What The Age You Got Your First Period Says About You, According To Science
Did you know that the term for your first period is “menarche”? It’s pretty catchy, particularly as opposed to “a seriously stressful event that likely involves at least one panic attack and/or mystification about tampons”. (I did NOT know how to put the damn thing in.) Menarche — pronounced MEN-ar-kee — is likely a distant memory for you if you’re in your mid-20s now. But science tells us that the age at which you first got your period (or visit from Aunt Flo, monthly gift, Eve’s curse, whatever) can be an indicator of many things about your life, nutrition, and even future health.
Menarche has been significant in many cultures for centuries. It’s a pretty major event — it signifies a girl “becoming a woman,” or entering puberty and her child-bearing years. Medical Daily reports that communities in several countries, including Sri Lanka and Ghana, have lavish menarche ceremonies to celebrate the occasion. More bizarrely, Ritualwell, which records Jewish rituals across cultures, reports that some Orthodox Jewish women will be slapped across the face by their mothers when their first period happens. (It’s supposed to be in the hope that the slap will be the worst pain you ever experience as a woman, apparently.)
But it turns out that the specifics of your menarche may say more than you realize. First period age is influenced by a huge amount of factors, including up to 100 genes in your body. The average age of first period in the Western world has been getting lower, from an average of 17 over a century ago to around 13 today. That may be partially due to better nutrition, which means that we weigh more at a younger age, and thus our bodies can cope with childbearing earlier. But researchers are still arguing over whether it might also be due to genetic changes, more hormones in our food, or other environmental factors. Either way, it seems that your first period can be a big factor in your life. So what does it mean?
An Early Period May Indicate An Unsettled Childhood
It’s true that our age of puberty is heavily linked to that of our female relatives. Chances are very high that you’ll get your menarche at the same time that our mom, grandmother, aunts, and sisters did. But there are other factors that might be at play. And according to psychologists, one of them is whether you had enough parental care as a child.
According to a collection of studies on the topic by Psychology Today, lower levels of parental attention, support, sensitivity, and emotional security directly lead to early-onset puberty. Alas, that includes divorce and life as the child of a single parent. However, in those cases, if life is more settled afterwards and parents get more supportive, loving new partners who pay attention to kids, then age of menarche becomes average again.
This kind of makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. If you can’t rely on your family to take care of you, then your body will make you capable of finding a mate and starting your own family as soon as possible. According to a huge UK study done in 2010 of 80,000 women, early menarche is also associated with low birth weight, exposure to smoking, lack of exercise as a kid, and childhood obesity. So basically, if things are a bit rubbish or unhealthy when you’re a kid, your body tries to make you an adult ASAP.
African American Girls Get Earlier Periods :
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