{"id":442,"date":"2010-08-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html"},"modified":"2010-08-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T00:00:00","slug":"study-some-girls-entering-pube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html","title":{"rendered":"Ready for Sex at Age 8?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How young is too young to <a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/go\/thread\/view\/43911\/24077277\/Sex_education_for_kids\">talk to children about sex<\/a>?<br \/>\nFor some parents that talk may occur earlier than they&#8217;d thought because many girls are now <a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/go\/thread\/view\/59723\/25580953\/Ready_for_Sex_at_Age_Eight\">entering puberty at 7 and 8<\/a>, says a study published in the journal <a href=\"http:\/\/pediatrics.aappublications.org\/\">Pediatrics<\/a>. The new study says more girls are developing breasts by age 7 than reported from 30 years ago up to a decade ago. Conducted within the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers, this study focused on girls in East Harlem, N.Y., Cincinnati and the San Francisco Bay area.<br \/>\n&#8220;In the second study, Dr. Mildred Maisonet from Emory University&#8217;s Rollins School of Public Health and her colleagues observed that gaining weight quickly in infancy &#8211; a predictor of later obesity &#8211; was linked to early puberty in girls in Great Britain,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE6782EV20100809\">Reuters<\/a> reported Monday.<br \/>\nAnd a review of more than 100 studies that was published online in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jahonline.org\/\">Journal of Adolescent Health<\/a> found &#8220;overweight girls tend to reach puberty earlier than their peers do,&#8221; according to Health Behavior News Service.<br \/>\nJoin the <a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/go\/thread\/view\/59723\/25580953\/Ready_for_Sex_at_Age_Eight\">discussion<\/a> about this research, which raises questions about environmental chemicals and how they impact growth and development as well as physical maturity versus psychological or social\/spiritual maturity and breast cancer risks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How young is too young to talk to children about sex? For some parents that talk may occur earlier than they&#8217;d thought because many girls are now entering puberty at 7 and 8, says a study published in the journal Pediatrics. The new study says more girls are developing breasts by age 7 than reported&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":235,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-beliefnet"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ready for Sex at Age 8? - Community News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ready for Sex at Age 8? - Community News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How young is too young to talk to children about sex? For some parents that talk may occur earlier than they&#8217;d thought because many girls are now entering puberty at 7 and 8, says a study published in the journal Pediatrics. The new study says more girls are developing breasts by age 7 than reported&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Community News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-10T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jana Melpolder\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Ready for Sex at Age 8? - Community News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Ready for Sex at Age 8? - Community News","og_description":"How young is too young to talk to children about sex? For some parents that talk may occur earlier than they&#8217;d thought because many girls are now entering puberty at 7 and 8, says a study published in the journal Pediatrics. The new study says more girls are developing breasts by age 7 than reported&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html","og_site_name":"Community News","article_published_time":"2010-08-10T00:00:00+00:00","author":"Jana Melpolder","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html","name":"Ready for Sex at Age 8? - Community News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-08-10T00:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2010-08-10T00:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/#\/schema\/person\/ed4df2f4c08a1cb26b9e488226ab83af"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/2010\/08\/study-some-girls-entering-pube.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Ready for Sex at Age 8?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/","name":"Community News","description":"Beliefnet Community News","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/#\/schema\/person\/ed4df2f4c08a1cb26b9e488226ab83af","name":"Jana Melpolder","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7b0\/7b06445eb7242dad0695efa8bc034da4x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7b0\/7b06445eb7242dad0695efa8bc034da4x96.jpg","caption":"Jana Melpolder"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/author\/jmelpolder"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/235"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/communitynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}