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Perhaps because the sexually active teens that the magazine excoriated a decade ago had become the parents of young children, the magazine upped the ante a bit by suggesting that vigilance needs to begin even sooner -- with toddlers. "The sexual acceleration starts early and holds throughout adolescence," Newsweek wrote. "A 3-year-old who no longer holds her mother's hand becomes a 9-year-old who can discuss homosexuality, AIDS and transsexual surgery."

Also Today Teen girls not in a rush Four random but not randy "tween" girls talk about boobs, boys and sex -- and why they're not in a hurry to have any of it. By Karen Houppert

The article continues to blame the media (the pop song "Me So Horny" takes a hit) and moms ("Most mothers aren't home when their kids return from school and can't exert day-to-day control").

By 1999, Newsweek hits its stride. Last week's cover story -- with a nod toward the healthy economy and the buying power of 27 million American "tweens" -- manages to hit all the familiar bases. The new Pediatrics study -- regurgitating the same stats that show white girls beginning puberty around age 10 -- is cited to prove that the age of puberty is plummeting and this segues -- surprise! -- into a paragraph on premature sexual activity.

Blame is dispersed. A finger is pointed, once again, at working moms: "The vast majority of their mothers -- more than 75 percent -- are in the workforce," and that and divorce mean "they're often alone in the afternoons." And the media is scolded for fostering a "tweens" love affair with the TV show "Friends" and an obsession with Brandy, Backstreet Boys, Pokémon and Quake III -- all proof of untoward sophistication.

Newsweek does not manage to provide proof that early bloomers are having intercourse sooner or that absentee moms, along with a premature dousing of hormones, are to blame. Probably because it doesn't really exist.

"Actually, new studies have found that, if you control for the age of the peer group, there is no association between pubertal maturation and the age of sexual debut," says Dr. Blum. In other words, girls who get breasts sooner are treated like they're older than they are -- by boys and their parents. They can attract the attention of older, more sexually experienced guys. They can incur fear and guilt and premature leniency or restriction in their parents.

"Early puberty actually catapults girls into an older peer group, and thus there is an association with early puberty and sex," says Blum, "but it's actually related to who you hang out with, not hormones."

In pointing out the difference between social maturation and physical maturation, experts tend to agree that parents and educators need to be sure they are not treating girls who may look sexually mature as though they are more mature. They point out that attraction is quite different from action in young teens -- a fact that Newsweek and other media alarmists seem too panicked to accept.

And these days, even further distinctions have to be made. While articles about these sexually sophisticated teens seem to have only one thing on their minds, the teens who contemplate "sex" do not. Sexual intercourse is the publicly-stated "problem" in the press, partly because it allows the authors to bring up the specter of unwanted teen pregnancies. The leap from there to a teen pregnancy "epidemic" is easy to make. But the teens who call themselves "active" often have never had sexual intercourse and have no intention of doing so anytime soon. Sex, to them, is about blow jobs, hand jobs and heavy petting.

In fact, the rate of teen births in the United States has actually dropped in the past few decades. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the rate has declined from 525,000 teen births in 1956 to 513,000 in 1995. While any births to girls who aren't ready to be mothers is problematic, it's important to put the "crisis" in context. What has changed since the 1950s is not that more girls are having babies, it's that more girls are having babies out of wedlock. Those numbers have shot up, so that while only 15 percent of teenage girls who gave birth in 1960 were unmarried, 75 percent were unmarried in 1994. In other words, the number of shotgun weddings has declined.

The evidence, old as it may be, that some girls start puberty at age 8 or 9 has obvious policy implications. But those implications just don't make great cover stories. There have been plenty of studies that show that the key to healthy sexuality and a lower teen pregnancy rate is good sex education. But the same fear and ambivalence that spawn hysterical media spam about "tweens" inhibits the creation of decent education programs about sex.

"Puberty education is essential and needs to start earlier," says Peggy Brick, a longtime sex-ed teacher who now works as a sexuality-education consultant in New Jersey. "It helps kids understand that this happens to everybody. It normalizes things instead of everybody feeling these changes are secret or nasty."

Secret and nasty. Sounds like a cover line. Look for it 10 years from now at a newsstand near you.
salon.com | Oct. 22, 1999

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