes they would face in the upcoming years (Swift, 2014). This came with the perception that puberty required them to exchange childhood for the burdens of menstruation, period pain, and pregnancy; something that their male peers did not have to manage or endure. In addition, puberty brought with it the embarrassment of being teased about their looks, body size, and breasts. If these were the thoughts of girls yet to reach puberty, how isolating and scary it must be for a girl to enter into puberty before her age-mates.

The social politics of early blooming

Girls who begin puberty before their peers are subjected to sexual objectification, whereby their identity and mental ability are separated from their person, and focus is given to the sexual parts of their body or to their body as an object of sexual gratification (Szymanski, Moffitt, & Carr, 2011). In a society where female breasts are central images of erotica and en...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Introductory chapter
• SECTION I Culture and wellbeing
• SECTION II Young females and wellbeing
• SECTION III Bullying, cyberbullying, and student violence
• SECTION IV Interventions to Promote Wellbeing
• SECTION V Interventions to promote violence prevention
• Commentary chapter
• Index