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From: eric@batcomputer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Another thought on why are males are X and women are Y
Message-ID: <1203@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Mon, 13-Oct-86 10:27:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.1203
Posted: Mon Oct 13 10:27:42 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Oct-86 07:14:40 EDT
References: <239@zen.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: eric@batcomputer.UUCP (Eric Fielding)
Distribution: net
Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 29

In article <239@zen.BERKELEY.EDU> c50p-az@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (E. Stephen Mack) writes:
>The behaviour is still gross, and I wish I had been more
>enlightened when I was in high school.  Thankfully, it seems
>in the "modern sexually free '80s", when the average age of losing
>virginity is around 13, we are slowly moving out of that mindset.
>
>I think people are becoming more mature earlier, compared to when
>our parents became mature.  The "rite of passage" age I believe is
>getting lower and lower.  (Maybe someone can confirm physiologically
>as well that we enter puberty earlier now and have our first
>periods/erections at a younger age?)
>
>[e. stephen]

I remember reading a Scientific American article about 5-10 years ago about
the changes in the age of puberty. My memory is a little hazy, but I do
recall that the age of menarchy (female puberty) has dropped steadily over
the last few *hundred* years, due almost entirely to better nutrition, from
something like 17 yrs in the 1700's to something like 12 yrs today (I don't
remember the exact figures.)  It would seem that the physiological changes 
are occurring on a much longer time scale than the *social* changes that
result in earlier sexual activity.  I wonder whether the early teens that
are having sex really are more mature now than they were before.  I don't
have much of a perspective, as I was a "late bloomer" myself (being a 
transplanted Yankee in a Georgia high school did not help).

				++Eric

DARPA Internet:  eric@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu.arpa