Marry, pray, love

In a book of self discovery so popular that it has been made into a movie -- Eat, Pray, Love -- the American writer Elizabeth Gilbert took herself to India to learn to pray. That was after bingeing on food in Italy and before stumbling on a new love in Bali.

Gilbert set the stage for the voyage around herself by getting a divorce. But if she had prayed with her first husband they might never have parted, as research on marital happiness shows that the couple that prays together is more likely to stay together.

This has been confirmed by a new study from the National Marriage Project based at the University of Virginia: "The Couple That Prays Together: Race and Ethnicity, Religion, and Relationship Quality Among Working-Age Adults," appears in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Co-authored by sociologists Christopher G. Ellison , W Bradford Wilcox and Amy M. Burdette, it is the first major study to compare religion and relationship quality across America's major racial and ethnic groups. It finds that for all groups, shared religious activity - attending church together and especially praying together - is linked to higher levels of relationship quality.

African-Americans derive the most benefits from that connection because they are significantly more likely than whites or Latinos to pray together and attend church together, offsetting other socio-economic factors tied to lower relationship quality - a finding dubbed the "African-American religion-marriage paradox," says Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and a professor of sociology at the U of V.

Narrowing the racial divide

"Without prayer, black couples would be doing significantly worse than white couples. This study shows that religion narrows the racial divide in relationship quality in America. The vitality of African-Americans' religious lives gives them an advantage over other Americans when it comes to relationships. This advantage puts them on par with other couples."

The same is true, to a lesser extent, for Latino couples, says Wilcox.

But religion may not always benefit couples. Couples holding discordant religious beliefs and those with only one partner who attends religious services regularly tend to be less happy in their relationships, the researchers found. Being on different pages religiously is a source of tension for couples across racial and ethnic lines. "That may be due to less time spent doing things together," Wilcox says, "or having different values about child rearing, alcohol use or any number of things."

A substantial body of research has shown that relationship quality tends to be lower among racial and ethnic minorities, and higher among more religious persons and among couples in which partners share common religious affiliations, practices and beliefs, explained the study's lead author, Christopher G. Ellison, a fellow of the National Marriage Project and a professor of social science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The study uses data from the National Survey of Religion and Family Life, a 2006 telephone survey of 1,387 working-age adults (ages 18 to 59) in relationships, funded by the Lilly Endowment and designed by Ellison and Wilcox. The overwhelming majority of respondents were married (89 percent), with a somewhat lower rate among the racial and ethnic minorities.

The respondents reported high levels of relationship satisfaction (4.8 on a 6-point scale), but African-Americans reported being significantly less happy than whites. However, after controlling for age, education and income, the racial differences disappear.

Blacks reported higher levels of church attendance, both with and without their partners. Forty percent of black respondents reported that they attended services regularly as a couple, compared to 29 percent of whites, 31 percent of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans and 32 percent of all respondents.

Home life

Blacks were also significantly more likely than the other groups to report shared religious activities like prayer or scriptural study. That difference is probably driving the relationship improvements more than shared church attendance.

"The closer you get to the home, the more powerful the beneficial effects," says Wilcox. "It makes sense that those who think about, talk about and practice their beliefs in the home, those who bring home their reflections on their marriage, derive stronger effects from those beliefs, especially compared to those who simply attend church weekly.”

One practical effect seems especially important, Wilcox suggests: "I think forgiveness is probably a pretty key dimension to the link between shared religious practice - prayer in particular - and success in the relationship." In past studies, forgiveness has been found to be a key influence on the success of relationships, home life and even workplace happiness.

Previous research linking religious involvement to improved relationship quality has ascribed the connection to three factors.

First, religious communities typically promote ethical behaviour (the Golden Rule, forgiveness) that helps define appropriate relationship conduct, encourage partners to fulfil their familial roles and responsibilities, and handle conflict in a constructive manner.

Second, family-centered social networks found in religious communities offer formal and informal support to couples and families, from financial help to models of healthy relationships, to advice from an elder about how to discipline a difficult child.

Third, religious belief seems to provide people with a sense of purpose and meaning about life in general and their relationship in particular, which increases resilience to stress.

That's particularly important for blacks and Latinos, says Wilcox, because they are more likely to experience "poverty, xenophobia, racism, neighborhood violence, underemployment, or similar factors that can stress a relationship."

None of this has anything to do with learning meditation techniques in India and is therefore unlikely to be the stuff of bestsellers and movies. But it is the stuff of real life and happiness, so people deserve to know.

This article incorporates a press release from the University of Virginia. Carolyn Moynihan wrote the introduction and the ending.

Technorati Tags: marriage,prayer,race

Welcome to the Club of Ancient Wrongs

With one war in Afghanistan, another in Iraq, a possible war with Iran, and an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it seems bizarre that the biggest political issue in the US is whether to build a mosque near Ground Zero, the former site of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan.

Muslims overseas are puzzled. “The mosque is not an issue for Muslims,” says Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, a leading Arab journalist based in Dubai, “and they have not heard of it until the shouting became loud between the supporters and the objectors, which is mostly an argument between non-Muslim US citizens!”

First of all, some facts.

Only part of the US$100 million Cordoba Initiative is a mosque which will accommodate about 1,000 for Friday prayers. The rest of it is a community centre with a library, gym, auditorium, restaurant, 9/11 memorial and so on. Second, it is not a “Ground Zero Mosque”. It is a full two blocks away from the place where more than 2,700 people died.

Third, it is not a gathering place for radical Muslims. The Kuwaiti-American imam organising the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, may have sent mixed messages, but he claims to be promoting dialogue between Americans and Muslims. He has even written a book titled, What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America. Since we have George W. Bush’s word for it that Islam is “a religion of peace”, at least New Yorkers should believe in Mr Rauf’s good intentions.

There are two strands in the commentary defending the proposed Islamic centre.

The first is that Muslims have a right, like other Americans, to build places of worship wherever they like. In the words of President Obama, "Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country." Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a prominent Jewish leader, says: “it is not only the constitutional right of the peace-committed Muslims of the Cordoba Initiative to build a community center in Lower Manhattan, but they are ethically right and profoundly wise to lift there a beacon.”

The other is that “Demonization of the Muslim religion is what this brouhaha is all about.” It is “as irrational an act of scapegoating as blaming all ethnic Germans for the acts of Nazis,” in the words of one left-wing pundit, Robert Scheer. Even the usually sensible Economist says that “The campaign against the proposed Cordoba centre in New York is unjust and dangerous.”

But the right to free commercial activity and the right to freedom from discrimination and vilification are very blunt instruments for dealing with a “sacred site”. His opponents may be using the controversy as a way to weaken President Obama (when 20 percent of Americans think he is a Muslim) but the source of the opposition is more an inarticulate sense of sacredness than bigotry.  

If New Yorkers were really that prejudiced, why is the current Islamic centre in downtown Manhattan located ten blocks away in the basement of a Catholic Church?

Today, in most Western countries, the concept of reverence for the sacred is often dismissed or ridiculed or simply viewed with perplexity. But even a secularised sense of the sacred is a tenuous link to transcendence and an important element in forging a personal and national identity.

To take a non-political example, would Walmart ever build a mall and parking lot in Yellowstone? Will California ever sell off Redwood National Park to timber companies to balance its budget? Such proposals somehow violate places revered for their awe-inspiring beauty. Or if Mr Rauf somehow managed to shift his centre to the battlefield of Gettysburg, would the ensuing protests be due to hatred of Islam or to outrage at the violation of this hallowed ground?

And for Americans Ground Zero has been hallowed by senseless deaths, heroic sacrifice, national humiliation and an outpouring of grief.

It is hard to find words to explain why a plot of ground should be revered for memories like these. That is what poets are for. But part of being human is to be connected to places and spaces and memories. Analysing the conflict in terms of constitutional rights is utterly inadequate. Something more ancient is at work which disappears in sterile political battles over rights.

It is not pandering to prejudice to recognise that America, like other societies with a long and deep history, now has its own taboos which ought to be respected even if they are legally indefensible.

A Pakistani professor Islamic Studies at American University in Washington DC, Akbar Ahmed, understands this. A former ambassador to the US, he has a deep knowledge of both cultures.

"I don't think the Muslim leadership has fully appreciated the impact of 9/11 on America,” he says. “They assume Americans have forgotten 9/11 and even, in a profound way, forgiven 9/11, and that has not happened. The wounds remain largely open. And when wounds are raw, an episode like constructing a house of worship – even one protected by the Constitution, protected by law - becomes like salt in the wounds."

Protectiveness and anger are typical of disputes over sacred sites in the Old World. Perhaps the passions in this controversy mean that America is growing up, or at least growing older. What could be more characteristic of an Old World society than fights over sacred sites?

In newer countries like Australia passions seldom run so high. I used to live in Tasmania where the indigenous people, the Tasmanian Aboriginals, had lived in complete isolation for perhaps 15,000 years. Within two generations after contact with Europeans they had all perished. It is one of the darkest chapters of Australian history, even of world history. Yet there is no fitting memorial to them, just a few wretched plaques and a hiking track named after Truganini, the last of her people.

Ancient cultures have deep feelings. Why is Jerusalem the world’s most volatile city? Because Christians, Jews and Muslims would all die to defend their sacred places. The Babri mosque in Ayodhya was destroyed in 1992 by a mob of 150,000 Hindus who believed that it had been built over the birthplace of their god Rama. Serbia fought a war rather than grant independence to Kosovo partly because the Field of Blackbirds, north of the capital Pristina, is hallowed ground where the Serbs made their last stand against the Ottoman Turks in 1389.

It is easy for unscrupulous politicians to exploit sacred sites for their own political gain, as Slobodan Milosevic did in Kosovo to rally Serbs against separatists, and perhaps Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are doing now. But that doesn’t mean that ordinary Americans’ attachment to a sacred site should be dismissed as redneck prejudice. It’s more like the anger and exasperation you might feel if an intruding stranger made a scene at your mother’s wake.

And, to draw on the Australian experience, a sacred site can draw Western and Muslim cultures together. Arguably, Australia’s most sacred site is not on the island continent at all, but in Gallipoli, a Turkish peninsula in the Dardanelles Straits. There in 1915, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders died in a doomed attempt to capture Istanbul. Now it is a place of pilgrimage for both Australians and Turks who remember their forebears’ sacrifice and heroism.

Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and the Turkish commander, later wrote a touching memorial which displays far more magnanimity and sensitivity than anything uttered by American politicians in the past few weeks:

“You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well.”

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Technorati Tags: Ground Zero,Islam,New York

‘We insist: leave your conscience at the door’

Pharmacists dispense advice to a colleague who will not sell the morning after pill.

I recently wrote an article expressing my delight that Washington State pharmacists will no longer be forced to dispense products or provide services they find morally objectionable. My elation at the Washington victory was quickly numbed, however, when an edited version ran as a “Point of View” on the Canadian Healthcare Network website. It is one thing for the public to oppose our freedom of conscience, quite another for pharmacists to be shooting themselves in the foot.

Only 42 per cent of pharmacists who voted on the network’s site agreed that “they should have the right to refuse to sell products or provide services they consider morally objectionable”. Sadly, the other 58 per cent believe they should be forced to do what they believe to be wrong -- “Well, Mr. Smith, I hate to do this to you, but if you really insist, take this overdose and don’t bother calling me in the morning.”

My happiness at the Washington victory was further squelched by the plethora of intolerant, and in some cases highly dogmatic, statements posted by fellow pharmacists. While some offered considered views that mirrored common misgivings among the public, others shot assertions from the hip, epitomizing the very judgemental attitude they so fear in their opponents. “Pharmacists are to be non-judgemental” -- except, it seems, when criticizing one another.

A common thread running through the posts is deep consternation about conscience, showing, at the very least, that the authors have one. Yes, every living, rational, being has this capacity for self-reflection, regardless of dogmatic beliefs. But, alas, some have decided it is best to leave their conscience at the pharmacy door. They propose that we all live by one set of mores at work and another set at home.

One person writes: “If moral issues are a concern, provide a reasonable alternative…”

And, were euthanasia legalized, what might that be when Mr Smith insists on his overdose? -- “Ah, er, sorry Mr Smith, I’m afraid I cannot offer you this service, but Frankie’s Pharmacy down the street most certainly will! Have a nice day… Um, see you in the next life… I hope?”

“In some cases”, the comment continues,” you just have to separate work from home, and the professional judgment involved cannot be swayed by moral beliefs.”

Yet no one makes judgments in a vacuum. What, then, will professional judgment be swayed by: Consumerism? Feminism? Drug-company-ism? The next ideological “ism”?

Let me stress that I agree it would be unethical to deny the sick treatment. But because neither fertility nor pregnancy constitutes an illness, I refuse to pander to the feminist ideology that forces us to view and treat them as such.

It is a rather scary thought, is it not, that pharmacists should leave their morals at home. (Care to help yourself to that left over morphine in the back of the safe? How about chewing on low-dose Concerta?) Do we want robots in the pharmacy, people devoid of ethical or philosophical insight who simply follow orders and take no responsibility for their actions? Did we learn nothing from the crimes of the Nazi doctors who separated moral judgement from professional “duties”?

If reason allows us to reflect upon our professional actions in the area of therapeutics, moral conscience accompanies us always so we can discern the goodness or baseness of our own actions. So, when a pharmacist decides not to provide you with an overdose, he uses both his moral judgement and professional judgement simultaneously.

Pharmacists who refuse to dispense products they believe to be harmful are putting the health of the patient first. A pharmacist who will not sell the morning after pill, for example, chooses not to stock it because he believes that life is precious from the moment of conception. This is not a religious feeling or belief, but an ethical opinion that is just as worthy of respect as any other. P>What if a pharmacist decides to not dispense a medication simply out of caprice or bigotry? The oft-cited hypothetical example is someone who will not dispense anti-retrovirals to AIDS patients. I can only say that no pharmacist with an upright conscience would ever deny necessary treatment to a patient on a whim.

Sean Murphy of the Protection of Conscience Project has summed up well the contradictory position of those who demand ethical conformity without demonstrating “the superiority of the ethical judgements [they] propose to force upon unwilling colleagues.”

They could, he says, at least explain “how professional ethics will be improved if the only candidates admitted to professions are those who promise to do what they believe to be wrong.”

By: Cristina Alarcon is a Vancouver pharmacist and writer. She holds a Masters in Bioethics.

Technorati Tags: conscientious objection,morning after pill,pharmacists

Waiting makes the heart grow fonder

It is always gratifying when research coincides with common sense and everyday experience, as in the case of a new study showing that a relationship in which sexual intimacy is delayed is more likely to endure.

Researchers questioned 642 adults and 56 per cent of them said they had “waited until they got serious before they had sex” (quoting the Toronto Sun here). Most of them also reported that they had “a high quality relationship”.

The number was higher than for the 27% of people who had sex while dating casually and the 17% who were intimate while in a non-romantic relationship.

Professor Anthony Paik of the University of Iowa who reported the study suggested that the courtship process acts as a screening mechanism.

“The debate is ‘why can’t we have sex now?’ The expectation is that sex should occur very quickly. But doing so, you’re losing out on some information that might be useful,” he explained in an interview.

It’s almost an economic equation, he added.

“On average, the more costly the process leading into the relationship, the more likely it is to work. That’s what the data would suggest.”

Alas, he then confuses us by saying that further analysis showed it was not the early sex that caused low-quality relationships but the personalities of the people:

Certain people are simply prone to finding relationships less rewarding, and they are more likely to have sex in casual relationships, he added.

Either way, rushing into sex is not a good sign.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

 

Technorati Tags: abstinence,relationships

China’s crisis conundrum

Despite the government's attempts to regulate consumer safety, corrupt business practices are deeply rooted in Chinese culture.

China lurches from one man-made catastrophe to another, despite the efforts of its government to improve laws and regulations to protect people and the environment. In the latest front-page scandal, baby girls have been developing breasts after consumption of milk powder allegedly laced with growth hormones.

This comes just two years after another milk formula scandal that killed six babies and saw nearly 300,000 others become ill with kidney ailments from powdered milk contaminated with a toxic chemical (melamine), which is used in the manufacture of plastics.

While it’s true that the West has its own problems, China’s crises point to fundamental problems in its corporate culture. Problems in food and pharmaceutical products in the West are usually due to a breakdown in systems or processes, or sometimes to malicious sabotage or extortion. In most cases companies move quickly to protect consumers, thereby enhancing their own reputations.

In China, on the other hand, crises have been too often caused by greed: companies place profits ahead of people. Health and safety standards are ignored to obtain better bottom line returns. Many Chinese glibly explain that life is not worth much.

To a large extent, the problem in China is compounded by the incestuous relationships between the Communist Party, government and business.  Indeed, they are often one and the same. Sanlu, the company at the centre of the 2008 melamine scandal, was part owned by the city government of Shijiazhuang where it was headquartered in Liaoning Province. Its chairwoman was a Party appointee and a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body to the Central Government.

Often, too, laws are not enforced if they reduce profits that go directly to government coffers. The worst example is China’s mining industry where the annual death toll is unimaginable by Western standards. The government admits that 2,631 coal miners died in 1,616 mine accidents in 2009, down 18 percent from the previous year.

Many mines that breach occupational health and safety regulations are at least partly owned by local governments. In many cases local officials do not enforce strict regulations.

But don’t rush to blame Mao Zedong and Communism. China is also a prisoner of its ancient culture. Two deep-seated aspects of Chinese culture – guanxi and mianzi – are also important.

The concept of guanxi or connections allows many business leaders to act with impunity.  This dates back to the days of imperial rule and the Mandarins. Today it means weakened corporate governance as many companies are led by company directors with strong connections to members of the Party and politburo and can skirt laws and regulations.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Beijing correspondent, John Garnaut, recently argued that Du Shuanghua, one of China’s richest entrepreneurs and the businessman at the heart of the Rio Tinto bribery scandal that landed three of its executives in prison, not only escaped censure but continues as a leading player in China because of his guanxi with the family of the nation’s president, Hu Jintao.

Mianzi or face is important when the government or companies seek to cover up a crisis. The melamine milk contamination crisis, for example, was covered up by Sanlu so that China would not lose face in 2008 when it was hosting the Olympics.

In some cases senior managers do not become aware of simmering issues until it is too late because subordinates either want to save face for themselves or for their bosses.  Simply put, junior managers are averse to reporting problems up the line.

While China is unlikely to end its system of State-sponsored capitalism or implement major democratic reforms to address these problems, the country needs some political reform, however limited. At least it should unshackle its judicial system. As long as courts remain under government and Party control, justice cannot be served and the darker aspects of culture and politics will continue to thrive. A freer judiciary might also provide China’s seething underclass with an outlet for its frustrations – a point not lost on the Communist Party, which came to power on the back of proletariat and peasant disenchantment.

But even limited reform seems revolutionary and unlikely. A truly independent judiciary would undoubtedly threaten government connections and vested interests. Where’s the face in that?  

By: Constance Kong is the pen name of a Shanghai-based business consultant.

Technorati Tags: business ethics,China,corporate governance,corruption

Who respects the human body? Not homosexuals

The ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker to strike down Proposition 8 raises a host of issues that go far beyond the California case. Especially troubling is Walker's view of gender. His ruling makes the sweeping assertion that "gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage."

This declaration is being quoted in astonishment for its sheer breathtaking exaggeration. Yet it reveals a pivotal element in the liberal view of human sexuality.

Liberal ethics is based on a fragmented view of the human being that pits biology against choice. Its roots go back to the French philosopher Rene Descartes, who proposed that the body is a machine controlled by a completely separate thing called the mind. The ghost in the machine.

As philosopher Daniel Dennett explains, "Since Descartes in the 17th century we have had a vision of the self as a sort of immaterial ghost that owns and controls a body the way you own and control your car." In other words, the body is no longer regarded as an integral part of the human person but as sub-personal, functioning strictly on the level of biology and chemistry – almost like a possession that can be used to serve the self's desires.

This is the philosophy that underlies arguments for same-sex "marriage." The assumption is that our bodies have nothing to do with our identity as persons. And that, therefore, anatomy can be overridden by sheer self-expressive choice.

The denigration of physical anatomy does not stop with same-sex "marriage." The cutting edge issue today is transgenderism, a movement that rejects the distinction between male and female itself as a mere social construction – and an oppressive one at that.

According to the New York Times, several universities now offer separate bathrooms, housing and sports teams for transgender students who do not identify themselves as either male or female. Some schools no longer require students to check male or female on their health forms. Instead, they are asked to "describe your gender identity history."' In other words: Which genders have you been over the course of your lifetime?

Gender has become a postmodern concept – fluid, free-floating, completely detached from physical anatomy.

Several states have already passed laws mandating that schools and workplaces accommodate transgenders, and supporters are pushing hard for the same laws at the national level. In 2007, California passed a law requiring schools to permit transgender students to use the restroom or locker room of their preferred gender, regardless of their anatomical sex. The new law redefines sex as socially constructed gender: "Gender means sex and includes a person's gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth."

Note the assumption that your sex is "assigned" to you, as though it were purely arbitrary instead of an anatomical fact. The law is being used to impose a secular liberal worldview that dismisses physical anatomy as insignificant, inconsequential and completely irrelevant to gender identity.

As I show in "Saving Leonardo," this represents a devastatingly disrespectful view of the physical body. It alienates people from their own bodies, treating anatomy as having no intrinsic dignity. No dignity is accorded to the unique capabilities inherent in being male or female.

Ironically, Christians are often dismissed as prudes and Puritans because of their "repressive" sexual morality – and yet the Christian worldview actually affirms a much higher view of the body than the liberal, utilitarian view. It offers the radically positive affirmation that the material world was created by God, that it will ultimately be made whole by God and that God was actually incarnated (made flesh) in a human body.

In the ancient world, these claims were so astonishing that the Gnostics rejected them, and tried to turn Jesus into an avatar who only appeared to have a human body. They could not accept the idea of a Creator who celebrates our material, biological, sexual nature.

Today's liberal elites such as Judge Walker may pose as enlightened liberators, but in fact they are secular Gnostics, treating physical anatomy as having no intrinsic dignity or purpose. In an unexpected twist of history, it is once again Christians who are defending a high and holistic view of the human person.

---

Best-selling writer and speaker, Nancy Pearcey, editor at large of the Pearcey Report, is author of "Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning," which launches Sept. 1.

 

Technorati Tags: Proposition 8,Marriage,Catholic,Gay,California,Liberal,Nancy Pearcey,Same-sex marriage

What’s driving earlier puberty in girls?

Evidence that girls are reaching puberty as early as seven years of age is in the news this week following the publication of an article in the journal Paediatrics. It is a topic that has been debated for decades.

The new data shows that in the United States white girls are catching up with Black and Hispanic girls, who are still well ahead statistically when it comes to maturing early but among whom the trend has slowed right down.

More than 10 percent of white 7-year-old girls in the study, which was conducted in the mid-2000s, had reached a stage of breast development marking the start of puberty, compared to just 5 percent in a similar study conducted in the early 1990s.

Most lay people would be concerned about little girls’ physical development getting ahead of their intellectual and emotional development. For one thing it could make them vulnerable to sexual interest by older males. They are also more likely to mix with older children and mimic older behaviour.

But the current study (which did not include menstruation) was driven by concern about increasing rates of breast cancer among women:

Early puberty in girls is a growing public health concern because studies have shown that girls who start puberty earlier are more likely to develop breast and uterine cancer later in life. The National Institutes of Health funded the study as part of a larger investigation into the environmental factors that contribute to breast cancer risk.

Experts are not certain about the factors driving the trend, which has been evident since the 1950s. Among the chief suspects are excess body fat which affects the level of hormones (estrogen and progesterone) that trigger puberty; environmental chemicals; and the environment in the womb resulting from maternal characteristics -- including first period before age 12, smoking during pregnancy, and being pregnant for the first time.

Some researchers have found links with television viewing, as Aric Sigman has noted:

Dr Sigman’s report, which is based on his analysis of 35 scientific studies, claims that television viewing affects levels of melatonin, a hormone linked to when puberty occurs in girls. Melatonin levels increase in the evening, at the onset of darkness, but staring into a bright screen during this period hinders its production.

Another factor, cited by Leonard Sax in his book Girls On The Edge, is the absence of a girl’s biological father. Sax writes:

Robert Matchock and Elizabeth Susman at Penn State University are convinced that pheromones are the mechanism whereby the presence of the biological father slows down the tempo of his daughter’s sexual development. They believe that this phenomenon is hardwired in our species, as it is in many other mammals, in order to decrease the likelihood of a father having sex with his daughter. “Biological fathers send out inhibitory chemical signals to their daughters,” says Matchock. “In the absence of these signals, girls tend to sexually mature earlier.

As for early exposure to the sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone, no-one seems to be mentioning the possible contribution of hormonal contraceptives. Could they, for example, help explain why a first pregnancy -- after coming off the pill etc -- is among the risk factors for starting puberty earlier?

By:Carolyn Moynihan

Technorati Tags: tags : breast cancer,girls,puberty