Risky,early, controversial. Puberty in medical discourses

This article comes within the compass of a research program (entitled CorAge. Bodily Experiences and AgePassages among 9e13 year-olds (ANR-09-ENFT-017) conducted between 2009 and 2013 about the emergence of a “new” age in life -“preadolescence”- as instanced in France (Alsace, Lorraine) and Italy (Venetia). The impressive amount of references to “early puberty” and “precocious puberty”, in a context of feeling of a premature end of childhood, led us to make an in-depth study of this issue: first, through an analysis of international and French and Italian medical journals; second, through interviews with health professionals. Following the thesis of Foucault, we assume that the discourses on puberty timing participate of classifications of the child body drenched with moral representations of childhood, especially on gender and age issue. Our results: the question of whether a secular trend in puberty timing even exists continues to be debated between American and European scientists. Second, the terms “puberty”, “precocious puberty”, “early puberty” have been used to indicate a variety of puberty markers, increasing confusion. A controversy has focused on early breast development in girls, because this attribute is questioning the order of ages and gender. Moreover, psychosocial factors presented as accelerating early puberty, do not demonstrate the relation between earliness and risk behavior. The literature, as it is moved by the female precocity, creates a medical category to objectify the complex and flexible process of puberty and invent female child precocity. These differences between American and European scholars and the interviews with French and Italian health professional show a gap between the international literature and practitioners, clinicians and nurses who regularly work with children: they neither find pubertal advancement, nor increase of “true precocious puberty”, although they share concerns about premature feminization of girls (France) or environmental toxicity (Italy) on children.