News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Children who grow up in families where there is a lot of parental support from both a mother and a father and below-average marital conflict and depression experience puberty later than children without such advantages, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Arizona and University of Wisconsin/Madison studied the families of 227 children as they went from preschool through middle school. They found that stressors like marital conflict, lack of support from parents and negativity in the child/parent relationship increased the age of onset of puberty. Other factors were the age of the mother at puberty, socio-economic levels, and Body Mass Index. Leaner children tend to sexually mature later.

This study appears in the Journal of Child Development.

Labels: stress, support, puberty

Posted By: Aspen Education Group